Chapter 2: Silent Breakdown（沉默的崩溃）
The pain didn't come all at once.
It crept in, quietly, like cold wind slipping through a crack in the door.
I kept telling myself, I'm fine. I can handle this. I have to be strong for my child.
But my body knew the truth before my mind admitted it.
I stopped eating properly. A few bites here, a few sips there. Some days, nothing at all.
Then came the nausea. The stomachaches that wouldn't go away. The nights spent curled up on the bathroom floor, trying not to cry loud enough for my child to hear.
I thought I was hiding it well.
Until one morning, the pain was too much.
My mother saw me pale and trembling, clutching my stomach, barely able to stand.
She didn't ask questions. She just took my hand and said, "We're going to the doctor. Now."
At the clinic, the doctor frowned as he examined me.
"You've gone too long without eating properly," he said. "Your stomach is inflamed. If you keep this up, it could tear."
He gave me an injection to ease the pain, but nothing could numb the ache in my heart.
On the way home, I sat in the passenger seat like a ghost. My mother's voice broke through the silence.
"You don't have to be strong all the time," she said, eyes fixed on the road. "Crying doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're still human."
That was when I finally broke.
Tears streamed down my face, silent but endless. For the first time since you left, I let myself fall apart—right there beside the woman who once held me as a baby, and now held me together again.
I whispered, "Ma… I don't know how to keep going."
She didn't answer with promises or plans. She just reached over and squeezed my hand.
And in that moment, I felt something shift.
Not the pain. Not the loss.
But the beginning of something I hadn't felt in weeks.
A small, flickering light…