The short answer is neither.

Nevertheless, I think your mother would prefer that her perspective be the only legitimate version of events. For a short while, a thought the same about my own, that my version was the only accurate one. It’s hard to learn how to hold both truths simultaneously, let alone see the benefit of accepting others’ experiences. But doing that means having to face our own demons. I’ve noticed that Lisa seems to have a deep aversion to looking at her own shadow (a Jungian term). I imagine she has good reason to keep her eyes closed, and I have my own theories as to why.

It’s so important to do that work though, no matter how hard it is to do. If we don’t, not only do we stay stuck in dysfunction, but we also deny ourselves the gifts of empathy and solidarity. Plus, by consistently invalidating the stories of the people we’re meant to love, we end up alienating them to the point of complete estrangement.

And that’s where my sisters and I have now ended up. Virginia and Lisa have clung to an idea of who I am, one that no longer exists and belongs decades in the past. They simply don’t know the present me at all, nor do they seem to want to.

After I came back to Ottawa in 2008, I tried for a few years to bridge the gap between us. It was futile though, and that breaks my heart.

As adults, most of us come to accept that it isn’t possible for there to be only one legitimate version of events. We all have our own perspectives, and it’s common for them to contradict each other, even when the events were shared.

So I tell my stories here not to dismiss your mother’s, but to add the voice that she seems afraid to hear. I don’t blame her. To Lisa, judging by her reactions in the past, my stories are tantamount to character assassination.

To me, there are, understandably, a lot of things in Lisa’s collection that are missing, misremembered, or only partially remembered. Details in my stories are likely to, and often will contradict many of hers. And by the way, Virginia, too, has a vested interest in corroborating Lisa’s stories. If my stories are to be believed, she would have a few demons of her own.

As for Lisa’s recollections, I see that she compensated for my missing testimony by filling in gaps with the projection of her own experience. The most obvious tell is how often she used the pronoun ‘we,’ thereby superimposing her feelings and observations over mine. Maybe it frustrates her that she can’t erase me altogether. Maybe censoring me seemed like the next best thing.

By her account, she gives the impression that I skated through childhood without a care, while she suffered countless injustices. Granted, she genuinely did suffer a lot of injustices, and I’ll even admit some by my own hand, which I genuinely regret. I’ll also admit that I was blessed with some good experiences too. But beyond that, her portrait is an invention.

I get the impression that she’d like to think that she’s everything that I’m not. She once said to me, “the victim thing doesn’t suit you and it wasn’t who you were.” I think the idea that she might not have been the only one getting hurt back then would be unbearable for her. I think it threatens her identity. Lisa, like Virginia, tends to think in binary terms. Either she’s the victim or I am, not both.

I have openly admitted responsibility for the mistreatment I caused (a practice I started at eighteen when I worked the 12 steps for the first time). She and Virginia have yet to do likewise. In Lisa’s case, my suspicion is that her identity as my antithesis prevents her from even considering her own sins, let alone be accountable for them.

And look, I don’t begrudge her all that. She copes the best way she can with the hand she’s been dealt. As for me, despite all the shit that’s happened to me, I realized the futility of clinging to my victimhood. But gather victimhood still offers Lisa peace of mind.  If so, far be it from me to rob her of that.

Two seemingly contradicting personal qualities can co-exist in all of us, though. Yes, she was a victim. However, to me, she was also undeniably a participant in causing me pain, both wittingly and not. 

Meanwhile, in terms of the missing details in Lisa’s collection, it’s very possible that she overlooked them because she doesn’t believe they happened. Or maybe she doesn’t want to believe they did, who knows.

Guilt is never an easy thing to live with, which is why, as we both know now, she doesn’t seem to ever apologize for anything significant. As you say, she’ll happily apologize for something like accidentally stepping on your foot, sure. But to admit she’s the cause of any meaningful psychological damage, to admit she’s guilty of being insensitive, cruel or thoughtless, that seems entirely out of the question.

I’m sorry that you’ve had to suffer as a result of that. As far as I can tell, she dismisses other people’s psychological pain the same way our father did, which is to diminish it as self-pity and over-sensitivity, thereby displacing the shame of any responsibility onto you. Only one of you can be the victim, and it won’t be you. It’s a classic trait of un-treated narcissism, soemthing we all learned from our father and it’s very, VERY hard to unlearn.

As for her stories, I feel she’s missing stuff because either she wasn’t there to see what happened, or she wasn’t paying attention when it happened, or for her the events weren’t bad, or else a lack of objectivity obscures her part in how things went down. No doubt it’s a combination of all of that. Either way, judging by how hard she tried hiding her family book project from me, she doesn’t seem willing to have my perspective fill in those gaps.

But, let’s be honest, Lisa isn’t the only one with blind spots, I certainly have enough of my own. Actually, no one with a heartbeat is immune to them, which makes history-telling such a delicate and flawed thing. I’m in no way claiming that my version is the definitive and more accurate one, either. That would only be arrogance and fear talking. But it’s definitive in my own mind for the purposes of understanding and being able to forgive everyone, including myself, my sisters, and our parents.

We all have the power to teach each other great things, things that help us, and things that heal us. I credit Jen for helping me realize one particularly important lesson that’s relevant here: that all of us are entitled to trust our own stories as we remember them, and regardless whether they may occasionally contradict each other, that they are all legitimate.