On Grieving

I've been helping my dad pack up his apartment, not that there's much to it.
We came across a DVD he'd made from an old video tape of my second birthday. I'll be turning 25 in January, if that helps you understand quite how much time has passed since then. While it's been 23 years since that video was shot, and only about 6 months less since my parents divorced, it seems like centuries. The entire world has been turned on it's head since then, never mind my own life.
To see my mother as I don't quite remember her- happy, beautiful, sober, loving- brought me to tears with a quickness. My sister was 8 months old, and my mom held her and kissed us both. She was amazing in that video, everything a mother is supposed to be. What in the world happened?
I know more than I'd like about the divorce- horror stories put on display by my mother raised a lot of questions for me, as most of what I'd been told throughout my life simply didn't make sense once I became an adult and was able to put all the pieces together for myself. Small questions brought about massive answers, and made me realize at twenty-one what I never was allowed to or capable of grasping while under my mother's roof. It would bring about a disaster of monumental proportions, even today, should I choose to bring these matters up to either my sister or my mother. It's something we all know, and something I'm punished for attempting, regardless of the intention. I've seen it before, and am far beyond thinking that it will ever change. Sunset may have my sister convinced she's sober, but it would only take one word from me to begin receiving phone calls at all hours of the night, being yelled at and accused, by a drunk, angry woman over 2,000 miles away. It's something I know without understanding. My sister accepts this all, and assumes it is her duty to keep everyone at peace, without actually working towards progress of any sort. As long as I keep my mouth shut, everyone is happy. God forbid anyone in this family begin to heal.
I am finally beginning to really let it go, and accept there is no changing it. I don't think this will be one of my easier tasks, but I hope that it, like other mountains I have conquered, helps me grow in ways I wasn't capable of understanding when I began the trek.
My grandmother, on my father's side, said something my dad mentioned to me the other day. When she first laid eyes on me, she looked at Tumbleweed and said "Don't you just see the devil in her eyes?" That woman sure knew what she was talking about. She saw the wild streak, the side of me that was like she'd wanted and tried to be, the one who would never quit. Dad now understands what she meant all those years ago.
I am trying to come to terms with everything, so I may be the wife and mother I want to be when Bright Eyes and I start a family together. This is, by far, the scariest thing I've ever contemplated.