Obsession.

It may seem that I am obsessed with my husbands ex wife. Infatuated with her perhaps. But this is certainly not the case. I know I waste far too much energy on her. She is simply the key to my stepdaughter’s behaviour towards me I'm sure. Or would it be easer to accept that she is actually a child with a very nasty streak in her, capable of treating an adult with such disrespect? I don‘t think for a moment she is. She would have to be very clever for her age to be a normal happy child to most of the people in her life, and then try really hard at being someone else when she is at home with us.
This whole situation makes me miss my son even more. I have to share my home with a disrespectful child when in actual fact I want to share my home with my son. Her behaviour brings all the emotions of being without him to the surface. That in itself is hard for me to carry, which adds to the resentment.
Understanding her actions is all I seem to concentrate on at present. We have been graced with a school report this year and already I am looking for a hidden agenda. I don't trust my husbands ex wife’s nicey nicey approach at all. It just isn’t in her character. There is always an alternative schedule with her. I cannot accept that she is simply giving my husband a school report to give him some involvement in their daughter’s progress. We never received one last year. Even the school photograph that his ex wife sent was passport sized. The size we would of liked was sent over to “ grandmas” Who was more important here, daddy or Grandma? Obviously Grandma!

The school report was wonderful. My stepdaughter is making excellent progress. Her work is consistently high. She is confident and independent. Her reading and writing is to a very high standard but her greatest pleasure is performing! She adores drama, role-play or reading to an audience. Fantastic. But all I can sit and think about is, if she can read to an audience of complete strangers, is confident enough to act, why cant she talk to me? We have been in each other’s life for over three years. Where is her confidence with me? Why, when she is here, does she look so frightened and timid? Where is this confident independent child? Are we talking about the same one?

I do wonder what the agenda was of my husband’s ex wife in the summer holidays of 2005. I had taken my daughter and our new baby daughter to the local park. My stepdaughter was there with her mother. Once my stepdaughter had noticed my daughter she came running over to me and our baby daughter, who was in the pushchair, jumped onto my lap and started talking to me. To my horror, shortly behind her was her mother, my husband’s ex wife. Was she coming towards me? Sure enough, she strolled up, her own new baby in her arms and began chatting like we were old friends. I made pleasant conversation. What was I supposed to do? Our children surrounded us. She commented on what a lovely baby I had. Now I found this very strange and a tad uncomfortable to say the least. Was she comparing babies? Did she simply want a look at the child her ex husband and I had made together? I will admit I was extremely two faced but was polite, and was glad to get away. My husband’s ex wife has never made polite conversation with me since. Perhaps she is the one who is obsessed with me!

It is hard, not to create a personal vendetta towards my husbands ex wife over the way she is raising her daughter and for me to imagine that I can perform a far better job that she can. She constantly gives me reasons to doubt her role as a mother. My stepdaughter has a new bicycle, and has told my husband that she rarely uses it because no one will go outside with her. A new pair of rolling skates remains unused in the cupboard, again for the same reason. Mummy doesn't have the time for bedtime stories and we often frown upon my husbands ex wife. Why is she not spending the time with her own daughter to teach her these menial things? But then, if I'm honest with myself, there are such things that I am guilty of for not spending time with my own daughter, bedtime reading being one of them.
Does that make me a bad mother? I should hope not as we do so many other things together as I am sure my stepdaughter’s mother does with her. We only seem to hear of the things that her mother fails to do with her.