Trouble verifying email address with custom domain name

I'm trying to set up an email address with a custom domain name. I bought the email address successfully with cloudflare through the system that iCloud provides. I then logged into cloudflare to verify the email but saw that I cannot access an inbox there (my technical knowledge is limited - maybe that was obvious) so I went to set up email routing so that I could verify. Doing this required me to delete some of the DNS records relevant to using the address with iCloud, which I did. I then asked apple to resend the verification email to the address but it still wasn't forwarding to my personal email, so I disabled email routing and added the DNS records that iCloud requires. The DNS records and email routing appear to be mutually exclusive so how can I verify the email and proceed to the next step?