She said: ‘And the record is important even if no one else reads it?’
I said: ‘The record is important especially if no one else reads it.’
We talked for a while longer. At the end of the session she said something I have thought about since: ‘You’ve been very fair to everyone in how you’ve told this story. Make sure you’re being equally fair to yourself.’
I am trying.
## What Being the Easy One Costs
I want to expand on what I said to my therapist, because I think it is true and I think I had not said it clearly to myself before I said it to her.
Being the easy child in a family is a role, and roles come with costs that accrue slowly and are hard to see because each individual cost is small. My mother did not overlook me dramatically. She loved me and showed it in real ways. She came when things were hard, she remembered what mattered to me, she told me she was proud of me at moments when I needed to hear it.
But she also decided, in some deep and unexamined way, that I was okay. That I would be okay. That my okayness was load-bearing in a way that Elise’s okayness was not, and that therefore when resources — attention, jewelry, recipe boxes, my own dress — were needed elsewhere, mine could be diverted.
I participated in this. I was okay a lot of the time, genuinely okay. I did not require the same vigilance that Elise did during her difficult period, and I did not ask for it. I came around to things because coming around was easier than fighting. I accepted explanations as apologies because the process of separating them was exhausting.