I did not, in those years, secretly always know my own worth and merely wait to reveal it.

That is the tidy version, and it is a lie.

The truth is that I half-believed them; for a long time, I genuinely wondered whether they were right about me — whether I really was the difficult one, the lesser one, the one who couldn’t.

A role assigned in childhood and reinforced daily for three decades does not leave your own self-image untouched; it gets inside, and whispers in your own voice.

What saved me was not some unbroken inner certainty.