There were no broken bones, no scars—some bruises, a few welts here and there, but nothing anyone would notice. Physical abuse? If you had said these words to my father, if you had said them to me, we would have laughed in your face. This wasn’t abuse. This wasn’t even a beating. My father knew what a real beating felt like. And he was right about that. What he dished out to his son was nothing compared to what he himself had received. And so the chain goes, across generations, link to link. Whether he knew it or not, my father was doing more than meting out punishment for imagined
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