I lived with my stepmother, let's call her Di, from 2020-2023. I had lived with her before for more than a decade, but this was the first time I'd lived with her alone.
Those three years were difficult. Middle-class and tame, compared to what I'm used to hearing about. But difficult for me. Writing this is my attempt to convey these events to others and work my way through it.
My dad walked out on the first day of 2020. That left me, my stepmom, and our 18-year-old cat. I was 20 and used to it. But Di took it really hard.
She fell into a lot of the behaviors that she had abandoned for her nine-year marriage to my father. That included drinking and drugs, sex work, partying, etc. Harm-reduction philosophy states that our problem lies with problematic use, not use itself. I would describe Di as a problematic user.
Di would go to work, come home, drink, put on Lana Del Ray or the Petshop Boys, and cry in the living room. When I got home, she would tell me about how awful my father was. How awful it was that he abandoned me and her.
This would occur every night she was home, for around 3-5 hours each time.
As she got deeper into her lifestyle, our conversations got deeper. More resentful. She said that my fathr had never taken care of us. No one could take care of us. We could only take care of each other.
Taking care of me meant buying me gifts and taking me out to fancy dinners. Not really my thing, but you wouldn't catch me being ungrateful. Especially since, according to her, we had no money.
At the same time, she began leaving me alone to manage the house for weeks at a time. I liked being alone, but I couldn't manage a house. I was barely managing myself. I started to believe that we were going to become destitute.
I downsized to one meal a day. I grew dangerously thin. Fine hairs grew all over me. My heart palpitated all the time. I had a POTS episode so bad I went blind for a few minutes and had to be carried inside by my mother and cousin. Now that I'm thinking about it, there was definitely an attempt to numb things via restriction. If I took up as little space and money as possible, maybe she would leave me alone.
I engaged in other maladaptive behaviors. I rarely got out of bed. I'd hit myself with a belt when stressed, particularly before going out with Di. I refused to engage with darker subjects in any way. These behaviors worked in their context. They allowed me to push what was happening away. To not look it directly in the eye.
Story
Whenever she came home, she drank. The more she drank, the more sexual her topics became. How my dad didn't like anything fun in bed, how this was because he got molested. How much fun she was having now. How much she hated doing sex work. Her affairs. She'd detail certain sexual acts to me, drinking glass after glass, lounging in her robe. Piss, blowjobs. Her robe falling open. I avoided looking at her nakedness. She knew I was attracted to women. If I looked at her robe falling open, revealing her breasts and her genitals, I'd be the sex offender.
This peculiar dynamic culminated in a few incidents.
One time, she walked around the kitchen, opening and shutting cabinets, talking about how dirty they were because my father had touched them. How degrading her sex work was, how much she hated it. But she did it for me. For us. She did more for me than my father ever did. We didn't have any money and I didn't work. She said that whenever she gagged on her client's cock in her throat, she'd repeat my name in her mind, over and over. To remember who she was doing it for.
I didn't know what to say other than thank you.
Another time, she was drunk and on the couch, her robe falling open per usual. I couldn't look at her, so I paced. She asked question after question, more and more pointed. I got up to pace the living room. How were things with my girlfriend? Did we have sex? What kinds of sexual positions did I like? Was I uncomfortable? I looked uncomfortable.
Another incident involved her summoning me to her room to lace up her boots. She was in her dominatrix outfit. A corset with no underwear on. I could see her genitals as I laced up her boots and I just did my best to not look at them. I feel a vague sense of disgust recalling it. I've seen plenty of genitals like hers, in-family and out. But I didn't want to see them this time.
Another incident, the one that punctured the bubble of unreality, was with another person. However, it was under her direction. We went out clubbing on her birthday, though our cat had died that day. I've told the story a lot and thus won't here, but it's just as tame as the rest.
After, we walked home. Once home, she started spiraling. Begging me to take care of her in her old age, crying about our dead cat. I held her against my stomach while she sobbed. Promised her whatever I promised her. She said she had no one in the world except for me. How could I say no to that?
I went to my girlfriend's house. Or my grandma's house. I don't remember which. Started spending less and less time at home. She expressed no awareness that anything had happened that night, only said the man she'd set on me was "safe."
I began having nightmares about incest. I told my psychiatrist about it. I never quite connected the dots with that, not until four years later. Until now. Di was never in any of them. Only my other parents. Always there is that same disgust. I still have them.
How This Affected Me: