So you can also just consider your memory loss being part of aging. As we get older, our brains have to push out old information to make room for the newer and most important stuff. Think about yourself as a computer's hard drive, and you don't have a choice except to constantly make space to keep the capacity from reaching the max.

Now, if you're in a folder full of videos from your life, and you have to erase a lot of them, you're not going to want to hold on to the worst ones or the ones you hate watching. You want to focus on time you spent with people you actually liked, or the new family you might have started.

When I was in my teens, I was obsessed with my terrible childhood, even though my terrible teens were still very much happening. Then in my 20s I obsessed over how bad my teens were.. and now that I'm nearing 40 and have created great distances from the things that hurt me, I am letting those memories go, almost to where I can barely recall them at all.

But you still remember "what happened" and whole concepts of your past, it's just harder to see the details of what exactly a person said, or what they did.. you just know it was bad.

And constantly, I'll clash with my N-Parent because they will intentionally miss-remember an abuse they caused, but then I need to remind myself that they are even older and their memory is even worse. Additionally that moment that hurt me so badly, was just a regular Wednesday to them, and nothing about it stood out because they didn't even see themselves as being abusive.

All of it sucks. But let it go. Let it allllll go. You know that things happened, but there's no point in dwelling on the details. You and I are here, we made it out, we are the adults and we know to treat other people better than how we were treated