Confrontation

The year Song Zhiyi left home, I was just eight years old. That was the first time I tasted the bitterness of parting. It was sour and bitter, but more than anything, I felt lost and helpless. Tears streaming down my face, I clung to her waist, unable to let her go. I only remember that she said something to me. I was too young to understand, but I still took her words to heart. She said that perhaps the most important thing for a woman was not whom she married, but having the ability to make herself happy no matter whom she married. She said she did not have that ability, and Tang Zhenting was not the right man for her after all. At the time, I only resented her for being selfish, and locked away everything I remembered about my mother. I had always naively believed that if I devoted all my love to Duan Chengchuan, and spent my life by his side, we would stay together in warmth and happiness until death. Time passed, and I endured the grief of losing someone, along with regrets that could never be undone, until the innocence of my youth faded. Half my life had passed before I learned what it meant to yearn for something I could never have, and what it meant to find that having it was worse than not having it. At last, I understood. The greatest gamble in this world is falling in love with someone, because you can never know what you will get in return for giving them your whole heart. It was just like the inevitable losing bet I made in my tangled relationship with Duan Chengchuan. The only things in this world that truly belong to you are a few: the tears you have shed, the wounds you have suffered, the love you have given, the illnesses you have had, the people you have lost, the wrongs you have done, and the greed, resentment, and delusion that grew from them. Thankfully, love is not everything. Thankfully, not everything is love.