Blended Family

Quick recap from my last post: My mom had just packed up and fled the house. I thought my dad had pulled up as she was pulling out of the garage and I fainted because I couldn’t handle how disappointed or mad I thought he would be if he found out I knew and helped her leave.

Picking up from there: When I came to, it turned out my dad hadn’t come home yet. I had imagined it I guess. He came home right as I woke up. I think I’ve blocked out his reaction because I can’t remember what happened right after. All I know is my mom didn’t come back and I didn’t talk to her for a long time.

They got officially divorced a few months later. I was 11 in 5th grade and my brother was 5. My dad was a mess. He cried all the time. I remember one time at church he got emotional singing Did You Think to Pray and then he got up and bore his testimony during which he got extra choked up and went to the bathroom and sobbed. I knew because I got worried when he didn’t come back right away so I went and sat outside the men’s bathroom listening not sure what to do. Parent’s arent supposed to fall apart when you already are. I just remember feeling so bad for him. Like it physically hurt how much I pitied him. I felt like I had to be there for him. Like I was responsible for making sure he was okay. That’s not healthy for a kid. 

The custody arrangement was settled pretty quickly. What took forever was the dividing of assets. WOW, what a beast and what a mess that was. And it’s still raging 13 years later because my dad still owes my mom a ton of money. During all of this and for years to come I was told by both my parents that the other only wanted me for money. My mom told me I was my dad’s “piggy bank.” My dad told me my mom’s main focus was getting what he owed her and that she wasn’t concerned about time with me at all. It was awesome. Felt great. I didn’t want to believe either of them but it hurt less to believe my dad. In hindsight, I really was a little piggy bank for him. Not saying that was all he cared about but I think it was all his future wife would end up caring about...more on that later.

Out of everything in the whole divorce process, the mediations were the worst. For those of you who have experienced mediation, you know how much they suck. For those of you who are blessed enough to never have been involved in one, it’s what happens when both parties are so unable to come to an agreement on their own in court about custody, that the court orders a mediation which is where a professional is hired to interview all legal guardians and children involved (sometimes together as in, in the same room with each other which is an emotional disaster) and then make an assessment to determine the custody arrangement. I told my truth. That I didn’t want to be with my mom. That she wasn’t safe. Some of it was real. Some it was brainwashing and more dramatic than it needed to be. It was terrifying either way because it was all written down and reported to the court so both parties got to read it and knowing my mom would read what I said was enough to make me faint and never want to face her.

For that reason, I didn’t dare talk to my mom. I was afraid of her. Too much had happened and too much time had gone by. It was extremely awkward. I’ve honestly kind of blocked this weird limbo/transition period of court date after court date out of my memory. But I just remember my dad telling me I had a choice if I wanted to see her or not despite the court ordered custody arrangements. He said he couldn’t technically “make” me go see her if I didn’t want to. So I didn’t.

After our second mediation, the court decided to split me and my brother up so he saw her more and I saw her less. (It didn’t make a huge difference to me. My brother and I weren’t close at the time.) He was younger so he didn’t really have a say either way but all he wanted was for them to get back together. He was so sad. I knew that the divorce was the best thing that could’ve happened. I didn’t wish for a second that they had stayed together. I think I would’ve started losing hair if they had. But I do remember being in shock that it was happening to me because people only got divorced in the movies. 

It was surreal. But it was also a good time. It was just me and my dad. We ate frozen pizzas and lots of cereal and had a lot of fun. There were less rules and we both felt like we could finally breathe. My dad started dating pretty quickly. He didn’t necessarily tell me he was going on dates. Probably because he knew I wouldn’t be 100% ok with it. He would just tell me he was going to see a “friend.” I wasn’t stupid but I also didn’t know how to feel about it. 

Things were good until he started seeing someone in Arizona. One day we went there to “see my grandpa” who lived in Tucson (at the time he was only on his third or fourth wife). After we saw my grandpa we went to go see a “friend” a couple hours away. It was his girlfriend that I had never met. He dropped me off at her house to hang out with her kids and then left to go on a date. It was so messed up. I had never even met her or her kids before and he just left me like that. I’m still confused by it.

As they continued to date, my dad was gone a lot to visit her in Arizona. I felt abandoned all over. I stayed at my friends’ houses when he was gone. My friend’s and their family became my family. 

All I wanted my whole life was a mom. The kind that I read about in books or saw in movies. The kind that was a friend, protector and confidant. Someone who would let me fall asleep on them and stroke my hair. Someone who had my best interest in mind and had unconditional love for me. My dad’s girlfriend was more than that for her kids and I thought maybe she could be that for me. She acted like she would be before they got married and I believed her because she told me that she had gotten a message from God that I was meant to be her’s. She was very nice to me but I knew deep down she was just trying to get on my good side so my dad would like her and maybe marry her. I knew my dad made good money. Needless to say, I didn’t trust her. I was determined to break her because I needed to see her true colors. And then I did break her. And I wish I hadn’t. 

They got married a year or so after my parents’ divorce. She and her four kids moved from Arizona to our house in the Bay Area and just like that we went from a family of 3 to a family of 8. One was older than me. We had similar interests and hobbies so that was hard at first. My stepmom favored her most and that was hard always. Actually, she favored all of her kids over me and my brother but in different ways. Her oldest had her full trust. She was an angel that could do no wrong in her eyes and was going to be the next Taylor Swift. Her second was going to the NBA in her mind and she didn’t know how to say no to his sweet smile. Her third was going to be an olympic gymnast with a degree in anesthesiology and she couldn’t help but hand her money any time she asked for it. Her fourth was going to be a professional music artist because he excelled at guitar hero. I have nothing against my step siblings btw. I actually love them all a lot and omit the “step” now when referring to them in conversations. Her oldest actually is extremely nice and really good at singing, her second was good at basketball, her third ended up going to college on a full ride for gymnastics, and her fourth really does have a natural talent for playing guitar. But my stepmom’s view of them was VERY rosy and unrealistic. That’s the point I’m trying to get across. To her, her kids were better than everyone else in every way and she made sure everyone knew it.

She’s the type who swore by oils and claimed she could see auras and spirits. She suffered from lots of health issues, mainly back pain that kept her from being able to do anything. She told everyone she could know a person and their intentions by just shaking their hand. THAT was used against me A LOT. She was “always right” and she was THE BEST at everything. She loved to one-up a person (especially me which is delusional because I was a child and she was an adult) and she always knew better than you because she did that “thing” already or she had known that person “forever.” “People were more important than things,” which is true but her interpretation meant her kids could ruin and use anything and it was ok. “All you need is love” was another one of her mottos. It implied that you didn’t need money to survive. (WHICH IS SO ILLOGICAL DON’T GET ME STARTED WITH THAT.) But…..she lowkey loved money. She had no problem spending it. “We have the money now, so we need to spend it before it goes away.” Another saying I would hear. Also illogical. Don’t ask. She would preach that material things were of the devil and if you liked them it made you a bad person but then I’d catch her bragging about some material thing. I don’t know, man. She was confusing. 

She was also convinced everyone loved her or maybe she needed everyone to love her so she felt important? I’m not sure but she acted buddy buddy with everyone. She molded herself into whoever she needed to be to win someone over and stretched any truth to fit that mold as well. I watched it happen over and over again. But as confident as she acted around people, her insecurity manifested itself in how crazy she’d get if my dad even interacted with another woman. It’s odd that she worried so much because, as opposed to how things went with my mom, my dad never cheated on his second wife. He’d never been so faithful in his entire life. She cast a spell on him and wrapped him around her finger. Little did we know she had a habit of jumping from guy to guy like a frog to its next lily pad. One foot on the last as it lands on the next. My dad happened to be her next and third lily pad. 

They acted “so in love” and were all over each other all the time. It was uncomfy for all of us kids. But despite how in love they were they also proved to be terrible for each other. Their spending habits plus 8 mouths to feed plus the lawyer bills from my mother made them hemorrhage ALL of my dad’s money, got a car repo-ed, and caused them to end up declaring bankruptcy in hopes of wiping their slates clean. I honestly don’t know where the money went because we lived a life of scarcity. She never stopped talking about how broke we were because it was true. I had never been hungry after dinner before. Idk if it was that she didn’t know how to cook for a large family or we didn’t have enough money for more food. I’m not sure. And I had never been so poor that socks fell into the christmas present category or where the gas tank in the car was always running on empty. She also never stopped complaining about how crappy California was - my home. She made comments about people not being super nice in the Bay Area. How a chinese woman cut her off in line at Costco and how rude these people were - my people. She wasn’t very cultured and her off hand, inappropriate comments exposed her mercilessly. She attacked everything I had ever known and laughed along as her son made racist Chinese jokes that they all deemed harmless but affected my little brother more than anything.

She was convinced that I had it out for my stepsister. She questioned my every intention and thought I wanted to sabotage my stepsister’s life. It’s no secret me and stepsister didn’t get along at first but I didn’t ever wish ill upon her! How delusional can you be? Obviously she always put her kids first. Which is understandable. I get it now. But it’s hard to understand as a child when she tells you you’re hers and she loves you like you’re her own because she got a message from God telling her that you were meant to be her’s...and then she treats you contrary to how a mom is supposed to treat their child.  

After they got married, she became the definition of a wicked stepmother but with a really good smile that she would hide it all behind when people were looking. She had a huge problem with me but she would never admit it. She also painted herself as a very religious Mormon which my dad loved and valued (this was another example of her molding herself into the person someone wants her to be but we didn’t know that yet). Once she had his trust and confidence in her “sensitivity to the Spirit”, she then convinced him I was out to break all commandments. She made sure to turn my dad against me and got him to give her full parental power over me. Once she had that trust, he let her do anything she wanted to me and she encouraged him disciplining me to the fullest extent. I swear they had fun doing it too. They fed off each other and it was terrifying. He kept me on a close watch/lockdown all the time because she had secret powers that allowed her to “read people and know what their next move was before they did it,” remember? So I was usually in the hole before I even did anything to get me in the hole. She got my dad to see me through a different lens and they just always assumed the worst of me. He would believe whatever she said and never gave me the benefit of any doubt. I no longer was his favorite, sweet little girl. Our relationship vanished and my life became a series of unfairness. I was always told “no” and the rest of my siblings were told “yes.” They were treated well and I wasn’t. I got grounded miserably. They didn’t. It was completely MADDENING. I wanted it to end at one point. I was going to end it at one point. She and my dad were so awful to me.

Why didn’t I move out? I was still afraid of my mom and those fears were very deep-seated. Our relationship was also non-existent. But one time it got so bad at my dad’s that I decided that the pros of living with my mom outweighed the cons of this household so I started packing a bag and told them I was going to move in with her. (I had no idea my mom was paying child support to my dad at this point so me leaving meant no more piggy bank.) I’m now sure this was the reason my stepmom flew into a rage and started throwing my entire closet into the bag and screamed that I should leave and that if I did, to never come back. It was reverse psychology. I was so young and so afraid of those words that I stayed. I didn’t know at that point that her promises and threats were empty. I was just afraid it wouldn’t work out at my mom’s. I would go and soon realize I was even more miserable there and then have nowhere to go after that.

I might not have been physically abused but I was definitely emotionally and verbally abused and it is not okay. I’ll continue to share other instances and more of what happened in the following posts because it continued and got worse throughout high school. It affected my psyche in ways that I’m still discovering and still recovering from. The biggest problem with how they were treating me is that when you hear you’re an inherently bad person enough times or you’re treated like a criminal, you start believing it and then thinking like it. You get brainwashed this way. If this sort of thing is happening to you, no matter what the relationship - family, friend, or romantic - get out of there. Remove yourself. Pray. Talk to someone. You have to tell someone. Otherwise you will start believing the lies and it could cause you to have lifelong issues or to self harm. The best thing I did while I was living in this was surround myself with people who knew me best and loved me. They made sure I knew I wasn’t a garbage person even when I started believing it and even defending it. They also reminded me that my parents were nuts and didn’t think like normal people. I felt so lost and don’t know what I would’ve done without God and good friends to lean on. But I want to show you how you don't have to let it break you and send you down a path that wasn't meant for you. You can still become the best version of yourself. It might be hard to see or imagine now, but you have an amazing future because you are in control of how you react and the choices you make. Always lean on and continue to have faith in God because when all and everyone else fails, He doesn’t. You will see. He will send angels. I promise because He sent them to me, I survived and I am thriving now.

Also, the best thing you can do when someone is trying to tear you down or make you feel small is to become everything they told you you couldn’t be. Make good choices. Be smarter, work harder, and prove them wrong by succeeding. You can do this.

xxx,

Sam

Next up, is my freshman year and you won't want to miss it. This is where things start to get really good.