It makes sense to feel like you can’t really trust or rely on your memories somehow, especially if it feels like they are partial, foggy, or very distant from your own reality today. If something so important is unsure, it feels wrong to start building conclusions in your mind. It hosts a potential for pain and heartbreak that is gigantic - it’s intimidating and scary to face what feels like an unwanted mountain to shoulder.
For what it’s worth, when I started to have memories back of past abuse that happened during childhood, I was a grown adult and it was a hectic, confusing journey just like you describe. It was very raw and vivid, yet at the same time very uncertain. I could not - and still can’t - relate to depictions of flashbacks as we see them in movies. It felt like something was off and very real, but also absolutely unreal and uncertain. As if I was there but also not, like waking up from a vivid dream in which you have felt real/strong emotions. I had confirmation only because I could ask my sister later on if it was true or if my mind was inventing everything. Somehow, a part of me really knew deep inside, since forever, what happened to me. But I could never put actual words on it other than “I’m broken/don’t fit in this world” - until memories started to unfold. It helped me realize that I was not the problem - the unspoken trauma was.
Then on the other hand, it’s a freaking nightmare to face such reality and what it entails. Denial is something you can lean towards over and over - not necessarily in a bad way, but surely to protect yourself. I personally didn’t want to consider the consequences of such realization regarding my relationship with my parents - it’s like opening a can of worms with awful questions to ask yourself. Even though at some point I knew what happened, I kept choosing for a couple of years to live “as it was” because I didn’t want to feel like my world/family relationships would collapse.
As you said so well, we can still love someone who wronged us, and this is even more true when it’s about your parents. As a child we can only learn to love our parents, even if they treat us in the most awful ways. Love can take so many different shapes and doesn’t mean condoning what someone does. It’s so much more complex than this.
It’s really hard when it feels though that you can’t trust your own mind, to find yourself in this state of in-between where it feels like your world as it is could collapse, but didn’t yet. Something feels odd and real in your heart, then at the same time just the idea of peeking at what’s behind the rug feels awfully overwhelming. And to be honest… it’s okay if now is not the right time to explore this for you. It’s okay if truth somehow has yet to be clarified. Initially, there are valid reasons for our mind to block painful memories out, and during traumatic events we can end up dissociating so much that we only remember things partially as a result. When I started to remember things, it was something that just happened and I’ve learned to see over time how I was just finally ready to start remembering. It contrasted with when I was little and would be sad when seeing campaigns against abuse - thinking it’s awful that it happens to others, while it was happening to me at the same time. It then became a slow process of unfolding things - taking one step forward then ten backwards.
What matters in the end is your own journey, your own pace, your own steps. There is no perfect way to explore what could hurt, in order to reach a state of healing and peace that we thought would always be out of reach. In any case… you’re not crazy, and however you feel, whatever you remember, is valid - and a valid experience to process.