I didn’t want to post this in Life 1 because it is so dominated by libido and gender wars and I seriously wanted to know what people think about this. Since divorces and spousal deaths are so common, a lot of people have to take care of children who aren’t their own and the transition and the relationship are never easy. When my mother died and my father remarried, my sister and me had to go through the same and it was hell on both sides. It was small things like not letting my stepmother sit in the front seat or even with my father at any time, to big things like telling her to go to hell. But I know now, now that I have grown up, that my sister and I got very lucky. I have had to live with people who are not my parents many times in my life and two years ago I had to do the same when I started living alone. I lived with my stepmother’s sister and her husband and I paid rent. They paid 100 dollars to the landlord, I paid them three times that amount for a room. I am spoiled, I have never washed the dishes, never done the laundry so I didn’t think, I just didn’t ever think of helping my stepmother out around the house. Eventually, from talking about me loudly when I was in my room, to phoning my parents and making them worried, I moved out because they could never even let me live over there. To them I was not a family member, but someone less than that. Whenever I think about what they did, I am consumed with rage. If someone treated her daughter like that, she would die.
So I think I was so lucky to get my stepmother. I know there are many horrible stories about stepparents, there is sexual abuse, there is lack of trust, lack of affection, and a sense of complete loneliness and in such a transition, there were those things for me and my sister and my stepmom as well (not abuse, my stepmother has never laid a hand on us, I meant loneliness and anger). Until I was 14, there were about 6 years of complete hell.
I don’t think most people can ever take care of children that are not their own. Even women, who we think are so compassionate and giving and maternal, they can’t do it too. I think it takes a unique woman, an incredible woman such as my stepmother to give up her everything and give it all to her stepchildren. She won’t even buy clothes until we have bought expensive ones and she buys cheap ones from the leftover money, she won’t eat without us, she won’t even make herself chicken if we are not there to eat it. She washes our underwear, even now, and I am 21 and my sister 18, when they are soiled with blood from periods. She has NEVER asked to cook or to clean, to vaccuum or to dust. Never in my entire life. And I know if my mother was alive, she would have been less than my stepmom.
Another one of those tribute threads yeah, because I hold this woman in such great regard, despite everything. But I also want to know your opinions. I know there are some people on this board who have stepparents.