A Hypothermic Childhood

Lin Wan's happiness before she was six years old was very simple. Every New Year's Eve, her cousin would put down the King of Glory and play with her on the baby bus and go to her aunt's house in Qingdao. The sea breeze and shells filled her with all her expectations. It was the only warmth she had left in the short term. Lin Wan's parents divorced when she was seven years old and was sentenced to a cowardly father. Her mother often visited her at school and even picked her up to spend a few days with her. Her mother's new boyfriend had a boy who casually said he wanted to eat cherries. The boy climbed up a fruit tree to pick for her. The time was short and tender but ended quickly. She was locked outside the dark door by the man, and the relationship ended. At the age of ten, her mother suddenly returned after leaving home for a long time. The family seemed to be reunited, but only a week later her mother disappeared again while collecting money. Only then did Lin realize that the reunion was just a scam from beginning to end. A bullying gang of seven people tortured her endlessly for five years from the fifth grade to the fourth grade. She was beaten, kicked in the abdomen, and poured cold water on her head. She was slapped in the face and locked in a dirty toilet in public. Rumors and humiliation followed her everywhere. Her father remarried, and her patriarchal stepmother Zhao Guilan broke into her life. Day after day of yin and yang and verbal abuse overwhelmed Lin Wan. She suffered from depression, tear incontinence, and a chronic physical disease that strictly prohibited strenuous exercise. However, all her illnesses were described by her family as laziness and pretentiousness, "Just exercise more" vetoed all her painful growth. She almost fell into the clutches of human traffickers twice. Her fear turned into countless entangled nightmares. When she entered high school, she cautiously showed her sincerity in exchange for being ostracized and stabbed in the back by her friends. She repeatedly forgave her boyfriend who had cheated on her twice, but was eventually abandoned by him. Her deep uneasiness gave birth to a pleaser personality. She always pays attention to the emotions of others for fear of upsetting anyone. A misunderstanding became the turning point of fate. She did not listen to her stepmother's instructions. She was maliciously fabricated and argued. She was slapped and had her hair torn. She fought back against her stepmother. She used this as an excuse to force seventeen-year-old Lin Wan to drop out of school. She was forced to go out to work and was overwhelmed. She was dismissed from the factory and was sent home. She was greeted with another beating. She could not tell the truth about how she got up early and hid under the quilt to play with her mobile phone. Once she confessed, her only spiritual sustenance, her mobile phone, would be confiscated and she would be full of grievances and have nowhere to complain. Lin Wan's stepmother took her to the city where her mother had settled. Lin Wan was full of extravagant hopes, but she saw her biological mother bump into her and then took a detour to avoid the belated truth. The custody rights were originally given to her mother, but it was her mother who actively refused to raise her. The root cause of her parents' divorce was her mother's infidelity during marriage. Her father owes 50,000 yuan in foreign debt and 3,000 yuan in insurance premiums every year. Her stepmother and her father have set a cold rule. Lin Wan uses all her earnings from working to pay off debts and insurance premiums. In name, she is left with 200 yuan for living expenses. In the end, all of them will be taken back. Tears are her instinct, but as long as she sheds tears, she will be beaten and scolded. She tried to end her own life and came back, but all that awaited her was rebuke and violence. Lin Wan, who was sent back to the countryside, had to work in the fields during the busy farming season. When no one was around, she harmed herself over and over again, asking whether she was not doing well enough or whether she was born to be a disaster star that would bring misfortune to everyone. All the people who had been kind to her dispersed one after another. The little warmth in her childhood slowly disappeared, and misfortune followed for the rest of her life. The long hypothermia had begun. She was trapped in the endless cold winter and could not find any way out. Concept: Violence, indifference, and abandonment are not a one-time severe injury but a slow loss of a child's sense of security over many years. Compared with an extreme tragedy, such trivial injuries that are continuously rationalized by the family are more universal. A cowardly father, a selfish mother, and a mean stepmother. No one is a pure evil person, but everyone conspires to exhaust the remaining warmth of a girl's childhood.