1 Preface

I want to share my own story.

We are getting married in October this year. It hasn't been easy for our relationship to survive the ups and downs of the past ten years. I often hear people talking about the "realism" of women, and I also want to talk about my "unrealistic" side as a woman.

However, I believe that my unrealistic side also has its conditions.

We started dating in junior high school, when we were both innocent and didn't expect to come this far. Our ten-year love journey has experienced 7 breakups: I dated someone else, he became disillusioned, I broke up with the other person and we started again, gradually getting to know each other and opening up to one another. In between, we also had various conflicts and arguments, four years of long-distance relationship during college, and the challenges of finding jobs after graduation... It has been a bumpy road for our love, which can be described as extraordinary and yet ordinary. Now we are both 24 years old, and it can be said that half of our lives have been entangled with each other. All the experiences we went through have taught us to cherish each other. During our senior year, we firmly decided to be together for a lifetime, disregarding all external disturbances. Our hearts grew closer and closer, and now we are about to enter the grave of marriage, to live and die together.

Let me first talk about the backgrounds of our families.

I come from a single-parent family. My mother is a teacher and also runs a small family business, which provides a decent income for our small town. My mother loves me very much, and although we are a single-parent family, I have never suffered any major financial grievances. From childhood, my mother provided me with the best of everything - food, clothing, and more. Wherever I go, unless I mention it, people always assume that I am an only child. I had average grades and graduated from a second-tier university.

2 Family background

His family is very happy, with his parents and a younger sister. His father works as a laborer, while his mother runs a small shop. Although they don't earn much, it is enough to cover their expenses. Both he and his sister are top students, which makes their mother proud. Their living conditions were considered comfortable, but two years ago, his father was diagnosed with pulmonary edema, a long-term illness that requires ongoing treatment. He had to undergo surgery and it cost a lot of money, but they didn't tell him until his father was discharged from the hospital. His sister finished the college entrance examination this year and will start university in September. In addition, his mother's shop business has been declining, and their financial situation seems to have worsened. He is a very intelligent person, always excelling academically, and although he didn't do well in the college entrance examination, he still managed to get into a prestigious university and now works for a listed foreign company.

During his senior year, we were originally planning to return to our hometown. He had already received a job offer from a mobile company there, with an annual salary of over 80,000 RMB, which is considered a good job in our small town – stable and well-paying. His family was very happy about it. I also managed to find a good internship opportunity through connections in our hometown, and it seemed likely that I would be hired full-time. Our future plans seemed all set, just going back to our hometown felt great.

Before receiving the job offer from China Mobile, he was informed that he had to come to Guangzhou for the final interview, which is the last round of interviews with the company. He came to Guangzhou (he attended university in Guangzhou). We all knew that the outcome was almost certain, as he had already been informed that he had the highest performance in his group during his summer internship. We all felt confident that he would secure the job offer from China Mobile, and we were very happy about it. After the final interview, there was a month of waiting for the response. During that time, a classmate recommended him to do part-time work at the foreign company where he worked as a programmer (part-time work was well-paid). He thought that since he had free time, he might as well help out there.

The result was that this decision completely disrupted our future plans and shattered my dream of a stable future.

3 Stay in Guangzhou

In short, the bottom line is that he wanted to stay, stay in Guangzhou, and this foreign company offered very attractive conditions, with a starting salary of 100,000 yuan. At that time, this was really tempting for a recent graduate like me.

He talked to me, knowing that I wanted to return to my hometown because my family is there, and I'm the kind of person who is very attached to my mother and lacks a sense of security. I can't even sleep alone at night in my own home.

I have a lack of security when it comes to family because my own family is broken. I am very averse to marriage and just want to live well under my mother's protection. Plus, as my mother gets older, I want to stay by her side and take care of her.

But the person I love has his own ideals and ambitions. He wants to achieve bigger things and have a broader future. He said that if he goes back to our hometown, he might spend his whole life fixing servers in a mobile company and won't have the opportunity to work on his own projects. He has his own ideas and passion for programming, and he wants to use his own code to create something that can change people's lives.

Although these words sound naive, he said them to me seriously at that time. He said, "I respect you, and if you say you want to go back, I will go back immediately. With our annual salary of 80,000 yuan in our hometown, we can live a comfortable life; in Guangzhou, even with a salary of over 100,000 yuan, we may still struggle. But I won't let you suffer for a lifetime. If you are willing to stay outside with me and work hard, I will make sure you don't regret it."

Maybe it's because I have confidence in him, or confidence in myself, or maybe I'm just too foolish and naive, but I believed his promise. At least, until now, he has been fulfilling this promise. In the end, we stayed in Guangzhou, and he resolutely declined the offer from the mobile company. Later, they informed him that he passed the final interview and even sent the third-party agreement, but we argued with his parents for a long time. His parents were constantly trying to persuade us, and my mother kept scolding me for being stupid. But we persevered amidst the arguments from both sets of parents and stayed in Guangzhou.

However, please note this "however," staying in Guangzhou was not the start of a good life, but rather the beginning of a torturous journey. After rejecting the offer from the mobile company, he fully devoted himself to work at the foreign company. However, because he was still in his final year of university, he couldn't sign a formal employment contract and could only earn money through part-time internships. As for me, I also found an internship job in Guangzhou, where he earned 2,000 yuan per month, and I earned 1,000 yuan. That's how our days of hardship began.

At first, in order to be close to both of our workplaces, we randomly rented a small house, one of those simple migrant worker houses. It was a small apartment, less than 30 square meters, deep in a narrow and twisted alley where mud would splash all over us when it rained. We lived on the fourth floor, and on the ground floor was a small Hunan restaurant. As soon as dinner time started, the spicy smell would immediately reach our balcony, and our clothes would always smell of chili. At that time, we couldn't stay on the balcony, otherwise, we would choke to death. The toilet was next to the balcony, and there was a big hole on top. In the freezing winter, I would shiver while taking a shower, and it's really something I don't want to think about. Guangzhou is damp in winter when it rains, and that house, except for the balcony and the bedroom, only had one window each, everything else was closed, causing everything to become damp, moldy, and stinky. I lost count of the food and things I had to throw away.

4 My grandfather passed away

At that time, I was so heartbroken, it was all about money!

Two people squeezed into a small room, with only a one-meter-five-wide bed and a small wardrobe for two people. We had to hold each other tightly when we slept at night, otherwise, the blanket would fall to the ground when we turned over, and we would wake up freezing in the middle of the night. Later, we came up with a solution and placed the only two chairs next to the bed. Sigh!

Because I didn't attend university in Guangzhou, I had a hard time adjusting to life in Guangzhou. It started with continuous gastroenteritis, and I endured the pain for nearly half a month without going to the hospital. Then I caught a cold, and while my gastroenteritis hadn't healed, I got pharyngitis so severe that I couldn't speak clearly. Later, when the pain became unbearable and my whole body was trembling, I called my mom and asked her to send me some money to see a doctor. At that moment, my mom cried. Mothers are always the best, and she immediately sent me the money. It's not that my man doesn't care about me, it's just that I kept it to myself and didn't tell him because medical treatment in Guangzhou is too expensive. Later, when my throat hurt, he kept telling me to see a doctor, but I only said it was due to internal heat and that taking some double yellow lotus herb would be enough. My mom said, "If it's not good, let's go back home. Why suffer outside? If this man isn't good, find another one."

But I didn't want to be defeated by difficulties. I feel that the current life is a choice made by both of us, not just him choosing me, but me choosing him as well. This is mutual, and I shouldn't give up on him at this time.

Actually, my thoughts are quite simple. I just don't want those people who didn't believe in us at the beginning to say, "I told you so."

I want them to say, "I didn't expect that" in the end.

After recovering from gastroenteritis and pharyngitis, I started to have rectal bleeding! This time, we couldn't ignore it and hurriedly went to the hospital. The result was urinary tract infection, which means the inflammation had not been completely cured and had spread to different parts of my body. I was so close to tears at that time, being tormented by this infection for almost two months, and I spent over 1000 yuan on medical expenses.

Later, as the end of the year approached, his grandfather suddenly passed away, it was really sudden. His grandfather kept saying that he really wanted to see me, his eldest daughter-in-law. We hurriedly went back to our hometown and saw the old man for the last time. Although we hadn't officially defined our relationship, I still joined his family in busy activities at the funeral parlor. My mom said that I had a thick skin, running over without their acknowledgment. But I didn't care about what others thought. Grandfather cared about me, so I treated him as my own grandfather. I went home for grandfather, I didn't care how others saw me, as long as I could face my conscience.

On our way back home, my man rested his head on my shoulder and said, "Baby, thank you." Tears streamed down my face, knowing that everything was worth it.