I was born in and blinded for decades. It took the shock of seeing how a judicial committee works in the case of one of my children to fully wake up.
I had doubts for almost 20 years but I kept pushing them back in my head for some reason.
How I liken myself now is to a recovering drug addict that now has to start over at 40 years old with close to zero social skills and no network of people to lean on.