Where opposite truths meet.

A lot of people can only hold one truth at a time.

Either:

“She suffered terribly, therefore I should excuse everything.”

Or:

“She hurt me, therefore her suffering is irrelevant.”

But life is usually messier than that.

My mother got angry at me one day and called me an abomination.
I did not recall the loathing she felt for me in the moment just the logic question that I asked:

“If I’m an abomination, then wouldn’t you be one too?”

Melinda, Child Philosopher.

I did not see it as sass or defending myself. I thought it was a reasonable question.

Or a test of reality.

It was, “I do not understand the rules of this world you have just presented to me. If they apply to me, do they not also apply to you?”

And she could not answer because for a moment I exposed something she probably spent years trying not to see.

Children often believe that parents possess secret knowledge.

But sometimes parents are just handing down wounds.

Not wisdom.
Not truth.

Wounds.

And for one second she recognised that.

This memory is heavy for me not because I felt defeated.

She admitted, however briefly, that the poison she gave me was one she had already swallowed herself.

She replied, “Yes, I suppose that’s true,” I did not feel victorious.

I heard her resignation. Her grief.

The grief of someone realising that the thing they hate did not begin with the person standing in front of them.