“One of the hardest things for me to understand is that closure comes from within. It’s especially hard if you’ve been betrayed by someone you love because you feel like you have to tell them their pain, but only you can give you the peace you want.” ~Bruna Nessif
A picture of my father handing me a tennis trophy has hung in my living room for years.
Even now, if I look at it long enough, I can feel the old rush: pride, relief, belonging. For most of my life, that picture served as proof that my father loved me.
It took me decades to realize that it proved otherwise.
My father was a man of deceit—charming in public, terrifying in secret. He can entice strangers, friends and relatives to pay him for businesses he did not start and invest in.
At home, charm curdled.
He was vindictive, violent and unpredictable. The kind of people who can Above beating his childrenSmooth her hair, and rejoin a party downstairs smiling as if she’s just slipped away to refresh someone’s drink.
My siblings and I each found our own ways to survive him. My older brother fought back. My little sister was short and sweet.
I have been a good child.
I quickly learned that achievement could buy me a little distance from danger. Good grades, trophies, loyalty, compliance—these became my armor.
Not because they made me safe. They didn’t.
But they sometimes make me less likely to be a target.
My father’s affection came in spades and almost always with an audience. In front of other people, he transforms into a proud, loving father.
He will call me, hug me, praise me, show me off. Even as a child, I knew something was off about it. But when you’re hungry, you don’t stop criticizing the food.
you eat
One day, when I was eight, I played in a tennis tournament and came second. I remember standing on the stage waiting for the trophy to be presented, when the announcer called my mother to give me the award.
Then I saw movement in the corner of my eye.
My father pushed my mother to her seat so that he could present the trophy himself. There was a murmur in the crowd. People have seen it.
He didn’t care.
He bounded onto the stage with a proud, theatrical love and in that moment I forgot everything. I forgot the violence. I forgot the fear. I forgot what he did to my mother.
All I felt was chosen.
When he handed me that trophy in front of everyone, I felt something I almost never felt around him: whole. important loved
Still I knew him Love was conditional. Children always know more than adults.
I knew I wasn’t loved for who I was. I love to do things that reflect him well.
But I didn’t care.
The feeling was very strong.
That day, without a word for it, I made what I now think of as the grand bargain of my childhood: I would continue to achieve, and in return, you would continue to love me.
It seemed fair to me then. Harsh, maybe. But fair.
The film struck that bargain perfectly.
For years, I treated it like a flotation device. Whenever I felt unworthy, ashamed, or abandoned, I looked at that picture and thought: There. That was real. Whatever else he is, whatever he does, that is love.
But children in conditioned homes become experts at building cathedrals from scraps.
A warm look. A public compliment. One hug. a picture We save these scraps because we need more convincing than they do.
If they don’t mean love, then what exactly are we living for?
The photo hasn’t lost its power as I’ve gotten older, but my vision has changed. Or maybe I’ve changed, and the photograph no longer hides what it always had.
I started seeing the whole scene, not just the parts I needed. I have to see my father’s appetite. My mother is being pushed aside. My own face lit up not with security, but with relief.
Admitting it was the hardest part.
What I once called love was partly the relief that I wasn’t ignored, threatened, or used as a witness to someone else’s humiliation for a brilliant public moment. What I kept as proof of love is also proof of hunger.
And hungry children will call many things love.
Once I saw it, I could finally name the real deal my dad offered. I thought the deal was my success in return for his affection.
His real deal was: make me look pretty, and I’ll pretend to love you.
That realization did not remain in childhood. It reached my adulthood and explained more than I wanted.
I could suddenly see how many times I had chased the feeling the picture gave me. How many times have I mistaken approval for intimacy. How many times I was drawn to people who had to warm to.
I confused admiration with love. I confused being useful with being valuable. I confuse scrap with livelihood.
And because the pattern was old, it felt natural.
This is one of the cruelest things about childhood conditioning: what Hurts us quickly The latter can feel strangely familiar, and familiarity can masquerade as security. You find yourself overperforming, overachieving, overachieving, still trying to win a love that keeps crossing the finish line.
For a long time, I believed that if I was successful enough, successful enough, impressive enough, the real deal would eventually pay off. Someone—my father, a partner, the world—will see me and choose me completely.
But that hope was a trap.
It kept me working for love instead of getting. It kept me performing instead of resting. It keeps me loyal to a contract I signed out of fear.
The healing began when I stopped asking that photo to testify on my father’s behalf.
I stopped and asked, does he love me?
I began to ask a different question: why must I carry so much weight right now?
The answer was simple and devastating. Because there was nothing else.
This answer changed the way I see myself now.
For years, I felt ashamed that the photograph meant so much to me. I thought my attachment to it made me weak, needy, stupid.
Now I see children doing what they do. Making money out of whatever tenderness was available. Trying to build myself out of volatile materials because stable stuff wasn’t on offer.
That child does not deserve my contempt. He deserves my condolences.
That transition taught me something I realized early on: When you grow up with conditional love, healing isn’t just mourning what happened. It’s also about learning how to recognize old bargains when they show up again.
For me, this means focusing on a few questions.
Do I think that I have to influence this person to maintain their warmth? Do I feel anxious when I’m not producing, pleasing or acting? Do I feel deeply attracted to people who work hard for small moments of approval?
Those questions became a kind of compass.
When the answer is yes, I know I may not be responding in the present moment. I might be standing on that tennis podium again, at age eight, hoping for one more trophy to finally endear me.
When this happens, I try to pause and do three things.
First, I named what was happening without embarrassing myself. No, “There I go again, being pathetic.” But, “it’s an old wound to address.”
Second, I ask whether the connection before me feels reciprocal or performative. Healthy love doesn’t need constant proof.
Third, I remind myself that value is not something that another person awards me. not my father Not a partner. Not the audience.
That last part still takes practice.
There’s a reason conditional love creates such deep grooves in us. It trains the nervous system to chase relief and call it belonging. It teaches us to feel most alive when someone tough finally softens towards us.
But peace comes from a different place.
It no longer comes from confusing uncertainty with chemistry. And emotional labor from calling devotion. Self-worth must be worked on from no longer wanting to achieve.
The picture still hangs in my living room.
But it hangs differently there now.
There is no evidence that my father loved me. It’s proof that a child can survive surprisingly little and still reach out for love.
It’s a testament to the bargains we make when we’re young and scared and desperate. And it reminds me that I don’t have to honor that bargain forever.
I can choose people who don’t need me to shine so they can feel bright. I can choose relationships where I am ordinary, tired, uncertain and still allowed to love.
I can stop auditioning.
This may be the most profound lesson the film has taught me. Love isn’t earned, but I’ve spent years believing it.
And if you grew up the same way — mistaking appreciation for security, approval for love, performance for value — I hope you question every relationship that leaves you a little blind to choose.
Some bargains are worth keeping. Especially the ones we made as kids.
