I should start by saying that I have had low self esteem, high stress levels, anxiety and depression for a long time that I am only now getting help for, in part due to my father who is a bully and sees me as a failure because I don't fit his idea of a perfect child. He and his wife have done things that I have suppressed and ignored for years, eventually managing to make a joke out of them (as I am very passive and find confrontation incredibly upsetting). When I told the counsellor that I am seeing a few of the things she was incredibly shocked and told me that they were some of the unkindest things she had ever heard. But in my head I can explain them/laugh them away as wellmeant but inappropriate and most people gasp and laugh when I telll them, she was the first person to be shocked. I think I need an external perspective before I can believe her.
So a few of the things:
On my 22nd birthday they turned up with a box full of little individually wrapped presents. I got very excited but when I opened them but it was all the things that my mother had left behind in the house when she had moved out two years previously. Basically my stepmother had emptied the medicine cabinet, drawers and under the sink cupboards and wrapped it all up. There were half-used lipsticks, old milton bottles, a package of old fashioned maternity towels etc.
When we visited with brand new baby DD she took me to one side and presented me with a bag. Inside was 'sexy lingerie' two sizes too small. She then proceeded to tell me several stories of colleagues who had become too immersed in their baby and ignored their husbands who had then had affairs and left them (Stepmother doesn't have any DC). She spent the rest of our visit monitoring my portion sizes, to the extent of removing bowls from my hands and replacing them with smaller ones. I found her going through my luggage and she told me I should throw out all of my black clothes and wear brighter colours as my baby wouldn't be stimulated. She produced a bag of clothes she had bought (two sizes too small and not my style) and sulked horrendously when despite thanking her I didn't wear any of them during our stay.
Everytime she visits she rearranges cupboards and drawers, especially the kitchen which drives DH crazy. She questions every aspect of my life and makes it clear that she thinks I am not a good wife to DH. When I had DS and they offered help I asked them once if they could bring something to eat when they visited as DS was a colicy, refluxy baby who needed to be held constantly. I was expecting bread/cheese/ham etc but they spent the whole time in the kitchen making a lavish four course meal, complaining about the size of the kitchen and constantly asking me to find equipment they needed to cook.
My dad was there for all of these (and others) and said nothing. My problems with him are more deeprooted and complex, around feeling like I have to be a good girl, wellbehaved, academic and quiet. But he has made it clear he sees me as a failure because I am a)fat, b)a SAHM mum with a good degree which I don't use and c) I had children young.
I can see that the stepmother things don't look good, but I believe she genuinely thought she was doing the right thing and didn't want to hurt my feelings. She doesn't have any family of her own and she stepped into a ready made one when she married my dad and I think she was trying to act like a mother without really knowing me. My counsellor says that she constantly oversteps the boundaries so far that it shocks me into silence, whereas I do challenge smaller issues. She also says that it isn't well-meaning, quirky, thoughtless, eccentric or gently inappropriate (as I have been telling myself) but hideously unkind and mean. That they are bullying me and making me feel like a failure because I don't do what they think I should. That I don't have to see them if I don't want to.
This is a whole new way of thinking, my head is spinning and I honestly don't know who is right and wrong anymore.