"The Recovered Memory"
Decades ago I knew a woman named Sarah who was attracted to me, and who proceeded to confide intimacies about her past, including a belatedly recovered memory of her having been molested during her teen years. I am inclined to believe her about this, yet I still recall a psychologist familiar with Sarah remarking that her self-dramatizing manner resembled, to a striking degree, the clinical profile for Histrionic Personality Disorder.
It had indeed struck me, as well, that she might have unconsciously projected the story, and that probably neither she nor I would ever be able to recover the truth for sure either way. I worried that this ambiguity would follow our relationship always as an insidious cloud. Our discussion of the subject dropped off; and subsequently, our friendship did too.
Sometimes I wonder idly whether, in the years since then, Sarah might also have recovered some distressing memories about terrible things I did to her, things I wouldn't recall at all; and I wonder how, in that case, I would ever decide who was right, since I know by now to distrust my own dodgy memory just as much as hers.
TITLE - "The Recovered Memory"
WHERE - Port Moody, British Columbia (2014)