Why can't I just let this go?

It's been unbelievably hot here in Wisconsin.

And right now I'm inside at my desk, there's a cold Diet Coke sweating onto a coaster.

I keep watching the condensation run down the side of the can.

It's oddly mesmerizing. Some drops follow exactly the path you'd expect. Others wander sideways, collide with another drop, disappear for a while, then suddenly find an entirely different route.

I think thoughts are a lot like that.

Just when you think they've settled...

they find another way down.

Today they led me somewhere I wasn't expecting. Not because anything happened. Nothing happened. Which, honestly, is often when my mind gets the loudest. Eventually they found their way back to my family.

For years I've avoided writing about my family. Not because there wasn't anything to say. There was. There always has been. But I told myself I was protecting them. I've been working on a book on and off for years, and every writing group I've ever been part of has said some version of the same thing.

"Tell us more about your mom."

"We want more of your family."

"That's where the story is."

And every single time I thought the same thing.

Too bad. I'm not writing that. I won't tell those stories.

I'll respect my family by keeping my side of the story quiet.

At least that's what I called it.

Respect.

It sounded generous. Mature. It sounded like the kind of person I wanted to be.

The past few years, though...

something has been shifting.

It wasn't an all of a sudden kind of a thing. More like layers peeling back. One uncomfortable realization after another. One quiet anger making room for the next.

I started wondering whether what I'd been calling respect was actually something else.

Because at a point before I can even remember, I'd decided that telling my story automatically meant betraying someone else's.

As though my experience belonged to everyone except me.

As though someone else had to substantiate my memories as truth.

As though the only acceptable version of my life was the version that kept everything going.

That belief lived in me for so long I didn't even know it was there.

Then I was sitting with my own therapist talking through all of this. Talking about everything I couldn't quite bring myself to say. Why I couldn't write about it.

She listened for a while and then asked such a simple question it knocked the wind out of me.

"Do they even read your blogs?"

I just stared at her.

Because...

No.

Not really.

And suddenly I realized I'd been following rules that protected reactions that weren't even happening.

That question uncovered something I hadn't wanted to admit.

It wasn't really fear of hurting them. It was fear of losing something.

Approval.

Belonging.

Connection.

Whatever version of family I was still hoping we might become. And what I thought was needed from me in order to get that.

The strange thing is...

I don't actually feel especially supported in this part of my life.

That doesn't mean they disapprove. Honestly, I don't know. But support and approval aren't the same thing. And I realized I'd been sacrificing my own voice to preserve relationships that already didn't feel good.

That realization made me angry.

Actually...

it made me really angry.

And underneath that anger was hurt I'd spent years trying to push away.

I think I believed there had to be one version everyone agreed on.

One verdict that would finally tell me whether I was allowed to trust what I felt.

Because if they were right...

then I needed to let it go.

And if I was right...

then I wasn't sure I knew what to do with everything that meant.

Neither option felt right.

One meant walking away from my own experience. Which I have tried to do.

The other meant questioning relationships that I wanted and spent my whole life trying to protect.

So I did what I think a lot of us do.

I kept the case open.

I kept collecting evidence.

Replaying conversations.

Remembering them one way.

Then another.

Wondering what I'd misunderstood.

Wondering if I'd overreacted.

Wondering whether I'd imagined the whole thing.

Wondering if maybe this time I'd finally find the piece that made everything make sense.

But it never did.

But maybe that's not what I was really looking for.

But maybe that wasn't what I was looking for at all.

Maybe I wasn't looking for proof.

Maybe I was looking for permission to believe my own experience.

Not from them.

From me.

Because here's the thing I keep coming back to.

I do have a story.

It isn't the whole story.

It isn't the only story.

It isn't objective truth carved into stone.

But it is mine.

Other people remember the same family differently. Of course they do. They lived different lives inside the same house.

But their experiences don't erase mine.

Mine don't erase theirs.

Those things can exist together.

And I don't have to prove mine is the correct version before I'm allowed to become curious about why it still hurts.

Looking back, I think I was asking my pain to do something it couldn't do.

I wanted it to wait.

Wait until I'd reached a verdict.

Wait until I knew whose version was true.

Wait until I could explain it.

But pain doesn't work like that.

It keeps showing up.

Not because it knows who was right.

Because something in us still needs our attention.

I started noticing how many rules I'd been following without realizing they were rules.

Don't make people uncomfortable.

Don't be dramatic.

Don't remember it that way.

Don't need too much.

Don't make it about you.

I don't remember deciding to believe any of those.

Somehow...

they just became true.

Maybe that's why so many women second-guess themselves before they speak.

Why we silence our thoughts before we even speak them.

Why we apologize when we cry.

Why we rehearse difficult conversations we'll probably never have.

Why we tell everyone else's story with compassion...

and edit ourselves almost completely out of our own.

It's not that we're lying. We just assume our experience matters less than everyone else's.

As though believing ourselves is somehow selfish.

I've spent years believing that telling my story would be the betrayal. Lately I've been wondering if not telling it has been the greater one. Not because my family is bad. Not because they don't have their own stories. Not because my version is the only version.

But because I was there too.

I felt what I felt.

I experienced what I experienced.

Even if someone remembers differently.

Even if someone wishes I hadn't said it out loud.

I don't know exactly what comes next. Where this will go.

Honestly, I'm still figuring that out.

I know there's anger in me. And underneath that, there's grief and hurt.

Maybe underneath that there's something else.

I haven't followed that drop of water all the way down the can yet.

I'm still watching where it goes.

But I think I've arrived at one small truth that's beginning to feel solid enough to stand on, even if it still feels wobbly.

But I'm reminding myself that telling my story isn't the same thing as betraying my family.

It's allowing myself to exist inside of it.

And maybe that's what so many of us are really missing, really wanting.

Not to be the loudest voice.

Not to have the final word.

But to believe that our own experience deserves a place at the table.

I don't know exactly what happened in every moment of my childhood.

I probably never will.

But I've started wondering whether certainty was never the thing I was missing.

Maybe I couldn't let it go...

because every time those thoughts returned, I talked myself out of my own experience before I'd really listened to it.

I don't know where that curiosity will lead me.

I'm still following it.

But for the first time...

I'm following it long enough to see where it actually goes.

—

Julia