Kill Me Now

[anonymous]

You all should be able to figure out who this is. Just gotta keep it a little less searchable, just in case.

My stepdaughter is a train wreck. Part of this is some inherent mental health conditions, and part of it is being raised in an emotionally and verbally abusive environment for the last 12 of her 16 years on this earth. She currently has a shrink who's diagnosed her with ADHD, social anxiety, and some OCD tendencies that he feels are going to "grow into a full blown personality disorder, we just don't know which one yet." He has her on Risperdal, Lexapro, and Focalin.

Over the last year she has taken to confiding in me, which is, you know, good I guess that she has at least nominally figured out her mother's a shitty role model, and that she's acting like she's willing to receive some rational adult perspective on her life. But the practical result of this is she calls me screaming and sobbing 2-3 times a week, and I have to spend the first ten minutes just talking her off the ledge enough that she can be fucking coherent, before I can even find out what completely retarded thing has set her off.

Yes, her life's not fair. Yes, her living situation is abusive. Yes, 75% of her problems are not her fault. But she also refuses to accept responsibility for the 25% that are her fault, and after a year of this it's my determination that she's not actually interested in getting advice or solving her problems, she just wants to dump on me the way her biological family dumps on her.

I can't fucking deal with being emotionally dumped on, more than most people. I am the very definition of nonconfrontational. I have been putting up with it because I'm trying to be a good stepmom, to be there for her when clearly nobody else is. But I feel physically ill for hours every fucking time I have to talk to her.

And now she fucking wants to live with us.

More accurately, she wants us to start a war with her mom, who includes fierce codependence in her abusive activities and will absolutely not let her leave willingly. We think it's a given that the judge will let her live where she wants in the end, but to get there it will be at least $5,000 in court costs, and her mom will drag it out as long as possible, easily a year--and she's only got a year and a half before she graduates anyway.

And no matter how much I agree that living here would absolutely be better for her, there is also no question that it would be worse for all of us, notably my two younger children. They like her, but she amps them up and generally fucks up their routine. I also can't shake the impression that this is just one of many (many) of my stepdaughter's subconscious ploys to get her mother's attention, to make her see how much she'd miss her if she were gone, so her mom will stop screaming obscenities at her and make her the favorite child after all. And after we've waged this war on her behalf, she'll feel she's gotten the point across and will make amends with her mom, and we will continue living in retribution hell for the next four years until her little brother fucking graduates.

Teenagers suck. Blended families suck. It's nobody's fault but my own that I married into this bullshit situation, but there are days when I seriously fucking regret it, and they are going to be a lot more common before they start to fade again.

[footfootfoot]

If by "me" you mean the step mom, then I'm all for it.

Otherwise, holy christ...

[glatt]

Wow. Your hands are already full. You don't need that. You need to protect your own kids first.

Does your husband take a position on any of this? Is he thinking it's a good idea to bring her in?

[anonymous]

He readily admits that it would be an adjustment, but as far as he's concerned all four of them are "our" kids, and their needs have to balanced equally against each other, no preferences. In his mind she really needs us right now. Frankly he's never gotten over the bitterness of losing the original custody battle, and he's excited now to have a chance to make up lost time.

We have them for six weeks every summer, and he thinks that's a reasonably fair analogue of how it would go. He acknowledges that I am far more stressed during the summers when they are here, but believes this is mostly self-imposed, not necessarily a legitimate reaction to any added work they cause me. And I freely admit that's true; at a core level I'm stressed because I don't enjoy their company, which makes me more readily resentful of the small amount of work they do require. It's like the neighbor's kids--they're not horrible, but they don't do things the way your family does them, and it's grating.

He also thinks she would get a whole lot better if she were living with us, so he thinks that how she behaves now is a moot comparison. This is a gamble, in my mind. I do think she'd be a lot more emotionally stable, but I also think she'd still make nonstop stupid comments at the TV all the time. But everybody's teenage children are super annoying, right? And certainly my two children bug me sometimes. I don't know how to figure out what's normal, or what I should just suck it up and get over. I do know it's normal for stepmoms to not like their stepkids as much as their real kids, but I also know that it's my job to never, ever let the kids see that, and I knew that when I signed up for this gig.

We both agree that going to court is a horrible option that we want to avoid if at all possible. And I think there is a slim, slim possibility that her mother will do the mature thing and admit that she is tired of the constant screaming matches, and let her come here for a semester on a "trial" basis. It all hinges on the stepson, really. If he says he wants to stay with the mom, that may be enough of a consolation prize, because he is her favorite after all. But if he says he wants to follow his sister and come here, the hellfire will rain down.

[glatt]

It's tough situation. You want to do the right thing and help this kid, but you also have to take care of yourself and of the rest of the family.

I suspect that your husband is right, and she would be better behaved if she lived with you, but it's still a gamble. And you are the one making the biggest sacrifice in the meantime. A year and a half until graduation. Could you hold out that long? At graduation, is she definitely going to college? Would she wind up trying to continue living at home with you?

Can you even swing two more kids financially? Do you have the space?

[monster]

Originally Posted by anonymous

I think there is a slim, slim possibility that her mother will do the mature thing and admit that she is tired of the constant screaming matches, and let her come here for a semester on a "trial" basis..

This is what I was going to suggest as I was reading through. Find a way to get mom to agree to a temporary period during the regular school year, with a finite ending date when you can all evaluate, and if you can't agree on what's best at that point, then maybe it will be time to revisit the legal situation.

Good luck, it sucks, I'm sorry

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by glatt

A year and a half until graduation. Could you hold out that long? At graduation, is she definitely going to college? Would she wind up trying to continue living at home with you?

College is likely, from the standpoint that she is smart enough, makes great grades, and there is a college fund that will cover reasonable state-school type of expenses. She has only recently been saying that "college doesn't seem impossibly terrifying anymore," but she's making progress and I think she'll probably be ready. She mentioned a long time ago the idea of living with us while she is in college, and we told her that while we would be willing to pay her living expenses while she focuses on getting a degree, we would want that to be in a co-op or dorm on campus, not in our house. Realistically we live too far from campus and UT is not set up for commuters, but more importantly we believe she needs a hefty dose of life skills, and it would be better for her in the long run to have to figure out how to live on her own.

The husband and I both worked through college and believe firmly that you have to get out, even if you're not financially independent.

Originally Posted by glatt

Can you even swing two more kids financially? Do you have the space?

Oh yeah, they're already with us every other weekend and most holidays. They have bedrooms, clothes, and a full complement of stuff. They've never been second-class citizens in that regard, same size pile of presents at Christmas and all that. The grocery bill goes up a bit when they're here for the summer, but not much because I'm already buying stuff in bulk anyway. We'd probably need to get her a proper desk for schoolwork, but that's about it.

[Gravdigr]

God, I'm glad I never got married. Or had kids. Or married a crazy chick. Or married a crazy chick with crazy kids.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

God, I'm glad I never got married. Or had kids. Or married a crazy chick. Or married a crazy chick with crazy kids.

But if you did, and it was this crazy chick, it might solve all of anon's problems.

Good luck Anon. Any way you go could turn out well, or explode. In the meantime, you're going through hell.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

But if you did, and it was this crazy chick, it might solve all of anon's problems.

Heh, I'd like to help, and all, but .

[Sheldonrs]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

God, I'm glad I never got married. Or had kids. Or married a crazy chick. Or married a crazy chick with crazy kids.

Amen! 😄

[BigV]

bump

I wonder what's happened in this story over the past few months.

[anonymous]

Ah, yes.

Well, we sent an email to her mom, detailing the situation and making it very clear that we did not want a war and were not looking to go to court, only to honor my stepdaughter's wishes as she had made them very clear to us. Stepson was surprisingly upset by the whole thing. He didn't want to live with us, but the idea of his sister being in a different place was as traumatic a concept for him as someone's parents getting divorced.

Anyway, the mom flipped out as expected, sat in on sobbing counseling sessions with my stepdaughter, promised to be a better person, and within 2 weeks my stepdaughter was already talking about how she "wasn't sure" what she wanted anymore. Then she accidentally let slip that last March, when her mother finally agreed to let her go gluten-free, it had apparently only happened because my stepdaughter had been threatening to come live with us, which we did not know. So clearly we are her go-to blackmail, and she never really thought she'd end up living with us after all. We were super pissed off to be used like that, but relieved that our lives weren't going to be upended after all.

Nowadays things are reportedly somewhat better over there according to my stepdaughter, though still rough at times. Supposedly the wheels are in motion for them to finally move out of the family home, which ought to help. (Grandmother, two aunts, and a random great-aunt and great-uncle are currently living in the house along with my two stepkids and their mom. It's a 5,000 square foot house so there's room for them all, but the emotional abuse crosses all generations as one might predict, and some of the stories we hear are astounding.) But it's taking forever because the mom--who will tell any stranger on the street her tale of financial woe as a single mother--has decided that the only thing she could be happy with is a brand new house, built from the ground up to her specifications. So that's not due to be finished until June at the earliest.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Children are conniving, devious little bastards. This is why they should be eaten young.

[footfootfoot]