My Stepmother

A little backstory, to start.

My mom is abusive. I don’t want to get too far into it as that is for another day, but this has been sitting with me a while and I wanted to get it out.

I’m neurodivergent, and I don’t know to what extent yet because I haven’t been able to be tested fully. I’ve been told that it’s hard to diagnose autism in those with cPTSD and PTSD and it’s quite an expensive process. I’m only bringing this up because of some of the things I went through as a kid that made me think I was a Bad Kid™ and I know I had a few behavioral issues, but not anything that would put me in a category that I deserved to be yelled at, hit and scared regularly. I just want to say it took me til I was 40 to figure that out.

When I was about 10, we came back to the States (for a second time) from Germany. My stepfather was in the ARMY and my mom had left him because of the constant physical abuse between the two of them.

During this time, she decided to get back in touch with my father. I hadn’t heard much about my dad other than that my mom left him and that he didn’t want anything to do with me. Turns out none of that was true, and my family had been worried about me the entire time I was gone. I now know that the only reason she even contacted him was in order to get child support and he asked to meet me.

So, I met my dad. Then he got every other weekend with me. I met my stepmom, Jalene (changed to protect identities). She and my dad were unlike other people I’d encountered. My dad had a lot of personal problems himself, but mainly he yelled and screamed all the time, and it was really easy to make him mad (still is). It was better than being hit though.

One particular visit a few months in, I got in trouble for something, and he decided to spank me.

I didn’t react.

I told him that I was used to it. He said that wasn’t normal. I had sort of known that when I was younger, but I hadn’t had much access to many adults that didn’t know my mom closely. I can remember being really young and trying to ‘run away’ but not making it far because of my small size and the cold.

We started talking a little, and dad realized that I was being abused pretty heavily at home. He got Guardian Ad-Litem involved, and basically, I went to live with him. So I went from Germany to Indianapolis, to Franklin Indiana, with some time in a Catholic school in there, which was not something I was remotely ready for.

I moved in with my dad, into a little room that contained the washer and dryer of the trailer they lived in. A whole new town and a new world.

My mom called me a little bitch and a traitor whenever she talked to me after that on the phone. She basically disowned me. Then, she got back together with her ex. I cried a lot. Her husband, Don, was just as abusive to me as my mom was, if not worse. He had a grudge with my father (which I didn’t know about, and is yet another story) so he actively hated me. In fact, I think they only got back together because I was gone.

You have to realize that even though my mom and I had an abusive relationship, she was still my mother and I was still a 10 year old kid with a lot of pretty severe issues. I loved her. I was in a completely new place, living in a laundry room with no friends, and I was broken.

I was a wreck emotionally. My dad didn’t want to get me any kind of therapy as he thought it was ‘bullshit that would fuck me up worse’, and he decided that all of my behaviors were for attention.

At some point in middle school, I had what I think is probably a major breakdown when I started to remember CSA that had happened when I was extremely young (during an assembly). I did have some counseling during that time, but it was only for that situation and it wasn’t helpful at all, really. It was in-school, and there’s only so much a counselor can do for a kid in that situation.

Neglect and abuse were what I was used to and I was weird. I didn’t know how to relate to people, especially other kids. I was bullied regularly, and eventually my dad taught me to defend myself.

Jalene was sweet. She really tried to help me and teach me things that I needed to know. She was a real trouper for putting up with a sudden kid, especially one like me.

Jalene also had a connection to Germany. Her parents were from there. That was really helpful for me, because going to her family’s home always helped put me back in a better mindset, even though they had terrifying large dogs and insane birds.

When I went to my mother’s house for summer visitation, I came back to find that my dad and Jalene had bought a new place to live. It was bigger, and I had my own room. It was beautiful.

I started playing flute. I started making friends. I started to thrive a bit. I didn’t call Jalene mom, but I started to get her to that place in my heart where I felt like were close. I trusted her, and I hadn’t been able to trust adults basically ever. She was calm and rational, and she showed me care and was always honest with me about my behavior. She didn’t scream in my face or point or hit me.

What I didn’t know was that she had become unhappy with the situation with my father. She got a new job and started to want children of her own. My dad had decided not to have any more kids when he was younger and was unable to at that point. I also didn’t find any of this out until I was much older.

None of this was discussed with me, at all. I was 11 at that point so of course there probably wasn’t much to say.

But one day, she and my dad talked to me, and she told me things weren’t working out between them and they had decided to separate for a while, and she left.

She said she’d still be in my life and everything would be okay.

I never saw her again.

Jalene had been the buffer between my father and I. She was also the only thing holding him together emotionally. He did get a job at a strip club as a DJ and he’d bring me fried chicken from the buffet, but we didn’t spend any time together.

He had (still has) a lot of severe emotional issues that he doesn’t deal with in any kind of healthy way. He had been on strike with Amtrak and lost that job before Jalene left. Without her income and him losing his job, he had to share our place with my cousin.

My dad was depressed, and my cousin (who was an adult) was sleeping in my bed during the days when he wasn’t working. They both smoked, so my room also reeked at that time and I was no longer able to sleep. My dad stopped taking care of me for the most part. He was completely withdrawn.

I ended up back with my mom for a few years. That’s a story for another day though.

I think about Jalene often. I’ve tried to look her up and find her. She got married after she left my dad, to a guy she used to work for and had a baby as far as I know. It’s weird to have someone ripped away from you like that and not even know what happened to them. It’s one of the more painful things I can remember and I’m sure it’s led to some pretty severe abandonment issues on my part, especially after my mom basically disowned me. When I went back to stay with her, the abuse was even worse because now she had a ‘reason’.

I don’t really know how to end this other than to say that I wish she had at least just let me know what was going on and said goodbye.