I Hate My Stepmother

Recently, while looking through old photo albums for some "Throwback Thurday" shots, I came across my biological father's journal.  This is actually about 5 months worth of journaling, scribbled on yellow legal paper from the first few months of my life.  My grandma found it in her stuff on a trip to Nicaragua about 15 years ago and brought it back for me.  It is fascinating.  It's clear that he loved my mother very much and that he loved his new daughter very much as well.  He definitely excelled at being a father, especially of babies. I was his fourth, although my mom's first...so he took lead on everything from feeding to diapering to general care.  It's particularly poignant to me, since I felt quite abandoned by him as a young adult and right up until he died.
In the journal I also placed a series of letters I wrote to him (I printed more than one copy) and his response to me.  Re-reading those, which represented the first time I ever really spoke up to him in an intelligent way, at around age 21, was moving...especially putting together the memories of the circumstances that surrounded the letters being written.  I read them aloud to my very patient husband because I was impressed with how young adult me had handled the situation, and I felt the response I got from him was such great insight into his weird, narcissistic personality that I needed to share it.  My husband only met him on a couple of occasions, and while he's heard many earfuls of stories about him, and even attended his funeral, this letter was a window into the kind of father he was to me, and the kind of person he was.
He died 3 years ago this month.  It's felt very peaceful since he died.  No stress or guilt on his birthday or on Father's Day, no second guessing if my cutting ties was the right thing to do...but a strong sense of his presence.  Seemingly positive and quite evolved from the person he was in life, his energy spent a lot of time around me when first he passed, real or imagined.  It was comforting to feel the father I had always longed for around me.  He was an incredible father to many of my siblings (he had 7 children), but that isn't the straw I drew.  Luckily, the universe granted me a second chance by way of my incredibly stalwart and honorable, if somewhat withdrawn, stepfather...but there's something about being loved by your dad that every kid yearns for, even if they don't realize it.
That man loved me.  I know he did.  I read it in his writings.  Unfortunately, he fell into a relationship with a hate monger.  A manipulative, horrid woman who could never be trusted, should not have been trusted with the care of his young child.  He turned a blind eye, although apologized for it later.  She was a terrific mother to her own children...and why not, she had me on whom to take out her frustrations.  As I grew, and became less tolerant of the kind of parent she was, I became the pariah to that family.  Their stories about me made it seem as though I left them out of some kind of spite or desire to hurt my them, especially my dad.  My story is one of survival.  I left to reclaim myself. I left to stop the pain.  I found a way and was lucky enough to be able to stop the cycle of physical and emotional abuse, but my younger siblings were taught otherwise...and I won't ever be able to convince them of the validity of MY version.  The last time I saw them was at our father's funeral.  They didn't make eye contact with me.  I didn't speak to any of them.  They made it clear that I wasn't welcome.  If I wasn't sure, the phone call I got the night before from one of them saying I wasn't welcome made it pretty clear.  I went anyway, as I was there for my older siblings, who have always been my protectors.
It's been 3 years and for a long time I was able to happily not think about my stepmonster.  I vaguely worry when I go to Santa Monica...concerned I may run into her...but I carry on.  I am a big girl now and she can't hurt me anymore.  But that hurt little girl isn't all that far away.  I sometimes daydream about the confrontation that would take place if I could.  It's a scene from a movie, really, where I yell at her in perfect Aaron Sorkin dialogue about why she's such a wretched human being and her children hear me and finally believe me and love their big sister again.  But that's not the ending to this story.   The little girl needs to be heard, and maybe will be one day, but the big girl knows that the only behavior you have control over is your own.  There isn't going to be a movie ending on this one.  Those 3 people who share my genes, the one who I carried home from the hospital, the one whose birth was the first I attended, and the one whose diaper I changed and hair I brushed...they have a different movie in their heads.  I'm the bad guy in their movie, and as much as it pains me, I accept that I cannot change it.  So, instead, I thank my lucky stars for the siblings I DO have who love me and hold me up, and for the rest of my family, who listens when I complain, and hold me when I am sad, and who love me.  Because that has to be enough.