When Someone Attacks You, Don’t HelpThem.

I’m writing this to get it out somewhere. It needs to go somewhere indelible, where I can’t take it back. You don’t need to read it. But I do.

It’s time I stopped accepting Sandra’s accusation as being rooted in anything but fantasy and malice.

I acted as chauffeur, babysitter, cook. I baked countless dozens of her favorite cookies. I sat in council with our parents discussing what to do next. I fed her, bathed her, walked her to school. When she got sick, I cared for her. When I suspected our mother’s boyfriend was abusing her, I stood up and said so, and I took the heat.

Then, one day, I decided to live my own life. I had the temerity to follow a dream to the other side of the continent. It was the right thing to do, for me. Our parents had lifted us out of my context when I was ten. They settled in a place that was anathema to my personality and depressing to me; the pacific coast temperate rain forest. I thought I had to stay. When I realized I didn’t, I fled. I didn’t stop being anyone’s daughter or sister or friend, I simply went on with my life. I went down my own path.

She never forgave me. She made up terrible things I did to her. They were always provably false but she repeated them until she believed them and so did anyone who had never met me, and a few people who knew better. They were so egregious that they were absurd. Like, the story she tells about how I had the police sent after my own father in England, accusing him of child abuse some 20 years…