Just want to get it off my chest! I posted part of my story the other night when I found the site, but there was so much more to the story. I definitely don't expect any of you to read all of this, I tend to be long winded! I have just had so much to deal with over the last 5 years and no one who really understands. I am the only one of my friends who has a step-child. Hard to believe huh? Even though I would never wish what I and DH have been put through on anyone, it is nice to know that I am not alone on my feelings. There is alot in my story that I know many will not agree with, but while you may have similarities in my situation, you have not lived exactly what I have just like I haven't lived yours.
DH and I got together very very quickly after his ex-wife (SD's BM) and he separated. His mistake was that he left and I know he did not make it completely clear that he was not coming back. She had SD convinced that her dad was coming back. He took his time with involving me in the picture with SD. In the custody papers that BM went and had drawn up she put in their that SD could not be in house with DH and a person of the opposite sex other than a family member between the hours of 11 pm and 8 am. This meant that until their divorce was final and we could get married every other weekend my BF/fiance at the time had to leave our house every other weekend at bedtime and go sleep with SD at his parents house 20 miles away. I would have so much anxiety starting on about Wednesday prior to the weekend that she was coming. To make matters worse it was also in the custody papers that on Thursday nights he could get her from 6pm - 8pm. This was so ridiculous to me, especially if it was a weekend that she was going to be coming. When they were staying at his parents house prior to our marriage, because they had a two bedroom house instead of sleeping on the couch like an intelligent person, he would let her sleep in the bed with him. Well of course once we got married this made for some horrible nights because I put my foot down, no kids in my bed. Our DD slept in bed many nights when she was a baby mainly due to how easy it was to just keep sleeping while she breastfed!lol! But no way is a 6 year old (at the time) going to be sleeping with me and my husband. She would cry and whine all night. She would wake up and go to the bathroom in the hallway and start crying so that way DH would wake up and go to her room. I told him to quit that shit and I started going and putting her back in bed. To make the situation worse, she sleeps with her mom at home, is 11 years old now and still does.
Everytime my husband and I would have a second alone when she was around she would always butt into our room and our business. Was I resentful of her, yes. Did I want her around, no. I used to pray that she would just quit coming. I would pray all week that her mother would make some kind of plans so she wouldn't come. At first we were way too accomodating to her and her mother. It started out that DH would go pick her up and drop her off, then he would get stuck out there arguing with the dumb bitch for an hour so he didn't want to go by himself anymore. Why he didn't just get in his truck and leave? I have no idea. It's ridiculous. Those are the thoughts I have that really piss me off, but anyway...So then he started this deal where he would call me about 30 minutes before she was supposed to be picked up and say "hey i need you to go get SD for me, i am running late at work." So of course I would go and then it was me out there arguing. My DD who is 5 now says "I remember when we used to go pick up SD you and SD's mommy would yell at each other." lol! Not behavior that you want you child to witness, but it does kind of crack me up. I would get so sick of having to go get her. Not only did I have to deal with her hog jaws mama but then I had to listen all about her mom and how wonderful she is and how great her family is and blah blah blah gag, all the way home. I told my husband one day that he needed to tell her to please quit talking about her other family so much. They don't like us and I really don't give a shit who got a new dog or whatever you know. We found out from SD that BM would corner her when she got home and ask her millions of questions about us and what we did all weekend, just every little detail. This was how things went for a while.
Then Disney On Ice came around. DH and I took SD the year before without DD. It was High School Musical that year, more her speed that the little one's. The next year it was Cars and Little Mermaid and a few other things that DD loved. We took DD without SD. My profile picture on facebook was a picture of the 3 of us at Disney On Ice. It's like this, my husband was paying 635 a month in child support and for her health/vision/dental insurance, so you know what why should we only do things with DD when SD is around? That is not fair to my child. SD gets to go do things still to this day ALL the time with her dumb ass mama so why should she get double vacations and events when my child is lucky to get one thing. Well, after the picture was posted on Facebook the next time I had to go pick up SD I was met on the back porch by the walrus. She said, "I can't believe that DH would do this to her. She has been every year. I can't believe that he would leave her out. Why did you do this to her? She doesn't even want to come this weekend now. Do not bring this up to her. She plans to talk to her daddy about it." I let her know real quick like that she was NOT going to dictate what went on in my house and I damn sure was not going to clear my plans with her ass. Her (BM) main problem is that everyone has always let her control everything and say whatever the hell she wants to. She had never met more than her match before me. If I could kick her ass and get away with it, believe me I would have slapped her ass right in her horse teeth long ago. Also I would like to point out that my facebook page was on private and has always been, so what she does is just stalks my page and looks at the picture to try to see what we have going on. idiot. And SD would not have known that we went without her had big mouth ass BM not told her before we had a chance to explain that we had gone and why we took Megan and not her. After we had a chance to talk to her she was understanding and fine or at least pretended to be.
After this incident it was never the same for us. Every weekend she would come she would call her mom constantly. This really irritated the hell out of me and DH because we did not want BM in our business. She would bring pictures of her mom with her and stuff them in her pillow. She would cry all weekend, literally cry. I mean all weekend. I would get so tired of working my ass off all week at work and then on the weekend I like to relax. How can you relax with that shit? We tried to take her to the beach a couple of times. The whole time she would just cry and cry. One time her mom was at the beach near ours and SD knew that and cried and begged to just go see her for a few minutes, BM wouldn't agree because it was going to interfere with her drinking. I don't care how bad I wanted a drink I would never refuse to see my baby girl if she called me crying. Period. We decided that weekend that SD would not be going to the beach with us again. We have a place and go every other weekend. We were accused by BM that we never involve SD in anything we do, blah blah blah. Well damn if someone is going to cry the whole time, really? Also we don't have enough money to take her out places the whole time she is with us. She eats like a damn grown ass man, it costs us so much more just to feed her.
It was getting worse and worse. SD was not making it through the weekends when it was her weekend to come and then she was supposed to stay for 2 non consecutive weeks in the summer. Well on the first one in 2009 we had sold our house and that was the week we had to move. We had to hear major bullshit from BM on that. "why are ya'll moving that week" yeah yeah yeah. I had to explain to her dumbass that closings and move out times are decided by the buyer not the seller. The woman wanted our house and we wanted to sell so we could build our dream house and in the market over the last few years, you take what you can get. Of course SD went home early that week. DH said that it was better because she was out of the way. I told you we were beginning to get tired of the damn whining and crying all the time.
During this time my husband injured his knee at work and was out for a while my in laws started picking SD up for us because I told DH I needed a break from dealing with BM. Plus I also had a miscarriage at this time after we had been trying to have another baby for almost a year and I just couldn't handle much more. So inlaws were more than happy to go get her because the sun rises and sets in that little brat's ass in their eyes. They were still spending time talking with her mother at the time too. This just irritated the hell out of me because my relationship with them, especially my MIL has always been a little strained because I feel she has always blamed me for the end of SD's parents marriage. boo hoo. Well they kept on with the pick up and drop offs for us because neither of us wanted to deal with BM and her ridiculousness. I told DH that that was one of the things that made me dread SD coming so much was having to deal with her mother. It was no problem until September. One Friday his parents called him at work and said that SD had refused to go with them and that she wanted her "daddddy" to get her. In the custody papers it says he has until 6:30 to get there. This was the weekend of our DD birthday party, which I always planned for when SD was going to be with us so she wouldn't be left out, lord knows we wouldn't want that. DH called me and said can you please go get her, the time was 5:50. They live 25 minutes away. I said yes, got me and DD dressed and shoes on. Get in car and call to let them know I am on the way. BM answers and says "we are on the way to (her friends) house, we figured ya'll just weren't going to get her this weekend because you are late." I told her the papers said that 6:30 was late and that she needed to go home and I would pick SD up there. She refused to go back home. I told her that was the only place I would pick her up at, that I was not going to anyone else's house and that was that. She said "well SD doesn't want to go anyway." I said well fine. Hey now I was going to be able to enjoy my DD birthday party without whiny ass there anyway trying to take all of DH's attention. By the way, it was a great party, a bowling party!
She refused to come the next 3 times she was supposed to come because her daddddddy wasn't going. We kept sending the inlaws every time and then they would call and say she wasn't coming. Even on the dumbass Thursday night visits. By this time the Thursday night visits consisted of her getting to our house at 6:30 and doing her homework until 7:30 when she had to leave to be taken back home. Me and DH both asked BM if she could please have her homework done prior to the visit so we could actually do something with her, but she said she has to do the homework the other 4 nights a week so DH could be a dad one night a week. Well, it was always BM who did the homework. BM was also notorious for sending projects to our house on the weekend that were due on Monday even though the assignment would have been given 2 weeks prior and we would have to go spend all the money on supplies and basically I had to do the damn project for her. Which she always got A's on. Go Me!! We finally quit doing them. We would do the basics and i would help with research online with her, but no more buying stuff. She gets enough child support for that.
Finally the little brat learned her lesson that her daddy now had balls and was not going to give in to every whim of her or her dumb bitch of a mom. She gave in and came with the in laws. I flat out asked her was it her mom who made her refuse to come. She admitted that at first it was her own idea but then it was her mom who refused to let her go with them. She would walk into the house and not even say hello. We were living with my grandmother while we were building and my grandma would ask her to help her do something and she would say that she didn't want to. I spoke to my husband about that because I told him that shit would not be tolerated. She REALLY never made it through a weekend then with us. She also decided that she was not going to sleep at our house (my grandma's house) because she wanted to go stay with her granny and papa (my inlaws) because they lived in the same town as her mommy and she felt more comfortable there near her mom. Give me a fucking break. Well, my husband being the wonderfully accomodating man he is gave into that and said if it will help her get through the weekends then that's what we would do. This really pissed BM off. This went on a few times on the weekends she was supposed to come and then Christmas came.
At Christmas 2009 we were supposed to get SD from Christmas afternoon until the day before school went back in. This was 10 days. Damn that is a long time. I prayed because I knew she would never make it through. In laws were late getting to our house with her. I knew something was wrong. She came in crying like crazy. She said, "Mommy says I have to stay the whole time, I can't go home." Dear God. She called her mom wanting to go home within 2 hours of being there. She didn't even want to unwrap her presents. We finally convinced her to do so. Santa got the girls a Wii that year that she has still never played to this day! She has a box full of presents still sitting at my grandma's because she never played with them. They are new in box and we didn't move them to our new house. I figured what was the point? I am planning to donate them this Christmas. Her mother kept telling her that she could not go home. We told her that if she would stay that one night she could go home the next day. She cried all night. She called her mom begging her to let her go home. When her mom said no, SD said, "well, what do you want me to do cry into my pillow all night?" Manipulative, but at the same time, I just could not leave my daughter hanging like that. The next day she was up at the crack of dawn. Calling her mom. She kept sending her to voicemail. BM sister calls my grandma's house and asks to speak to DH. He refused to speak to her. He despises all of them because of the way they have slandered he and I. I got on the phone and told her that SD needed to go home. She was overly anxious and not doing well. She said that SD had to learn to stay with us. I pointed out to her that maybe if all of them had not trashed us the way that they had and still do then maybe SD would feel better about staying, but when a child is constantly told how their daddy does not love them and he has a new family now, and the BM always points out to the child that she is so lonely when she is gone, what do you expect is going to happen. By the way the reason BM did not want SD going home was because my DH's best friend who is not anymore, was sneaking away from his fiancee at night and going over to pork her and of course SD couldn't be there. Pathetic.
DH told in laws to take SD home. This was on Saturday afternoon. We found out on Monday that THEY still had SD and had taken her shopping and bought her a whole new wardrobe trying to bribe her to stay with them. She had been calling BM the whole time who was still refusing to "let" her come home. In laws did not bother to tell us that she was still there with them. They brought her to us on Monday night. I told DH I was taking her home. She was in a bad way when she got to our house. That is the only time I have ever felt sorry for her. When DH got home he told her bye then he had to go work on our house. I put her in my car and drove her to her mother's house. At first her mother would not come to the door. I would have called the police if she had not eventually come to the door. You should have seen the panic in that child's eyes. When BM opened the door SD reached out for her and I left the driveway. Of course there was some shit talked about that. But you know what, I am not going to sit back and watch a child want their mom and not get them to her. period. Like I said in another post I would have crawled on hot coals to get to my child. We did not see SD for the month of January, she refused to come each time. DH said he needed a break from the drama. We did see her in Feb one day for her birthday. In March she missed one weekend and then the next weekend she came she cried from the time she walked in the door because she wanted to spend the night at home with her mommy and she wanted her little boy cousin on her mom's side to spend the night with her at her mommy's. Nevermind that she has a little sister here who adores her. She lasted two hours and then my inlaws took her home. That was March 19th 2010. The next time she was supposed to come was the weekend we were moving into our new house. DH emailed them and told them we would not be getting her that weekend. Too much drama when we had all that work going on, but that was fine with them. To this day, she has never been in our new house. I later changed her room into my office. There is a bed in there.
A little side note here: my husband's company that he had worked for for 6 years was shut down during this time. The same week the bank told us we were 50% done with our house, scary times. I could have paid the house payment myself, but we would not eat. My husband was lucky he immediately got another job, but he has an hour and half commute both ways (company truck, not our dime) so the Thursday night 2 hour joke of a visitation was cut out by us because he doesn't get home most nights until 7:30 or 8:00 and by then she has to leave. I damn sure don't care to visit with her, so why should she come? This was a decision made for me and my husband not by us.
My DH received a letter in the mail from the brat stating that when she comes to visit, it is not to see me or her sister, it is to see him. She tells him in the letter that he never hugs her or tells her he loves her, which is a damn lie. I got on him one time because I was pissed off that everytime he would hug me or tell me he loved me he would always have to look at her and say i love you too. Don't even tell me that you love me if you are guilted into saying it to someone else. She also says that when (my name) said that you were not getting me on Thursday nights anymore, you should have stepped up and said, no I want to see my daughter. Oh hell no, of course i get all the blame. That's ok. Most of the words in that letter were not that of a 10 year child. There were alot more disrespectful things in that letter that I can't remember without getting up to go get the letter. We knew she would avoid coming to visit for a while because she would be scared.
DH got a call on Thursday night prior to the next weekend she was supposed to visit by SD and she was very quiet on the phone and asked, "would it be okay with you if I just didn't come anymore?" DH replied that if that is what she wanted to do then he would not stand in the way because all we have ever wanted for her is to be happy. She said that she was not going to come anymore unless she called ahead of time and said she wanted to come. He asked her if she wanted to say hi to DD and she refused. Pissed me off because DD heard him ask. A few minutes after this phone call he gets an email from her saying that he really hurt her feelings. He said back that he was just doing what she wanted.
The only correspondence we got for a while after that was an email inviting us to her dance recital. I told DH I wasn't going because the recital was shitty the year before and secondly I really didn't feel like being stared at by BM and her dumb ass family for 3 hours. So of course DH didn't go either because he says he didn't want to go because if she can't come see him then he isn't going to her activities. Then SD called him on Father's Day about 7:00 that night and talked for a few minutes and then hung up. He said it was just so awkward talking to her. Then nothing, no emails, no calls nothing.
My husband and I finally got pregnant again that April 2010. We never told SD that we were expecting. I was always so scared something would go wrong and I didn't want BM to rejoice in it. Well something did go wrong. Our daughter was stillborn in Sept of last year due to an abrupted placenta. I can't talk about it in here because I have another site I go to talk about that. But it is the worst feeling you can ever imagine. You can't imagine it unless it has happened to you. And I hope it never does. We never told SD or her BM about our baby but because we were put on so many prayer lists at churches and word of mouth of course they found out.
About 2-3 weeks after the death of our baby SD calls and says that she would like to come visit that Saturday. DH said I guess that will be fine for a few hours. After he hung up, I asked him was he freaking kidding me. I was not ready to deal with her and the drama and did he not remember that fucking letter that was so disrespectful to me and DD. He called her back and said that now probably would not be a good time and maybe some other time. She said okay. Of course her mommy posted all over facebook how shitty he was and I was the witch of (the town we live in) blah blah blah. Then I get an email from her best friend that says how she has always tried to stay out of the situation (good thing since it has not a damn thing to do with her) but that what has happened to mine and DH's baby was karma. yes, she said that our baby deserved to die. i still have a copy of that email. A friend of mine did some research and actually found out that I could have pressed charges on her for that in the state we live in. I told DH that night that he had some decisions to make because I never want to deal with any of that shit again. I am done with it. He is suprisingly completely understanding about it. If murder was legal, you know the rest.
So we had no contact with SD or BM until about two months ago when SD wrote my husband an email which said "hey daddy, not ____(my name)." he wrote her back that that was very disrespectful and that I am his wife and she and her momma needed to respect that. She wrote back to him that even though I was his wife that I had no right to read his emails. Yeah I am so sure she wrote that by herself. He responded that we share everything in our marriage and that he didn't have to explain anything about our marriage to an 11 year old. We have not heard from her since.
I would be completely fine if I never had to ever see her or her dumb ass momma's fat faces again and no, I don't call a child fat to their face. I would never do that. I have told DH that at this point she is not welcome in my house, nor is she to be around DD. I don't want the disrespect to rub off on DD. not only that but DD's feelings have been hurt. We do not talk about this in front of her but she knows SD is not coming. Kids are not dumb. I have just been through too much especially this last year to deal with any shit that I don't have to. It sounds bad but my DH feels the same way. I know that he has been hurt by this but at the same time it's gone on so long he has kind of numbed himself to it. He just believes that one day she might come around and he is going to show her all the emails. There is alot more that has happened with BM but I will save that for another blog because this one is so long. Yes, I knew my DH had a daughter when we got together but that does not have to dictate every part of my life or his. Our DD lives with us, but we still have a life of our own as a married couple too. Well I could go on forever. I feel better now!