For fifteen years, I believed this was the kind of love I deserved.

Not the gentle kind.

Not the kind where your parents support you, speak softly, and make you feel safe.

Just the kind that teaches you how to endure.

My parents divorced when my older brother and I were still very young. I was barely five.

And it wasn’t one of those quiet separations where people drift apart and slowly build separate lives.

No.

My father shoved my mother hard against the wardrobe door while we were packing our things — right in front of us.

He didn’t beat her.

But to a five-year-old, the distinction doesn’t exist.

All I knew was that something irreversible had cracked open.

I didn’t understand what was happening or why.

I remember crying — frozen, terrified, unable to move.

A few minutes later, my mother came to me, helped me put on a jacket, and walked us out of the apartment. We waited for my grandmother to come and get us.

From the outside, it probably sounded comforting.

At least you had your grandparents. At least someone took you all in.

But safety didn’t follow us there.

It took about two months for things to change.

At first, it was subtle.

My grandmother raising her voice when I didn’t do something exactly right.

Forcing me to befriend a child from my class because she knew his mother.

Making me apologize when I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Then it escalated.

She ripped clothes off me because she decided I wasn’t allowed to go to school in jeans.

She would hit me.

That lasted two years.

Eventually, my mother saved enough money to buy an apartment. When we moved, it felt like relief.

It was quiet.

Safe.

Almost peaceful.

But peace, I learned, can be temporary.

I know I wasn’t a perfect child.

I lied sometimes. I didn’t always listen.

I know that.

Still, something in my mother changed.

She insulted me.

Got in my face if I dared to answer back.

Pulled my hair.

Hit me.

There were moments when something inside me clicked — a small, desperate survival instinct.

Something is wrong

Stay quiet. Don’t react. Don’t make her angry.

It didn’t matter.

Even when I spoke calmly, without attitude, she reacted the same way.

One afternoon, I took my dog for a walk around the block. I ran into a friend and we talked for maybe thirty minutes. I didn’t go far. I swear I didn’t.

When I opened the elevator door to go home, my mother was standing there — furious.

She didn’t let me explain.

She grabbed me by my T-shirt, dragged me into the apartment, hit me, and shoved me into the furniture while screaming.

I was left with a large bruise on my thigh.

Chunks of my hair came out from how hard she pulled it.

After that, I started going to school already crying — just to let some of it out.

I stayed up late at night so I could finally feel something other than fear.

So I could cry in peace.

I was always wrong.

She was always right.

If I tried to do something right, I was insulted.

If I did nothing at all, I was insulted anyway.

And so I grew up in an environment that taught me the same lesson over and over again:

This is what you’re worth.

For a long time, I believed it.

So deeply that I told myself I never wanted children — not because I didn’t love them, but because I was terrified of becoming this kind of pain for someone else.

That’s why self-love never came naturally to me.

Even now, I sometimes sabotage my own good moments.

I do something that makes me feel good for a second — and then it collapses.

The confidence disappears.

The old voice returns.

You’re not good enough.

If you try, you’ll fail.

And someone will say they knew it all along.

I’m still unlearning what I was taught.

Still trying to separate love from fear.

Still figuring out what kindness feels like when it’s directed at myself.

But I know this much now:

What I learned wasn’t love.

It was survival.

And surviving is not the same as being unworthy of something better.