When I was 12 years old, my world shattered in a way no child should ever experience. I can still see that evening as if it were happening in front of me right now, the heavy silence in the living room, my mother’s trembling hands as she tried to hold onto her dignity, and my father standing tall beside a woman neither of us had ever seen before. She had a smug smile plastered on her face, as though she had already won something precious.
