“You deserved better.”
Maybe I did.
Maybe every child deserves parents who love them equally.
Maybe life doesn’t always provide that.
The important thing was understanding something I had spent years missing.
Their treatment of me was never proof of my value.
It was proof of their failures.
There is a difference.
A huge difference.
As the sun began setting over Lake Michigan, my mother quietly left.
I watched her drive away.
Then I sat alone on the porch.
The same porch where Grandma once drank tea and told me stories.
The same porch my father tried to take from me.
The same porch my sister thought could finance a vacation.
The cabin remained exactly where it had always been.
