Without You

Posted by Anonymous.

I married your ex husband and raised your three children. They were 4,5,and 6 when you left and 15, 16, and 17 when you killed yourself. You left me here holding the bag.

I took you in and made you a part of our family so that YOUR kids could get to know YOU. I raised them as if they were mine and they never wanted for anything. Except for you, that is... You were around in the end but you were more like a favorite aunt instead of a mom. They loved you then and even more now. I disciplined them, taught them right from wrong, loved them unconditionally, held them while they cried over your absence, tried to explain why you left them with their dad, I was everything you didn't want to be.

So why did you do this to me? I never resented you for leaving your responsibilities with me! I loved you as a friend but I loved you mostly because you were the mother of the children that I loved so much. Since you have been gone the two oldest kids will not speak to me any longer. They hate me for doing your job for you.... Your family hates me for raising and loving your children. How could you be so selfish? Were you trying to get back at me for taking your place? What else was I supposed to do? You gave them to me and they needed someone to care for them, so I did.

In the wake of your death, your children have turned their anger on me. It breaks my heart that the children I love so much, resent me so heavily. It pisses me off that you were a horrible mother but now that you are gone, you were the greatest thing that ever lived. Your oldest son wasnt even speaking to you when you died because he was so angry at you. Now he goes around telling everyone what a great mother you were. I wasted the last 15 years of my life raising your kids. I devoted the last 15 years of MY life to YOUR kids! I hate you for what you have done. I regret the day that I ever told you that I would take care of them! This has turned out to be the worst mistake I have ever made. You took a really good thing and destroyed it. But I guess that was what you did best! Destroyed everything good in your life. Yet, somehow, I am the bad guy! How does that happen?

It has been three years and it seems to get worse as time goes by. You took the love that I felt for those kids and turned it into anger, resentment and regret! I took you to get help and you pushed me away. I knew this was coming and I threw my hands up because I was so frustrated. I am so sorry I didn't try harder to save you. Maybe if I had, "our" kids would still love me. But, what's done is done, and your kids are lost in this world without you and now without me. If I could go back in time, I would NOT do this over! I hope you are happy where ever you are! Just so you know.... we are anything but.

To My Husband

Posted by Anonymous.

To my husband,

There are things I wish I could say to you, that I never have. They get caught in my throat and then just circle in my head. Let me start with I love you, more than you can ever imagine. I can't imagine my life without you. And yet at times like this, I wonder why I am still here.

There are so many things that I can't even begin to talk to you about. You are a bad listener. You are a great reactor. I wish I could duct tape you to a chair to get you to hear me. You are fun to be around, but only think of yourself. You are a good husband, but not the best father. You are ruining our relationship with our daughter. You are driving the wedge in further and further. My son is afraid of you. You lack empathy. I understand your desperation, your fear when it comes to your daughter. I really do. But clearly this isn't working.

I don't know how to fix things anymore. Our family is falling apart around us, and I can't hold it together. And you don't get it. I hate myself for not stepping in when you are mad at her. I hate myself because I know that if it was my son you were yelling at like that, I wouldn't stand for it. And because she is my step-daughter, I don't feel like I have the same authority, and neither do you. I hate that. I hate that this is effecting my son so much. I don't know how to protect him. Sometimes I feel like I should have left to give him a better life. But if I left what would happen to her? I love her like she is my own daughter, and yet she isn't. And within our family that is very clear.

A week ago we agreed to not have anymore children, or even a child together. It hurts, and I know it is the right decision. But this isn't how I imagined my life. How are your values so different from mine when it comes to children?

But I love you. And I read this and it makes you sound like a monster, and you are not. You make us laugh and we're happy most of the time. But today the rug has been pulled out from underneath me. And it is all your fault. You don't get it.

I Don't Want Her In My Life!

Posted by Anonymous.

I am 28 years old, a married SAHM to two children ages 4 and almost 1. I am also legally blind. When I go out I use a white cane. I can see a little, but only a little. I have gone through so much crap in my life. I have many blessings too, but the crap is overwhelming at times, and it mostly has to do with my dad's second wife. I will just list some of the things:

* Parents divorce
* Dad's remarriage two months later
* Dad fighting with second wife
* Going blind
* Dad fighting with second wife
* Dad's divorce
* Dad fighting with second wife
* Dad's remarriage to his second wife
* Dad fighting with second wife
* Second wife fighting with my sister
* Sister cuts second wife out of her life.
* Both uncles fighting with dad and second wife.
* Both uncles cut dad and second wife out of their lives.
* My grandparents move in with dad.
* Second wife fighting with my grandparents
* Grandparents moved out and in with my uncle.
* Dad fighting with second wife
* Dad stayed with me for a week
* He moved back home
* Dad stayed with me for a week
* Second wife fighting with me.

These are some of the things that I am concerned about.

I do not want phone contact, because being blind I can not read my phone to see who is calling before I answer. Second wife has said some very disturbing things to me. This is also why I do not want any written contact.

The reason I do not want contact in person from second wife is because I am unsure what she will do and I am afraid of injury to myself or my two children.

Here is a list of things that second wife has done that disturb me greatly enough that I no longer want her around myself or my children.

* She has said things that do not make sense. She told me her mobile phone was broken, but my husband checked my phone and she was calling from her mobile phone.
* She said that I wanted her to die. I have never said anything to give her this impression. That is why this scares me. I have never said anything to give her any thought along this line. So, I am worried that she may want to harm me, because of her thoughts.
* She has said she is good as dead. She implied that she was going to kill herself.
* The majority of the time when my family has gone over to her home she usually is drinking some type of alcohol.
* Being around her she has acted withdrawn, talking very slowly, and like she can not comprehend what I am saying. She also seems like she has a hard time trying to say things, like she no longer knows what the meanings of some words are.
* Almost any time she gives us food to take home from her home the food is expired.
* She told me that she was going to drive. I did not think she had a license. In the state she was on the phone I was worried she would drive to my home. I did not know what she would do, but I do not want her when she is in such a state around me or my children.
* She threatened to sell my wedding dress. I was able to get that from my dad.
* She threatened to sue me for the financial assistance my dad gave me through college, the computer my dad helped me pay for when I was in college, and the video camera I was given at my baby shower.
* She has called me all sorts of things.
* She wanted me to return every thing that my dad or she has given me.
* My dad brought back anything that I had given to them. He said he didn't want it destroyed.
* She sent my husband 70 texts in less than two days saying many terrible and horrible things. My husband didn't respond and we had to change our phone numbers and email addresses.

My dad was going to get divorced but it seems like he isn't now and he is putting a guilt trip on me and wanting me to let her back in my life.

I don't think she cares about if I am in her life or not she just wants my children. I don't want to subject them to her. I don't know if she will be stable or not and I love my kids too much to put them in that situation.

My dad says she just has health problems and needs a lot of love. I just keep thinking, what about me? Don't I deserve a chance to be happy and anxiety free?

Whenever I think about her my chest hurts. I have an anxiety attack and can barely take care of myself. Since I have cut off contact I feel so much better, but my dad just tried to convince me to have Easter with them. I feel bad because I want to forgive, but I just can't emotionally handle her. It makes me wonder why can't I just get over it. I guess because there has always been some issue involving her since I was 15 when my dad married her. I don't think I can do that to myself again.

I have told my dad all these things, but still he continues to try to convince me to let her back in. Why doesn't he care about the way I feel? I have told him countless times but my words don't seem to matter. Every time I get anxiety.

I have had enough.

Living With The Hurt

Posted by Anonymous.

You hurt me and the hurt has not gone away. I can't seem to push it down or pull it out of my mind. You, my "mother" for more years than my real mother was able to spend with me, lied about me. It was several years ago that you sent out a vicious email in response to an innocent question from me. The saying "ripped me a new one" came alive for me as I read your diatribe. I felt physically ill. I felt a deep rage. I go for months without thinking of it and then it pops up in my head. It still can make me sick to my stomach.

You, you go on later as though you are the kindly Christian woman you'd like all of us to believe you are... no apology because you are right no matter how horribly you act. You think you deserve an apology. I won't give it. I go along with your stupid game only for the sake of my siblings and my poor Alzheimer's father. Without them you would have been the recipient of a hard slap and then I would be gone. Forever, never to be hurt by you again.

I don't know where your anger came from exactly but I can be fairly certain it has something to do with the fact I won't kowtow to you. I won't leap to the rescue with every crisis. You don't seem to be able to live without a crisis. You make everything all about you. Someone's mother-in-law dies and you talk endlessly about the guilt you feel for not praying a specific prayer over her. WTF? I am pretty sure that God would have heard your prayer regardless of where you said it. What in the world does that poor woman's death have to do with you?

Everything revolves around your little bank book of pluses and minuses - You did X for me, so I need to let you treat me like shit and be at your beck and call. It took me a long time to realize that no matter what I did it would not be enough. I would never be good enough. Never. And then to wonder why, why would I care? All I wanted after my mother's death was someone to love me and encourage me. Instead I got you. Lucky f**king me.

I try not to hate you because that hate will just hurt me.

For Him

Posted by Anonymous.

I'm 20. I'm a full time student, training to be a teacher, working part time as a tutor. I'm living at home with my parents since it works out better for me financially, and my parents enjoy having a babysitter/chief cook and bottle washer, and I think it's a pretty low price to pay considering I live here rent and bill free.

Well. It was, until recently.

It is my mother's second marriage, and he is my step father. I have known him since I was 2, and I call him 'Dad'. I would call him my father. I noticed when they argued, but it didn't happen often. My mum had a few friends from her time at university and saw them occassionally - but since my dad got us to move when she graduated, she very rarely got to see them. My dad had no friends, and never went out at all unless it was with us, or to go to work. My mother was stuck in a new area, with no means of transport, two children under the age of 10 (myself and my older brother) and a newborn baby (my little brother, J) and a husband who refused to take her to meet people or show her around the area. At the time, she dealt with it because she knew leaving with a newborn in a new city and two school aged children was impossible. And of course, they'd just got married so there was a chance of it improving.

It never did.

Things limped on. My dad had some debts that she knew of, from before they'd met, but he refused to let her see the bank statements. One day she'd had enough, took the statements and had a confrontation. He owed (owes) an obscene amount of money. That will take the rest of his life to pay off. And he had continued spending, booking holidays, getting new credit cards to cover costs. The marriage fell apart.

And since then, it's been hell. He is insanely jealous that she has joined a gym, got fit, and made new friends and that she now goes out several nights a week. He waits up, looking out of the window, waiting to see who will give her a lift home. He constantly interrogates her about where she is going and who with and why and to do what and why is she wearing that and when did she buy that and when will she be home and how will she get home and who will drive her home. She has told him, multiple times, that she wants a divorce, that it cannot carry on, that she no longer loves him and that he needs to move out. But legally, it is half his house. She cannot make him move. And he refuses.

More than once he has just decided on a whim at the very last minute to go out to a bar, and only tells us by leaving a message on the answerphone. This happened once after my mother had already left to go for a run, expecting him home and leaving me to babysit, when he left a message. I was forced to give up my plans for the evening because I couldn't get in touch with either of them and couldn't leave my brother on his own (he has a serious heart condition which means he needs someone in the house with him at all times and regular medication). Not only that, but his beta blockers (which I can't give, since I don't know the quantities) ended up being an hour late - which could be life threatening. Because my dad was trying to stop my mother going out. He has also refused to go and pick up the beta blockers from the chemist when we'd nearly run out because, "Why should I always do it", despite the fact that he has always done it when he picks up his own medication for asthma and so on.

She has repeatedly told him not to touch her, that she is only still there because she will not move out of the house and leave my brother. His behaviour is becoming more and more erratic, whether it's from putting my brother's health at risk, or snooping through my mother's underwear drawer and her desk, or spotting my older brother in town and following him for ten minutes without actually saying hello because, "I just wanted to see what he was up to."

Tonight, my mother came home from work and went to get changed. She immediately called me upstairs to show me something. He had bought several sex books ("Foreplay Tips", "How To Please A Woman In Bed") and left them displayed on his bedside table, along with a box of chocolates that said, "GORGEOUS!" on the label. She was, understandably, very freaked out and upset since she has made it extremely clear she does not want him to be near her. She phoned my older brother, who is a police officer, for advice and she's now keeping a log of every inappropriate behaviour he displays. His behaviour isn't erratic enough to get him sectioned, he refuses to admit he is in any way creepy or inappropriate, he will not move out so that divorce proceedings can start properly. In short, he will not do anything that will make anyone's life, including his own, any easier.

My mother has started looking for houses to rent with my older brother, who has said he will move in with her and pay part of the rent. I will go with her, and possibly J, and we will fight for custody. It seems likely that we will get it, since my grandfather (my mother's father) is the one who looks after J most of the time and he has said he will not help my father look after J if there is a divorce because he does not believe he is a fit father.

My mother is feeling intimidated in her own home. My older brother and I are concerned for her well-being. And my heart breaks for my younger brother, who already has so much to deal with.

But sometimes, I just want to be selfish. I am only 20 and I am being more of a parent to J than either of my parents are right now, as well as studying, and working, and attempting to keep my 18 month relationship going. My boyfriend is very supportive (to the point of offering to rent a place and us moving in together just so I can get out of the house), but there are only so many times I can cancel plans, or say, "I'm sorry, I can't see you this week, I need to babysit" without causing tension. I am desperate for a life of my own and the more limited responsibilities of the rest of my friends.

And then I look at J and I remember losing touch with my biological father when I was his age. I remember feeling abandoned, and unloved, and worthless, and how useless must I be for my own parent to not want me. He is tall and gangling, but he is still my little brother, and he needs stability, and for someone to want his company and to laugh at his jokes, and to sometimes make him smile. So when he hugs me goodnight and I can feel his unsteady heart beat, I know that I will make my sacrifices, and I will not move out, and I will help my mother get custody, and if I need to I will live with my father so that J is not on his own. I will do it. For him.

Sick

Posted by Anonymous.

Let me tell you about this man I know- I call him my father-in-law, because my husband calls him "Dad." Really? He was the shittiest kind of stepfather, withholding love, affection and worthwhile gifts while showering my husband's sister, his bio-child, with everything that he could. But my husband doesn't seem to resent it, he still calls him Dad.

My "father-in-law" has Hepatitis C. He also has a secondary disease that I have alluded to above that I like to call "Serious Asshole Disease." He has had Hepatitis C now for going on fifteen years- I have been with my husband for six of those years. During the first two, I rarely saw him. We were young, and the only time he came out of his room was to pull the intimidation route (note to parents, also to self- intimidating your kid's friends and/or significant others will not make them like you) At the top of the third year, he came out of his room and started smoking pot. Then drinking. My mother-in-law packed up and left- she said that if he could not live for his family, couldn't leave that back bedroom to eat dinner or talk to his kids but he could do so for drugs and alcohol then she didn't want anything to do with him anymore. He then started doing Pharmaceuticals. He swore he wasn't. Years pass, this behavior continues. We took him to the hospital last Christmas Eve because whatever he was on started a major GI bleed. (He lived.) That was my daughter's first Christmas Eve.

He came home and managed to fall and hurt himself on the next major holiday (I couldn't make this up, this kind of thing always happens on a holiday)That time he was just drunk. He turned a corner then, said that he had changed. My mother-in-law took him back. My sister-in-law started talking to him again. My husband believed him, hell, I believed him. He was convincing.

A month later the Hep C started kicking his butt. He ended up in the hospital and things got weird- he was disoriented and "off"- he even cursed out my preacher- but that was the disease. When liver failure starts kicking in majorly, it causes some people to lose their heads a bit, or so I am told. He got out of the hospital and went to all of his appointments, and got on the liver transplant list for our state.

Three months in, and we start noticing weirdness. He would get oddly aggressive when talking to people, stirring people up, even when talking to my not quite two year old. Have you ever seen somebody pick at a child until the kid is screaming and they are all the while laughing while the child is upset? That's what he does. One night I saw him fix a drink and take a swig. We made eye contact, and he poured it down the drain. I was still angry, so I asked him why he was drinking again. He told me a sip wouldn't hurt him. My mother-in-law, sister-in-law and husband confronted him, and he mocked them.

This month he went to a checkup at the liver doctor. He quit smoking for two weeks and didn't drink for a bit and went for his checkup. The doctor moved him down the list, said that he was doing better. That was three weeks ago, he is now drinking openly, smoking again, and I acting a lot like he's back on the pharmeceuticals again. Today he went to the regular doctor and was supposedly told that he's better now! He doesn't need a new liver at ALL, and he is off the list. I think he got kicked off, that they found something in his blood system that proves that he isn't a good candidate for a new organ.

He isn't a good candidate. Hep C causes cirrosis of the liver. A new liver will give the Hep C patient a good chance to live a LONGER life, but it isn't the golden ticket. He will always have Hepatitis C. If he won't behave, then he will destroy the new liver too.

We have tried confrontation, we have tried trusting him. I even told him that if nobody cared then we wouldn't ask about it, would not even ask about the drinking. We don't know the truth about the doctor visits, we don't have a clue what is going on.

I am angry. He made my husband's childhood so hard, and now his twenties too. He has no respect for my mother-in-law or any of my husband's or my family. I wish that if he was going to commit suicide, that he would just do it already and save us all the pain of watching this destruction. He told my sister-in-law that he didn't care if he lived to walk her down the isle later this year or not. We've asked if he was depressed- he mocked us.

I don't want to see my kid get hurt by this man. She is his first grandkid and he doesn't seem to care - she is only two, but she is a very AWARE two year old, you know?