One Finger and Half a Lifetime Gone By

After twenty-three years of marriage, Li Qingqing has always been the most decent wife in the eyes of outsiders. Her husband, Lin Wenzhou, is the vice president of the university. He is gentle and steady and respected by everyone. Their marriage is peaceful and they are what colleagues call a "model couple." Only she knows what is missing in this marriage. Her husband always looked at her with a thin layer of distance. He spent more time sitting on the balcony in a daze than talking to her. She had always known that there was another person living in his heart, even before they got married. She waited for twenty-three years until that early morning when her husband said goodbye to her with a cold kiss. After he left, she found a yellowed high school graduation photo among his belongings. In the photo, the seventeen-year-old him and a girl were standing side by side, separated by a finger's width. He had guarded that finger width for thirty-four years, and she had guarded him for twenty-three years, but she had never really gotten close. This is a marriage monologue written with forbearance by a woman for half her life, and it is also an emotional dilemma that spans thirty years. No one of the three people was wrong, but no one got a good death. No one of the three people was wrong, it just took them half their lives to understand that letting go was the best ending.