Rock Paper Scissors

by Alice Feeney

I know what it is like to be abandoned by someone who is supposed to love you. There is nothing worse.

I think when you feel abandoned by your own parents, it’s impossible not to spend the rest of your life suspecting people of plotting to leave you.

Rightly or wrongly, I poured every emotional part of myself into us. I adopted your hopes and dreams and loved them as though they were my own.

Nothing I did as a child was ever good enough. We are our parents’ echoes and sometimes they don’t like what they hear.