Lin Sheng was named by his adoptive mother, who said the Sheng was an ancient musical instrument with a lonely sound. Her life seemed to confirm this name - she was adopted, arranged, and married at the age of eighteen to a man who was obedient at home but violent and perverse at home.
After seven years of marriage, she learned to use foundation to cover bruises, and learned to curl up when fists fell. The only thing she couldn't learn was "resistance." Until that night, her four-year-old daughter Xiaotang rushed to block her, with the same fear in her eyes.
At that moment, Lin Sheng saw himself in the child's eyes - a shadow so humble as to be buried in the dust.
Divorce was the bravest decision she had ever made in her life. Taking the child out of the house, renting a damp partition room, working the night shift in the supermarket until I was so tired that I could fall asleep while standing, being pestered by my ex-husband, being accused of being ignorant by my adoptive parents... Life is like an old piece of clothing full of holes, with holes everywhere no matter how hard you tear it.
But she insisted on sewing.
The day she picked up a paintbrush, she had no idea what it would change. She just wanted to draw her daughter's sleeping face and the outline of two people cuddling in the dark. There is no technique in those paintings, only heartbeats. They started from painting classes in the community and went all the way to the Internet, to art exhibitions, and to a world that she had never dared to imagine.
This is not a story of counterattack, but a story of a woman rebuilding a "home" for herself and her children on the ruins, brick by brick.
Her original name was Lin Sheng. Later someone asked her: Has anyone listened to your Sheng now?
She smiled and looked at the little girl holding hands next to her.
Some. That audience is always there.
