Safe and Righteous -- or -- Vulnerable and Willing

I am up waaaayyyy to late tonight. There will be no righteous running in the morning either, not at this rate. So. I've decided this is most likely the secrets blog of my three sites. Not that I hold much back on the main site or the other subsidiary site either (silly little Ophelia), but still, here's where very few holds are barred or something like that. Where else will I talk about rape and step-mother hate?

One thing I noticed was that when I gave myself permission to have a secrets site I suddenly didn't have as much need to rant about what I consider the really bad stuff. Hmmmn. Is that because it's been temporarily rendered harmless or because I know people read it? My guess is a little of both, permission and publicity.

I have a secret today. I've had it eating at my insides for a week and I just need to spit it out.

Here goes.

(drum roll please, there's ever so much guilt and shame rolled up in this one)....

My fifteen year old, nearly sixteen year old daughter is driving me out of my ever loving mind.

There. I said it. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Except for the fact that I rescued my daughter from her abusive father three months ago and somehow think this relationship suddenly has to be perfect.

How could it be perfect? She's been manipulating her divorced parents for most of her life and now we are suddenly glued to the hip 24/7 and life should be perfect.

k, here goes... (my snivel for the week)

I am a bad bad bad bad bad and evil mom. I get emotional and don't manage to process her needs every single living second of the day and periodically (it's rare these days but happened last week) take her head off at the abdomen leaving bloody entrails flapping in the breeze and...

She, being my daughter truly and completely, responds in kind.

Oi.

Take two passionate, powerful, strong and wilful women and put them nose to nose and look out Hiroshima!

I love my baby girl up one side and down the other in more ways than I can write or speak and yet, today, today, if I had not remembered that I'd punished her most by removing my affection and obvious out pouring of daily love, would not have thought to stop the madness by wrapping my arms around her stiff and angry body, pulling her back into the safety net of mother love and thus diffusing nearly all the noxious static that had precious little to do with she and me in the first place...

Confessions of an Evil Step-mother

Oooh, here it comes. There's a site out there (and I'm sorry I don't have the link to it handy because I haven't bookmarked it even though I should have because I'm fascinated by it) called Secrets or something like that. People send their secrets on a postcard and they get posted. I think they even made a book out of some of them. Some of these secrets are pretty horrifying like the woman who wrote in to say that she'd given her cat bleach so that she had an excuse to go back to the cut vet. Yikes! But by and large the others are what fall into the realm of 'normal' (don't even get me started on the realm of 'normal', just accept it today, OK?). This got me thinking I have a secret and I'd really like to get it out in the light of day. Secrets can be awful things. And I don't mean the kind of secret like the last post. That falls squarely into the category of family tragedy that we try not to talk about in public. This one's different.

I am an awful step-mom. There, I said it. Honestly, I love the little buggers but I just can't stand them. They drive me out of my ever loving mind. And what's worse is when they are in my house my husband reverts to similar lunacy. I can't think of what makes me madder.

Here's what I hate about my step-sons:

1. They have almost no boundaries or regard for people around them.


2. They behave exactly as they please regardless of how it affects anyone else.


3. If you say something the response will most likely be "so?"


4. They are completely unaccountable and often find it funny that this upsets people.


5. They remind me of their mother who has often been the bane of my existence.


6. They cause my husband no end of grief from the guilt of not being with them.


7. Any attempt I have made to have a relationship with them has been sabotaged by their mother immediately following the visit in question.


8. When they do things to me that I find unacceptable their father's first response is to deny it and the second to defend it.

I could go on, but what's the point? I have another list as well, this is the one that keeps my head above water:

1. They were and are raised very differently than I or my children.


2. I am not their mother nor do I need to be.


3. If I can't get along then I ought just take myself out of the equation and let them and their father be.


4. This has nothing to do with how I feel about their mother and I really need to keep those feelings separate.


5. I do not have to do anything I don't choose to do.


6. The issues I do have need to be taken up with their father, my husband, and left at that. It's up to him, not them, to establish boundaries if I cannot.


7. They are just kids, people, human beings and deserve to be treated as such.


8. There are moments when I actually like both of them very much. Just strangely never at the same time.

I could go on, but what's the point?

It has made me stop and think though, what is this all about? Really it's about feeling like a victim. Like I don't have any control over what's happening to me or mine. It's about my own personal guilt for having someone else's Dad parenting my children on a daily basis. None of that changes that fact that to me, and here's the important part, to me they are just awful children. That's my experience and it's valid. They are just awful. To other people they are just fine. And here is where the worlds collide and guilt occurs.

You know, I bet there's another story about Snow White and Cinderella. Kind of the same way, after having read Wicked (Gregory McGuire and never mind the Musical) I can never not feel for the wicked witch.

There. I've said it.

p.s.

And if you really don't get it about that last post and conflict and everything else, read the blog header.

oh.

I've had a glass of wine, it makes me feel calmer. That doesn't mean I'm any calmer, I just feel that way. I launched this site so that I would have a place to 'be' without feeling as if I had to 'be reasonable'. I have, after all, been WAY TO F$%#ING REASONABLE for way too long. And yet, I am very uncomfortable letting myself drift, flail, fall, stumble, LEAP into the realm of unreasonable.

Whew. That took effort.

I feel whinny. I hate feeling whinny. It's small and useless and yet, I do feel whinny. I hate that about myself. <= note, perfect example of self pity.

I am afraid to LEAP into unreasonable because I am afraid to let go of my very carefully crafted and nearly mastered illusion of control. There. I said (wrote) it. Here comes the equation!!!!

To let go of control is to be out of control
To be out of control is to be vulnerable
To risk vulnerable is to risk harm
To risk harm is to die
else
To be out of control is to risk error
To risk error is to risk punishment
To risk punishment is to die
else...

It's all hogwash but it drives me, what can I say?

Maybe if I could just add that that one last else statement that might wrap up my theoretical If / Then statement...

Nope, not working. I am still in a glut of pity party wallow badness. Ewe, I stink to high heaven right now; unclean, unclean, unclean (blah, blah, blah).

okhereswhati'mreallyupsetaboutrightnow

My son is pulling at my heartstrings but has declared himself my mortal enemy because I have tossed him from his mother's home and supported his minor sister in escaping from their father and this is all just way too much to bear. How can you choose to save one child if it means letting the other fall as he may? When one child has done grievous harm to another WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO???!!!

The therapist says I did the right thing and if I didn't that family services would have an awful lot to say about it if they ever found out oh my god i let my boy go please god help me i cannot reconcile this awfulness...

It happened the day after Christmas. It being just one of many but this is a biggie. I slept in, exhausted from the sensory overload of having my nearest and dearest fill up my home for two straight God Forsaken days (I love them but I have no protective layer). When I woke up my Dad and his wife were reading the paper and my brother and his were gone home without a good-bye (we're OK like that) and my step-boys were downstairs watching something and my youngest with her dad elsewhere and my oldest, my oldest, waiting for momma to wake up so they, she, he could tell the truth.

In the night he reached up into her bed and under her shirt and he touched her in a way that no one should ever touch anyone if they are not fully and complicitly intimate and if they ARE NOT YOUR @#$@#$ BABY SISTER and they were 20 and 15 respectively and my whole world came apart right then and right there. How awful to say that. Her whole world came apart. His whole world. Do not say he does not matter because even though we want to rip his testicles through his nose he does indeed still matter. And yet, yes, my whole world came apart.

Never mind the niceties of having to wrap up the visit with Dad and Step-mom and send them on their way back to Vermont with lots of it will be OK this kind of thing happens and you know you should never have put them in the same room and teach her some self defense and

OHMYFUCKINGHOLYGODWHATDOIDONOWISTHISHOWMYMOTHERFELTAFTERIWASRAPED
ANDSHESATOUTSIDETHEBATHROOMAFTERICAMEBACKFROMTHEHOSPITALWHILEIWASHED
AWAYTHEBADDDDDBADDDBADDNESSANDKNEWATSEVENTEENTHATICOULDNEVERMAKE
ITBENOTSONOTINAMILLIONYEARS

I sent him out of the house to his father's indefinitely until my girl was ready to see him again after I let her scream and yell and pound his chest and oh! oh! oh!

We went to a movie, me and my girl and somehow I had little girl too? We saw that night at the museum movie and through the whole thing I tried to work out how I might live through this enough to catch my girl and save her

I cannot save my girl. There is no saving anybody.

But there is love. And oh god I do.