The clues screamed in neon. But I could not see them. After all, plenty of people feel or look “other” than their parents or siblings. Biology doesn’t promise similarity. Traits skip generations. Characteristics emerge, seemingly out of nowhere. Our parents seem alien to us. My mother, certainly, had always seemed alien to me, biology be damned. And so I built my narrative edifice, brick by brick: my mother was a pathological narcissist who had a borderline personality disorder; my father was depressed, shattered by marital misfortune; I was an Orthodox Jewish girl who looked like she could
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