What to do

Sometimes, I just want someone to tell me: what do I do with all that pain?

Clearly, writing has helped me create a space for it. If I can write about it - even just for myself - I can keep it from choking me. But this...I have not written much about this. I think some things are best left unsaid. Some people say secrets are poison, but I've never quite believed that. Sometimes, hurtful truths can stay in the darkness. Even so...

She knows. She now knows what he did, many years ago. She spent decades with this man, and had no idea. She came after the abuse. After the pain. After the horrible, family-shattering, shameful period of my life that doesn't get talked about. Not anymore. Not for a long time. The man she knew was not that man. He couldn't possibly have done those things. All this time we assumed she didn't know, and we saw no reason to tell her. He was a different man with her. A better man.

And then he went and died. And he wasn't rich, but he was comfortable. And there was some money to be given to us - only the youngest two of us. Not to the oldest, who no longer had a relationship with him and hadn't in decades. Only she didn't have it liquid right away, and I was fine with that. I was fine with waiting. I didn't want his wishes of an inheritance to us to be a burden on her, because there were extenuating circumstances. My sister did not feel the same way.

She wanted that money to pay the sisters who were abused. She wanted to provide some restitution for actions she had nothing to do with, to pay for our father's sins. She thought giving money to the other girls was the right thing to do. I disagreed. No amount of money could undo what was done. No amount of cash was going to fully erase the horrible memories. And it wasn't theirs, and our father was more than that.

In a moment of hate - not particularly out of character - one of the sisters divulged the secret to her, my stepmom. And my stepmother assumed it was a lie. She told me the messages she'd gotten were full of hate and lies, and I  - maybe I shouldn't have, maybe I should have let her believe it was a lie - had to tell her it wasn't a lie. He really did those things to her. And I cried, and she hated that I'd gotten upset. And so we decided not to talk about it anymore. But part of me wants her to understand what my co-inheriting sister was trying to do - that she was trying to pay for the things our father did. To do something small to make it right. It's not that she was greedy, necessarily. Her perspective was different.

So now she knows. And it wasn't her choice to know, and it wasn't mine, and part of me hates my other sister for disclosing hurtful information that had nothing to do with my stepmother. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do with the relationship. I don't know what to do with the pain.

I don't know.