After my parents split, my father thought we needed a new mother and married my sister's 3rd grade teacher. At first we loved her. She was very nice to us, very loving..so my sister and I were excited when they told us they would be getting married. We found out the hard way, it was just an act.
My memories of this time are confusing and out of order and try as I may I can't seem to put it all in it's proper place.
My brother and my sister had gone to live with my mother by then...my brother went because he was little, and I don't really know why my sister went. In any case my sister( I think) and I were supposed to be in the wedding but the spring before the wedding, my mother called to say that my brother had died in a house fire...he was 4 and I was 7 at the time...I didn't really understand what that meant, I never had been exposed to death before...I cried because my father cried..and I didn't get to go to the funeral, they said I was too young...I wish they had let me, maybe I would have understood better and it wouldn't have hit me like a ton of bricks a couple years later....so instead of being at the wedding, I went to visit my mother for the summer..and while I was gone, my dad remarried...........and everything changed.
I guess she figured since she had him, there was no reason to keep pretending. It started out with little things, some thing I did was overly exaggerated when relayed to my father, or ignoring me when I asked questions..and from there it grew..my sister would write my dad letters and my stepmom would grade them with a red pen and mail them back to her..during this time my father changed as well, becoming drunk more and more often, becoming abusive...one thing he still did was brush my hair everynight, it was time that I cherished with my father, my hair was really long and I wasn't able to brush it myself...my stepmom didn't like this and took me one day to the salon and had them cut all my hair off..my hair was short as a boy's then..she said if I couldn't take care of it myself then I had no business having long hair. I was devastated, it was the only good thing I had with my dad left, the rest of the time he was yelling at me or hitting me....one summer my sister came to visit and I can't remember why but we decided to go through my stepmother's things and found a letter she had written my father, saying that she couldn't love us because we weren't her own and she was asking him to get his vasectomy (had no clue what that meant then) reversed so they could have a family of their own...our reaction was to take some rings she had on her dresser and go bury them in the garden..we thought we were so badass for doing that lol..not so badass when they were found the next spring =/
From there things got worse, my sister stopped visiting and I was alone. As I got older my father's abuse got much worse, and my stepmother seemed to get off on it. I was shouldered with so many rules that no matter what I did, I was bound to break one and when I did there would be hell to pay. My father wasn't home alot since he was in the military, which left me alone with her..she did have 2 children, and she forbid me to have anything to do with them like I had some contagious deadly disease, and she told me that she had gotten rid of my sister and when she gets her way I would be gone too....in my teens I tried to kill myself a couple of times and started to run away. The summer before my 9th grade year she actually made me go to daycare with her kids..she said she didn't trust me at the house. At this time she was working as a Special Needs teacher at an elementary school..one day she had her teaching assistant come over to babysit the kids so her and my dad could go out...about an hour after they left, the teacher assistant and her daughter knocked on my door, nothing less than shock to see me, her daughter's age, standing there. My stepmother never mentioned me to her, she had no idea I even existed, so when they heard noises coming from my room they didn't know what to think....she said that my stepmother wasn't very well liked at the school, that most people found her strange, she said that she herself had gone to the principal with concerns because my stepmother had said in the teachers room, that once her kids reached school age, she couldn't love them anymore because then they would be like everyone else. She said the only reason she agreed to babysit at all, was out of morbid curiosity. My high school years were the worst with her, she would flat out lie to my father about things I had done or not done..and no matter how much I pleaded with him he would never listen or believe me when I tried to tell him how things were. One day when my father was due to be home after being gone for awhile I rushed home after school to clean my room, because the first thing he did when he got home was to search my room..for what I don't know...I was never allowed to go anywhere or do anything so I don't know what he expected to find....but on this day as I was cleaning I found an empty cigarette pack in my laundry on the floor...the same empty cigarette pack I had seen laying on the ground at the end of the driveway as I went out to the bus that morning...the bitch had planted it in my room. I couldn't even feel anger at the time, just an overwhelming sense of relief that I had found it before he did...another time I had pink eye in both eyes so bad I had blisters, the school nurse called my stepmother and told her she was to come take me to the dr immediately or she would be calling child protective services...so when my stepmother picked me up and I got into the car she reached around and slapped the shit out of me..I believe the woman was pure evil..I still do....there are so many stories I could tell, it could go on and on...but because of her I never wanted to be a stepmom....some part of me thought that stepmoms were just bad people..look at Cinderella's stepmom....but when I met my first husband and learned he had a son..I was so scared..but the first time I looked in that little boy's eyes I knew I could never be like her..I didn't have it in me...we didn't see him very much..he lived in a different state with his mother...and then my 2nd husband had 2 daughters, and those 2 little girls were the only reason I stayed as long as I did with their father....I couldn't bare having to leave them...it tore me to shreds when I did..but I just couldn't stay anymore...I still keep in contact with them through my personal profile and have since explained my reasons for leaving and they both understand...and now my current and last husband has 3 children and well...I think I bit off more than I can chew...but I am trying...and I will keep trying....you know that saying.."Just keep swimming, just keep swimming" ....just trying not to drown in the process...............
What happened to my evil Stepmother you ask? My father and she split a long time ago...they stayed married..so he wouldn't have to give her his retirement pay...she lives alone back in Ohio...never got with anyone else...never got another teaching job, since the principal at that last school told anyone who called asking for a reference the truth about her....I think she works part time at a Burger King and as a seamstress..my father has been living with another woman for over 10 years now...he once called drunk and apologized for never listening to me about her...too little too late..
