The anger I’d been harboring towards my parents was at a tipping point.

They had decided who I was going to be long before I was born. Their obsessively controlling behavior was rooted in childhood trauma. They grew up in the same neighborhood, one full of crime and poverty but devoid of hope and opportunity.

They never missed a chance to frighten me with tales of their former reality. They carried on endlessly about their grueling struggle to climb their way out. The only nice thing they had to say about their previous habitat is that they met there as children and fell in love as teenagers. They built a...