I don’t think my father will ever be able to say the sorry I need from him to heal, so I wrote it myself, conveying it as best as I could based on what I know his capacity to be. “Every time you’ve tried to talk to me and make repairs, you’re asking for a lot of vulnerability. I can’t fix the past. I can’t fix how I’ve been. But admitting fault would mean I also have to work on myself in the future.”

I’d spent so much emotional effort not wanting to become my parents, especially in scenarios where my under-two-year-old child was present. Yet, here I still was, screaming at the top of my lungs in our kitchen instead of looking for common ground, practicing empathy, literally using any of my other emotional skills.