Battles

"Sometimes, the hardest battles aren’t fought with others, but with the pieces of yourself that you’ve lost along the way."

Driving home felt like moving through a haze. My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, knuckles white, as I replayed the events of the day over and over in my mind. Everything was a blur, a whirlwind of emotions I couldn’t seem to get a handle on.

How had my life unraveled so completely in just a few hours?

My mother—no, not my mother—had told me the most devastating truth of all. I wasn’t hers. The woman who had spent my entire life resenting me, pushing me away, had finally revealed why. I wasn’t her daughter. I had always wondered what I had done wrong, why she never loved me the way a mother should. And now, the answer was simple. I didn’t belong to her.

But if I wasn’t hers, then whose was I? Who were my real parents? And why was I given to this family, to be raised in a home where love was withheld like some cruel game?

As if that wasn’t enough, Chloe