“So I told her I already had a boyfriend, one who was rich and handsome and smart and loved me for me, because it hurt too much to tell her that she’d just voiced my own fears.” She took a breath. I wanted to hug her and never let go. “And it’s just like what you said: your parents are the ones who are supposed to think you’re the best, so when they think the opposite…” She also couldn’t seem to find words to describe it.

I turned my palm up and squeezed. “I can’t believe your mom said that pile of crap to you. What the hell.”

Her head drooped. “I know,” she groaned. “It’s terrible. But it’s also just one side of her, and… I don’t know! She’s not all bad, but yeah, she says some really horrible things sometimes—things that make me want to scream and hurl stuff.”

This shouldn’t be a conflict for her. It pained me emotionally and physically. Yet if anyone could understand what it was like to still crave a relationship with parents who didn’t fully deserve it, it was me. I didn’t act on it, but the ghost of them haunted me daily.

So much churned beneath her shadowed expression as she said, “Sometimes I’m ashamed at how I’ve clung to them with bloody, torn-apart hands, trying to make it work even after they show me again and again it’s not worth it. But I’m somehow also ashamed of choosing myself now.” She hunched over, and her voice grew as small as her balled-up body. “Why am I forever doomed to be unhappy?”

I wrapped my arms around her, big spoon to her little ball. “Chloe.” She looked at me. “I don’t think anyone treats you as well as you deserve, including me. Because how can anyone give enough to the girl who loves so unconditionally and puts others before herself? Your love for your parents doesn’t make you weak; it’s why you’re so special, and why you deserve everything. Including happiness. They’re the ones who didn’t choose you, not the other way around. You feel guilty because you’re you. I wish I could take it away but I can’t.”

“Right,” she whispered, hearing me but perhaps not quite feeling it yet.

I continued to squeeze ball-Chloe, hoping I could at least replace some of the pain with love.