After I finished “Perfect Marriage Revenge” and caught up on “Marry my Husband”, I was stumped on which of my dropped dramas to continue watching or which new drama to start watching. I picked the latter.

I picked “Born to Run” because no matter how much hate is piled on “Yang Chaoyue” because she’s supposedly a ‘bad’ actress, I still like her. Lots of actresses are bad in cdramas, yet I feel her hate is excessive. I digress.

Anyway, I picked up the drama for her and I’m loving it so far. The plot is a bit heavy and I know I will/may drop it, yet, I wanted to watch it to some extent.

All these long backstory is just rant that Yang Chaoyue’s character “Chen Rouhua’s” mum in the series is the most suffocating, manipulative and selfish mum character I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing in my screen. Just like her deceased son said, it’s like a constant camera and alarm, hanging above his head, no peace of mind, no joy, no agency. Just controlling and suffocating ‘love’.

When she unlocked her daughter’s phone and went through her messages, I was dumbfounded. I actually felt sick to my stomach because how nasty do you have to be to invade your daughter’s privacy like that. She then proceeded to do worse as the drama progressed.

This is in sharp contrast to the other mother/daughter relationship depicted in the drama, which also has its own ups and downs yet it’s healing and inspiring, motivating and empowering not toxic and depressing.

Either way, I’ve dropped the drama because as at episode 18, Chen Rouhua has not stood up for herself for once, instead she gave up and moved back home to continue the rounds of manipulation and while I understand that it’s not an easy process to break free from an abusive and toxic relationship, I can’t bring myself to continue watching it.