Memories are so funny. I intentionally forgot much of my childhood as a part of my healing process after spending much of my life unnecessarily bitter about it. Today, I am surprised by some of my memories. Was I really happy back then?
Modern apps add a new hiccup to forgetting—I get daily emails of photos from that day in years past. This is creating some memory conflict. In 2022, I left a marriage after eight years, and leaving my ex-wife allowed me to see how stressed she made me. That relationship has been further strained since the divorce because we share a daughter, which forces us to interact and cooperate, something we never did well even while married.
It should be no surprise that my memories of those years with her are tainted, and this is where memory confusion comes in. My emails keep displaying pictures of me appearing to be happy with that woman! Weird, but there were moments of joy. I delete them. I don’t want to remember her, because I know the stress that existed before and after those pictures were taken.
Included with all the stress reminders are pictures of my ex-wife’s daughter. I had a step-daughter for eight years, and those were happy memories. She’s a teenager now, but I’ve missed most of her teenage years. Those intrusive emails send reminders of the joys of raising her, of playing on playgrounds, visiting museums, putting her in the mouth of a stone dragon for a funny picture, school projects on display, going on hikes, visiting the zoo. I remember baptizing her and holding her close afterwards. We were creating a kids’ book together where she drew the pictures and I wrote the story. Driving her to school and playing a music playlist I created for her, and listening to the news and talking with her about it. Sometimes I’ll hear a song or a news story and I’ll want to call her up and talk to her about. But I can’t.
I can’t call or text or have anything to do with her, because her father said so, and I don’t want to disrespect her parents. I do hear from her, though. My daughter, now seven, still spends time with my former step-daughter when they are both with their mother. My former step-daughter tells my daughter that she doesn’t like me, and that I was abusive to her when I lived with them. This is why she’s “former.”
When I first heard that, my heart sank. I was so hurt. I know my ex tells her daughters that I was a horrible person. The abuse she speaks of is how I removed all her toys from her room for a few days as a punishment, or put her in the corner to be still and quiet for five minutes in a “time out.” My own daughter, when she was five, repeated my ex’s strange accusations of abuse by telling me that I was abusive (yes, she used that word) because I took all her toys away one weekend. I know my ex poisoned my former step-daughter against me, but I don’t understand why she fell for it. And it hurts.
I was deleting pictures of my former step-daughter for a while, then I stopped. I may have had a positive relationship stolen from me, but I don’t need to steal the memories from myself. She was becoming a good person when I was with her, and maybe there’s still some of that going on, even though she seems to have succumbed to the destructive influence of her mother. I still think of her when I hear certain songs, and I still want to call her up and talk about art and the news and books. I still pray for her and hope she is making better decisions than I made at her age. And I hope that one day she will no longer be a former step-daughter, but maybe just a good friend.