As a child, when parents were infallible, the only known options were that I was bad or that my parents didn’t love me. It was less painful to accept that I was bad, especially because the beatings, yelling, and isolation would have continued either way.

As an adult, I’ve learned that it’s possible that my parents just weren’t very good at being parents. While the compartmentalizing has become easier to perform, the emotional scars still take time to unravel