It is deeply unsettling to find out something years after it happened, particularly when that information changes the way you see someone, someone you loved or someone you held in high regard.
You spend years believing you understand your relationships or even a particular period of your life. You have your memories, your version of events and an understanding of how things were. Then years later, when something comes to light, suddenly you find yourself questioning what you thought you knew.
It isn't necessarily that your memories change. It's that you begin to look at them differently. You have to force yourself to look back with different eyes.
For me, it began with something mum said.
After mum died, I found myself thinking about a comment she had made about my birth. She had described it as difficult. Her words did make me start to think about and later question the things I had simply accepted.
But there is another dimension to discovering something very late in life.
You may build an image of someone based on your experiences, our relationships and what you believe about them. Sometimes that image is so firmly established that anything which challenges it can be incredibly difficult to comprehend, let alone accept.
But what happens when you discover something about yourself that you didn't know about? You may feel angry. Let down. Or you may feel betrayed. You might find yourself questioning whether the person you thought you knew was ever quite the person you actually knew.
And perhaps the most difficult part is that those feelings don't fit neatly together when new information comes to light. There is no simple way to reconcile what you later hear. It isn't simply receiving information about an event that has already passed. It is having to process that information with the knowledge, perspective and emotions you have today.
And that can be particularly challenging when the person or people involved are no longer around to answer questions or offer an explanation. Instead, you are left with your own thoughts, your memories and the uncomfortable realisation that your understanding of the past may always be incomplete.
Perhaps there isn't. But is there ever a definitive moment when everything suddenly feels right? Instead, you may simply reach a point where you acknowledge what you have discovered, recognise how it has affected you and understand there are things you may never be able to change.
And we should never assume that because something happened a long time ago, discovering it now makes it any less significant. In a way, it makes it even more significant. Because the hardest part of learning the truth isn't what happened. It is having to reconsider everything you thought you knew or understood about someone, and that's challenging.
