The shadow of my childhood, which began in an old village house, along with my hunger for love and my inferiority, became chains I could never escape throughout my life.
I was born in a village that favored boys over girls. When I was six, my biological father beat me viciously. From then on, I never called him Dad again.
My younger brother's birth took away all the affection in the family. When my grandfather passed away, there was no warmth left in the world. I grew up alone, surrounded by cold stares and humiliation.
No one taught me what it meant to be loved. No one protected me from being hurt. They only made me so lowly to the core that I longed for even a little false tenderness.
And so I fell into a romantic scam woven in a Werewolf game voice chat room. A fifty-yuan virtual sports car was all the courage I could muster to risk everything for love.
I secretly traveled thousands of miles without telling my parents, broke down miserably at a train station during the Spring Festival travel rush, and faced a terrifying ordeal in a late-night rideshare.
I spent my parents' hard-earned money supporting an idle man, scrimping and saving only to be met with indifference.
I unexpectedly got pregnant and had an abortion alone, suffering devastating physical and emotional trauma, only to catch him cheating and acting intimately with someone else, while denying my existence to others.
My parents drove thousands of miles to persuade me to come home, but I stubbornly refused to listen. Only when my love was exhausted and I was covered in wounds did I finally come to my senses.
This journey that began in a virtual world was, in the end, a one-woman show.
Unloved as a child, I loved the wrong person as an adult. I loved until I was reduced to nothing, and lost everything.
