Well, about five months ago I received a Facebook message from my biological brother informing me, more or less, that he was cutting me out of his life. He gave a few vague answers, but nothing that really gave me an understanding of why he acted so abruptly and felt it was so necessary. Anyway, I chalked it up to his "rough childhood." I know things were very difficult for him during his adolescence, and I understand that. I also understand that I do not know the whole story, nor everything he went through, and I will take for granted that it was more difficult than I saw or could have imagined. However, of our younger years, he tells a completely different story from the one I experienced and I just don't understand. Flipping through some old Facebook photos this evening of pictures from our childhood, he had captioned a picture of our mother "took this 15 seconds before getting slapped for taking the picture. totally worth it." My memory of my mother, my very clear and vivid memories, tell me that she was not abusive. I mean, I would get slapped in the face every once in a blue moon, but that did happen very often at all. Needless to say, it is extremely confusing to have to very different and strong opinions of the same childhood. I also know that 1) children living in the same house can experience two very different childhoods--this is a thing, it happens all the time; 2) memories can and do change every time we retrieve a memory because our brains want to fill in the holes--human memories actually are not very good and pretty much suck. So that leaves me with two working theories: either I didn't witness or experience the things my brother claims he did (which is possible) or his memory was changed (or I witnessed everything and my memory changed). As silly as it may sound, either are possible and neither he nor I have the ability to distinguish what actually happened, since we have two competing theories. But, that inability causes problems for it leaves us both maintaining our own, spereate, incompatible memories. I am guessing how he feels about it because, at my discretion, we don't talk about IT. I guess he feels even more hurt because I am either unwilling or unable to affirm his hurt and pain. I guess I'm not sure it would do any good to talk to him about IT, at least that is what my high school self decided, because all we will do is fight without coming to a consensus. Hmm, maybe we both have warped memories and ideas, ones that would never occur to us, each of us.
On the upside, I have one more facebook friend (aren't I cool? ) because my brother decided to add me back on Facebook this afternoon.
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