The subconscious memories, on the other hand, are much harder to deal with. I can't bring my subconscious past to my mind's eye like I can with my conscious memories. This makes it much harder to verify and pin-down exactly what happened to me, so I can organize it on paper and bring it to therapy to process. Worse, my family is pretty broken and split in a lot of irreparable ways, complicating things even more.
My parents divorced when I was a toddler, and were never really able to put their differences aside to have an important conversation without going after each other's throats, with me right smack dab in the middle of their vicious arguments. Their relationship (if you can call it a relationship), was made worse when my parents began to date new partners, who, let's just say, were far from awesome people.
Naturally, getting reliable information (or any information at all) about my consciously-forgotten past from either of my parents has been difficult, to put it extremely lightly. It's especially rough since I have conversation "no-go zones" with both of my parents, on topics that I really ought to discuss in therapy (but don't, because it makes me feel uncomfortable in ways that are indescribable). With my dad, I refuse to discuss his wife, my stepbrother, and my half-brother (on my dad's side), because of how fucked-up that situation is. With my mom, I really try not to bring up any of her past boyfriends with her, mostly because I'm still pretty pissed off about her past boyfriends (especially the ones I consciously remember). Talking to one of my parents about the other parent is also super uncomfortable for me, especially since there's still so much hostility between my parents.
It freaks me out knowing that my family situation is far from normal, even for divorced and blended families. It's so gnarly that I can't even draw out a map of my current family situation on paper. I have so many siblings, yet I have no full siblings. I have two sets of maternal grandparents whom I've known my whole life as my full grandparents, and who consider me their full granddaughter regardless of blood. I technically have a stepdad, but he never married my mom despite having my brother with her, and my stepdad had kids before he moved to the USA from Canada looking for work. I technically have a stepmom, but things got so nasty between us that I can't call her anything more than "dad's wife". Even then, it leaves a terrible taste in my mouth whenever I admit that my dad has a totally different family separate from me.
Just writing those few confusing paragraphs make me feel... just... gross. My family situation, past and current, has never sat right with me. It bothers me just how shattered and convoluted my family situation has become, especially since I'm the glue that keeps it all together. That, and I also have the sole power to reach out to a handful of estranged relatives and attempt to bury the hatchets between us. After all, my dad's been pretty open to the idea of "reintroducing" me to his family, and I'd love to mend those relationships. I just don't know if it's safe to do so. I won't know unless I can figure out what exactly went down to annihilate those relationships in the first place.
Problem is, I can't remember a damn thing that happened between myself and my dad's wife. I just know it was very fucking bad. So bad, in fact, that the courts had to step in many times to get things under control. Frankly, I'm too scared to look through the court documents from a decade ago to figure out what the hell happened. And, I know, damn well, the only way I can really start the healing and reconciliation process is to unearth those court documents, and begin to initiate conversations that delve into the "no-go zones" I currently have with my parents (under the supervision of an experienced therapist, of course, and maybe under the influence of Xanax as well).
I just can't even begin to muster the gull to blow away the dust on those boxes containing the court documents. At least, not yet. But, the desire to heal from all that is there, and it's been growing for several years now. That's a start, right?
