No one will know. Aren't you pretending to be normal?

Kimberly considered her family completely ordinary until she went to school. Seeing how other children lived, she desperately realized that her parents were mentally ill, that she was ashamed of what was happening in their home, and most importantly, if her teachers or her classmates' parents found out, her mom and dad would lose their parental rights, and she would be sent to a boarding school. At first, she learned to be a "nobody": she didn't make friends, didn't tell anything about herself, and didn't stand out at school. But over the years, she adapted: she showered at the gym, wore cheap new clothes when there was nowhere to wash the old ones, found herself a fake home where she would say goodbye to friends and then quietly run to the real one. In high school, she even managed to become a popular girl. The shame of her family and the despair that her parents would never overcome their illness accompanied Kimberly throughout her childhood and youth. The art of pretending to be someone else helped her become an actress. But letting people in close, not searching for pathologies and dependencies in them, forgiving her parents, and not being afraid for her future—this took a long time to achieve.