Thank you so much, Mefisto!

I lived with my real parents and they've always been more or less physically present in my life, but emotionally, they are closed off and unreachable. They didn't accept my neediness nor so-called 'bad' feelings like anger, fear or sadness. They see these as weaknesses. My therapist suspects that when I cried as a baby or a small child, my parents either ignored me or failed to recognise what I needed, which I took as abandonment. I was a very lonely child and couldn't get close to my dad as I was terrified of this destructive rage he has within him. My mum, on the other hand, took care of me like a martyr because she had to, not because she wanted to.

I feel the good things that have come out of my challenging past are a deeper sense of empathy, sensitivity to other people's pain and hardships, and a genuine understanding of what it's like to have one's trust broken and how hard it can be to rebuild after such devastation. I also feel my experiences have made me more resilient.