Goodbye,My Once Beloved

At eighteen, I was desperate to get into the renowned K University's amphitheater classrooms.

By thirty, I found myself and my boyfriend of ten years in a tiny, barely ten-square-meter rental, sitting through my confinement after childbirth.

In the same budget private hospital, I lost two children due to poor-quality condoms!

——

Another sunny day, I sat across from the familiar doctor, belly still not showing.

"This is your third baby. Young lady, your uterine wall is very thin. It will only get harder and harder to get pregnant in the future!"

The nearly fifty-year-old doctor adjusted his glasses, looking at my report with a well-intentioned, bitter earnestness.

I turned to glance at the small BMW Mini parked below the hospital, hardened my heart, and nodded vigorously.

I went on the operating table alone and lay in the ward alone.

"The child has already been aborted!"

I sent a brief message to Jack Smith, then coldly blocked all his contacts.

From that point on, I knew that my ten-year long romantic run with Jack had finally ended.

The BMW was an engagement gift from David Wilson, who hated to see me squeeze onto the bus every day. With a playful laugh, after several polite refusals, I happily accepted.

David was my fiancé, average-looking, about 5.7 feet tall, just about my height.

Honestly, both in looks and demeanor, he was leagues behind my ex-boyfriend, Jack.

However, counting David's local status in K City, his well-off parents both university professors, and his modest success from entrepreneurship, Jack could never catch up to David in this lifetime!

I was never a gold digger. When I was young and beautiful, I chose to believe in love.

I had been pregnant three times for Jack, and I had three abortions. For a decade of love, no matter how naive we were in our youth, I felt I had paid enough!

Memories surged, piercing my heart like a thorn, impossible to pull out or swallow.

Jack was my boyfriend of ten years, four years in college, three years in grad school, three years post-graduation.

I spent the best years of a girl's life with Jack.

During these ten years, I wore the most expensive clothes from e-shop that would not exceed two hundred dollars, and always dared only to eat the fifty-cent pudding sticks.

Living like this day after day for ten years, the biggest skill I learned was how to save money.

Bread sold at half-price after six in the evening at the supermarket, a store at the end of the market that sold damaged cosmetics at just 20% of the price—these trivial details were carved into every corner of my brain over ten years.

But back then, I was just in my early twenties, who would care about all that?

''As long as Jack treats me well, that's enough.''

I often used this phrase to interrupt my mother's nagging on the phone.

Yes, I was content as long as Jack treated me well.

How well? At one in the morning, Jack would cross several streets to buy my favorite mung bean rice balls. No matter how tired, whenever I threw a tantrum, Jack would soothe me for hours despite his dark circles.

I was always a princess in front of Jack, all the favoritism I never got as a child, he gave to me.

Wasn't that enough? Wasn't such love worth more than the bread of life?