Heads up, this is long as fuck

You can't forgive the atrocities the mother did, but you can understand them. That's one thing I love about this work, you see. It mirrors reality way too much, so much that it has a lot of people hating some characters. I'm not trying to make anyone go soft for the mother, but please hear me out. This isn't the mother's fault. It's society's. The system that shames victims and twist realities to meet its own ends is at fault. You cannot love if you don't even know what being loved is like. The liminality between the realization of your reality and your desperation for a normal life will drive you mad, leading to an abusive mindset. I read this once, "when you're miserable, you need an even more miserable person." and it holds true to a lot of mentally disoriented people. They want to escape. They know they can't. But they desperately clutch onto that one speck of hope they illusion. When you're in pain, all you see is your pain. You can't hear anyone. You can't see anything else. It's like you're in a cocoon, tightly trapped with no way out. I know it's a little hard to grasp and I'm having trouble explaining exactly how I'm feeling about this, but society really plays a heavy role here. The mother was kicked out of her own house, kicked out by the very people that should've helped and supported her through this trauma. In a single moment, her entire life shattered. Suddenly, she was all alone. Everything she knew, everything loved, everything she dreamed of. Gone. And it wasn't even her fault. She had nothing to regret, as much as she wanted to. Nothing other than being born in the first place. She was the victim, but in a society that works in the favor of men she was bound to be ruthlessly trampled on. Society made her feel weak, so she wanted to assert her strength at the expense of another person or thing. She wanted to blame someone, anyone. 16. She was 16. A CHILD. A child forced to tolerate the tremendous pain of childbirth and stigma. I imagine she had to sell herself not long after giving birth for a few pieces of bread or a roof, even if for one night. And you all know how sex workers are treated by society. They're at the bottom of the food chain. She had to go for prostitution because a normal convenience store or any other job not requiring a high school diploma or a certain age wouldn't be enough to support a child, especially taking into account she's a woman and sexism is still alive and well. She basically sacrificed herself for her rapist's child. Perhaps because she was desperate to have any meaning at all, she held onto her job. It was her lifeline anyways, but on a more psychological level, "working" and "earning money" gave her meaning. She might have felt betrayed when her customers started taking interest in her son instead. To her, it felt like he was stealing them because she herself was constantly being robbed. Robbed of her purity, her sanity, HER LIFE. She had nothing but her job now, and he was "stealing" that. A child raising a child. She had to work so hard for him, but her own parents left her the moment they knew of her pregnancy. "Why does he get what I couldn't?". I'm surprised she didn't leave him on the road the moment he was born. Do you know how brave she must have been to raise him properly even if it was just a few years? If kindness has become a stranger to you, do you think you'll be able to see right from wrong? When you've fallen into an endless pit with your own fate's claws digging deep into your skin, will you care what's right or wrong? It was a fate other people created for her. Everything happened because of a jerk. All her suffering was because of him. This child was because of him too. By substitution, child = suffering. Her line of thinking probably went like that. Why does everyone assume kindness or sympathy is an innate trait? It's not. We are shaped by our environment. Some people, triggered by a certain event, learn to detach themselves from their environment and grow independently. But not everyone can do that. The human heart rarely stops on the slippery slopes of hatred. To her, this was life in its true colors. It wasn't much more attractive than a kitchen, it was just as smelly. Please. I can't stess this enough. You CANT heal in the same environment that made you sick. This entire story proves that theme, yet everyone wants the mother dead or in jail. I wish locking someone up like an animal actually worked. Maybe recidivism wouldn't be a thing. What matters to me is, in a world surrounded by wrongs the mother was finally able to see her mistakes. She used blaming others as a coping mechanism, but she had now realized where she went wrong. That's amazing in itself. Why was she able to? Because she changed her environment. She didn't do it alone either. And that's why she chose to bear the regret for the rest of her life, as symbolized by the ring.

I loved the ending. They weren't able to mend their relationship. They shouldn't be able to because they're both broken people. But they were able to face each other. Momo didn't necessarily forgive her. He just understood why she acted like that. It broke his image of an evil mom and twisted it to a woman who was crushed by society, a woman who despite that tried to survive. A woman who chose to scratch the earth for a living rather than part with it. And honestly, momo's & his mother's survival and happiness is the best revenge.