Step-Mothers Get No Respect: Reflections on the Major Suck that is Step-Parenting
No one ever gives step-parents any props. For the most part, being a step-parent is either stigmatized or shrouded in mystery, never idolized. I experienced both the stigma and the misunderstandings. Even now, a year after I’ve relinquished the role, it still sucks that I got no respect for my tenure as someone’s step-mother.
At the start of the summer, I was talking with my youngest; it a meaningful conversation where he divulged that he had been in communication via a game on his computer with his used-to-be-older-brother (Peter: the ex-stepson) and occasionally with mr horrible. I was blasé about the brother, a little dismayed about mr horrible. However, this conversation focused on his interactions with Peter. Apparently, he had been asking questions about me and about the divorce. This told me that mr horrible still had not explained things satisfactorily to his son after we left, and it makes me wonder what spin mr horrible put on his relationship with his married girlfriend because Peter has her as a friend on Facebook (blech), so obviously they have met. But I digress…
Weeks passed and I thought nothing more on it, not even when the day came that I knew Peter was going off to boot camp. Would it have been nice to have been involved in this phase of his life? A small part of me says sure, especially as I was so instrumental in making sure he was fit to pursue a career in the military from age 10 to 18. I can’t imagine he would have been ready with only mr horrible’s “hands off” approach to parenting. So I would be lying if I said my feelings weren’t a little hurt.
Rubbing salt in the wound came about two weeks later. MK and CR were still in school, I had taken a short summer class to pass the time until their school year ended. I was home after class taking a nap until it was time to pick up my kids from school and my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number so I sent it to voice mail. How dare some random call interrupt my peaceful slumber?
The phone rang again. Same number?! I normally don’t answer these calls as I half expect them to be bill collectors or telemarketers or other wrong numbers that I can’t be bothered to deal with when the alternative is a nap. But I answered this time. Something felt insistent about this call.
It was Peter calling from boot camp. I almost allowed myself to feel happy about it until he cut me off mid-greeting to tell me that he wasn’t calling to chat and instead was asking if I had his father’s number. The rudeness of his approach had me flummoxed, and though I tried to make some small talk while I searched through my contacts, he brushed me off. I gave him the number and assumed he would never call again.
Two weeks later, we are in the truck riding back from our camping trip in Galveston when the phone rings. I usually don’t answer unknown calls when I am driving, but in this case, my brother was in the passenger seat so I ask him accept the call because at least the Bluetooth speaker was set up already so I didn’t have to actually handle the phone. Turns out it was Peter calling again from boot camp, this being the time when they get to call home (he’s already talked to mr horrible, I checked). I let him talk to the kids and then I say a few words, but really I don’t have much to say. All the questions I want to ask him have more to do with what the fuck–why did he unfriend me on Facebook? Why does he never reach out to me if he has all these questions? Why did he pick the Navy over the Air Force? Why didn’t he believe me when I said I would still be there for him after the divorce and why did he sell me out once mr horrible starting talking shit about me behind my back?
But I asked none of these. Then right before he hung up, he asked me for my address, he said he was going to send us some letters and to be on the lookout for them in the mail. Sounded legit. They encouraged the writing of letters in boot camp, at least they did when I went in 1998. However, I don’t know what this newfangled boot camp is like and for all I know he’s just blowing smoke up my ass and they let recruits use computers to send emails and shit. What the hell do I know. But I bite. I actually expect a letter in the mail. He sounded so genuine. When the summer passed and his boot camp graduation has come and gone and I’ve received nothing, I realize that he lied. What else is new? Same old shit, different day.
He made a habit out of lying to me like his father did, why did I think that had changed?
I felt stupid for having hoped that he was really going to send me a letter, and that it would have contained all the questions I imagined he had for me about the divorce, all the questions that he probably asked his father and got some bullshit answer to. I don’t know why I even bothered to expect any communication from Peter, or even any modicum of respect of not being lied to.
Months passed and my youngest just celebrated a birthday. Peter is out of boot camp and has been in Chicago receiving training for his job in the Navy. He called for MK’s birthday from his cell phone. Peter has had his own cell phone since his father finally capitulated and got a smartphone to appease his girlfriend a year ago. Not once has he called me from his number, nor did his father share it with me. So I saved it into my contacts and really expected that it would be the last time he called. He ended up calling four times over that weekend, all to talk to either MK or CR, but it’s been a week now and he hasn’t called since.
It bothers me that Peter has so easily detached himself from me and the kids. It’s like none of the love, effort and time that I devoted to raising him mattered to him. All I am left is feeling that he doesn’t give a shit about anybody least of all me. I really did try to be as good a step-mother as I could be, despite the reluctance I felt about the task. I had to overcome deep resentment toward mr horrible that colored my relationship with Peter for the early years of his custody, but I worked through it and got better at building a bond with someone else’s son. I even built a better relationship with his biological mother. All that is gone now. Neither one of them speak to me anymore. Ungrateful bitches all of them–him, his father and his biological mother.
I don’t want to care but it pisses me off and I’m hurt despite the shield I try and keep around my feelings.
I want to ignore them and say fuck it to the both of them, but when he pops up like this, I am conflicted. My immediate reaction is to let it go, that it can’t hurt to let him talk to the kids. He’s barely into adulthood himself. Why should he pay for the sins of his father? But as time passes I want to prevent his contact with MK and CR because his inability to cultivate healthy relationships of a social nature has always been an issue for him and frankly, I’m of the mind that me and my kids are kit & caboodle. He can’t have one without the other.
This is the bullshit that I have to deal with mr horrible. That bastard thinks that he can just circumvent me to contact my kids however and whenever he wants, saying whatever the fuck he wants to whomever he wants (usually just with MK because he’s a misogynistic bastard therefore he ignores his daughter because she’s not his “favorite” and I don’t have time for that emotionally/psychologically damaging crap). It seems that Peter shares this same philosophy. Is it petty? I don’t fucking know. It sure feels hella unfair to me though that I get tossed out with the bathwater.
I want to shield CR & MK from the unhealthy relationships that can only be had with mr horrible and his son Peter. Here I thought Peter had grown up and being away from mr horrible was all he needed to be a better person and perhaps finally express some semblance of acknowledgement for the role I played in his life… nope. Same shit, different day.
