This Isn't What I Planned

I don't know whether to hug her or bitch slap her. I don't know whether to cry or scream. I don't know what to do, and I feel helpless, and that's too often the reality of this all.

I can only imagine how he feels. He's her father.

I'm just her stepmother.

I was naive, you know. Sure, the idea of suddenly being the [step]motherly figure in a blended family of seven rather than the single mother in a family of three was scary. But I figured I could handle it.

And I did and do, really. It's amazing how I've stretched and flexed and learned how to work in this new paradigm. It's miraculous how much I've come to love it.

The naivete came in thinking that it would be how I pictured it all. Secretly I believed we'd bring KlutzGirl to join us, and we'd be all seven together most of the time. The naivete came in thinking that because I've been working with teens for a decade and because I was also once upon a time a teenage girl, I would know what the hell to do when it comes to The Dark One.

Here's reality: I feel helpless. So does MTL. And we've been hit by a full-fledged nightmare. Teenage angst, anger, and manipulation to the nth degree.

Last night was the breaking point, for both of us. After hours of talking and crying and talking again, we finally decided to let her go.

Let her go. Because despite our true belief that we were making the right decision for her by moving into this district, she can't live with it. And despite our true belief that by letting her go to her mother's and go to school there will not make her happy in the long run and will end in tears, we have to let her try it.

I kept hearing that old aphorism in my head last night: If you love something, let it go.

It's what we're doing. It's what he's doing. Even though it tears him to pieces, even though he fears that she'll believe he's just getting rid of her, even though he doesn't want to do this.

He loves her that much.

It's trial by fire for us. There's the pure gold glistening through all this muck. All this shit. The light at the center of this darkness. Going through all this hasn't broken my love for him and his love for me. I love that man more deeply now than I did yesterday, and yesterday I loved him more deeply than the day before.

I never pictured this. I'm having to learn, all over again, that life does not go according to plan.