...something in my eye...

I can't tell you what the best or right way to handle this is. I can only tell you how I've handled it.

For a long time, it was deeply upsetting to me that, on top of everything else they took away from me, my parents took my family, too. When I told my truth to my family, exactly one relative believed me. The rest of them believed the lie, including one of my most beloved relatives. And that hurts the most.

It sucks that people you and I care about believe lies about us. It sucks that there's nothing we can do about it.

That's the important part: there's nothing you or I can do to change the story someone else tells themselves about us. They have to realize that you aren't the story someone else has told them about you, and we can't make them do that.

So what I've done is accept that I can't change how someone else views me, when that person is invested for one reason or another in believing a lie about me. I accept that it hurts. I accept that it's a loss. I grieve the loss.

And I do all I can do, which is continue to live my best life, be honest and accountable to myself and the people I love, and not let the story someone tells themself about me dictate who I am or how I live my life.

That's massively oversimplifying it, but as I said, I can't tell you HOW to do it, I can just tell you what I do and maybe give you a target to aim for.

The Battlestar Galactica (1978) fanfiction archive By Your Command is moving to AO3! If you used the archive or had works on it, read more at https://otw.news/command-moving-82efe8