These memories are mine

Hello! Guest post—but I'll let the content be its own introduction. 

Of course, there are “good” memories. Times when the little girl who didn’t understand who he was—or anyone was—felt cared for. What is my responsibility in regard to those memories? I am not interested in constructing a fictional person in memory, when I know the acts that offered interest or kindness were structured by someone else. He would never have thought to sit and read a child a chapter book without having been directly told to. He would never have apologized for berating her to tears, were he not instructed to. The acts that seem to represent some positive portion of our experience together don’t really have any relation to the will of the person who left. But, they do have value as times I practiced feeling as though I could rely on someone, without connection to that missing person as an individual. With the insight of years gone past, it’s become clear those times were mistaken, but they were still practice for the soul. It’s important to remember how to think warmly of people in roles you have negative biases against, when they are not the person who caused the prejudice. Do I have to consider the memories tainted because that person failed me, or can they be separated from the specific and kept as a feeling? Maybe what I’m struggling to say to myself is that, even though the person in those memories was false, I still believe memories of their kind can be true, for others or with others. I can think warmly in the abstract, with those memories to make the feeling tangible and help me relate to what others know. There’s no reason one person should be important enough to take that ability to believe away—just enough to draw conclusions about the individual they are.

There may be people like that out there, people worth believing in, but it ain’t you. My memories are mine, thanks. I can draw the line between their value to me and the part you played, crossing out the false descriptions and keeping the true. There was a parent who cared enough to see to it those things happened; it just sure wasn't you.

Seeing life from a more mature lens is all about accepting composite truths. I am not going to spill black paint across my own memories of Christmases past just because it turns out there was a dark element in them. It would be reactionary and self-defeating. If I want to salvage the worth those images have, then I have to accept they have warmth and pain at the very same time. As many aspects of life do. In the same way a piece of literature can contain relevant insights and outdated offenses at the same time. You see them for what they are, label them clearly to aid acceptance, then you set aside the irrelevant and build on the worthwhile.

Both constructing a fiction and erasing the past completely would be equivalent departures from reality. It happened, imperfectly. Transparency with others--and with yourself--is where you can find the freedom to appreciate which parts mattered in the construction of your present and which parts didn't.