I'm of several minds (LOL) about my childhood and my stepmother's abuse, etc. I know there's a lot that children don't remember, simply because they don't have the words yet; you can't "think"/remember without words except maybe some feelings. I don't remember my mother who was sick all my life and died when I was 3-1/2. I do feel like I have some sensual memories of her though, the "sense" of her and the house we lived in? I once had a dream 20 years ago or so and I swore when I woke up that it was a "memory" but I checked with my father and there was nothing familiar in it to him, he said the house I was "remembering" didn't match any we'd lived in.

Do you have any relatives at all you can "trust" or that you really like/liked as a child? My aunt, my father's sister, helped me in my 20's get a sense of Me and my life (and my parent's upbringing and lives/marriage) before my mother died, while she was sick, etc.

But in addition to being too young/too without words to have any distinct memories, there's also the relative weight of things. sometimes nothing much happens is why we don't remember. Just because we move; if a previous move was more important/difficult for us the next one may be "nothing" by comparison? I only remember bits and pieces of things but I know it's because going to/from school each day, who cares? I remember one of the first days of third grade; we were given a math test which included multiplication and division -- which we hadn't learned yet/were supposed to learn in 3rd and 4th grade! I knew a tiny bit about multiplication and the girl next to me whom I had never met before happened to know a little bit about division and we quickly taught each other what we knew. LOL. It was fun and I remember doing it but I don't remember actually learning division when I did later in the year or whenever. Do you remember much about learning to read? Think of all the reading you do, it's very important in your life but who remembers the details?

People's memories develop differently too because things mean different things to them than to others. My brother is 9 years older than I am. Our mother got sick when he was 5-6 years old and died when he was 12 -- he had no "childhood" if you think about it (I have two other brothers and myself and my oldest brother had to "help" my father since my father had to go to work and our mother was too ill to care for us, etc.) but he doesn't remember very much of his childhood either. He wasn't even abused and he doesn't remember much. But what he remembers is far less than what I remember. My father had home movies of the 1930s and 1940s (I was born in 1950, my oldest brother in 1941) with him out on dates with other women and just a few frames of my mother (very weird for me to watch; I looked like she did and "felt" like she was expressing on the film, knew her sweet, shy, embarrassment of having her picture taken as if it were my own) but when I had all the movies changed into a VHS tape and showed it to my brother and sister-in-law, my brother "recognized" the wrong woman as our mother! Even I "knew"/recognized my mother without remembering her in person but he remembers her in person a little (from before she was sick) but not on the film/movie. Memories and individuals and how they remember is not well understood yet.

My stepmother though was not a good match for me, was very controlling and "harsh"/punitive/angry a lot. I was hit (as you describe) and watched my brothers' punishment, etc. Too, it is interesting because she had her own individual relationship with my brothers so their treatment by her was different individually. My oldest brother (whom I've been talking about) and I got the brunt of the abusive behavior from her, my middle two brothers I don't think I remember ever being hit or even yelled at "heavily" (once she had an evening loud fight with my oldest brother which left him crying (he was 16-17 years old too so not likely to be the crying type) and she came into my room right after and found I was awake reading (I was supposed to be asleep) and hit me across the mouth, made my lip bleed, and yelled at me. Anyway, my middle brothers didn't get the abusive treatment and you do remember your sister being treated badly but that doesn't mean you were treated badly too but you may have trained your memory to remember her treatment but not yours but that doesn't mean you were treated as "badly" you may have just "needed" hers to remember a certain way. There's all kinds of skewing that could have happened in many directions but if I didn't "want" to remember I wouldn't necessarily try to force myself to? No one outside you can really know what you need to know or what might be "good" for you. Check your heart and see what it wants to do?

But I'd check and talk to relatives you like who might give you a memory or two of theirs, see if they suspect any sexual abuse? I was mildly sexually abused, groped, when I was 10 by an man working for my family and I remember it but don't dwell on it and it doesn't bother me too much I don't think. Get as much of a "full" picture as you can from other family members so you can see if there might really be something there to "dig up" if you want to work on it. But there's no law that says you have to or that you have to do it now! Check your heart and what it says.