Posted by:
Anon for This One
(
)
Date: July 20, 2018 12:35PM
So, 32-year-old [step] dtr has gotten into yet another snit with her father. This happens fairly regularly, so I didn't think much of it. She has been living with us, more or less rent-free, for a couple of years, and this has gone on sporadically since she impulsively married at 18 (mainly to get out of having to either get a job or go to university.)
Her online rants refer to her father as more or less a chunk of protoplasm to whom she has the gross misfortune to be related (although he has funded her for years past the usual age of 18, tried hard to help her out of various self-inflicted difficulties, etc.)
I have never been anything but kind to her, and thought we got along well. Not too long ago, when we were sharing a quiet moment, she told me, "You're my mom. Yeah, you didn't give birth to me, but you raised me." And that's how it has been.
After her recent spat with her father, her bio mom (who is into large trucks and trailers and things like that) helped her to move out into her own apartment (yet again), said dtr related that her "real mom" had helped her to move, along with a lot of other, fairly vituperative material.
I guess I've been demoted. I raised her since she was in diapers, wrote (or at least helped) with any number of papers and projects that she stalled until the night before they were due and then burned the midnight oil to get them done. I've loaned or given her dribbles of money over the years as she needed it. And yes, I have loved her, as if she had been born to me.
This child (an adult, legally, almost twice-over) has always been as fickle as the wind, but I thought we had established a fairly close relationship. Guess I was wrong.
Her father plans to change to door locks after she has moved out the last of her belongings. To the extent that I am able, I will help. I truly never thought it would come to that.
I have often thought of myself as the shock absorber that kept things from getting too rocky when one or the other of my volatile family members got mad at each other. Guess I'm worn-out and useless now.
Oh, well. I like retirement anyway.