How I Lost and Found My Stepson... and Myself
Photo by /Stuart Westmorland/Getty Images
About ten years ago, I met the woman who would become my wife. She had a son from a previous marriage. He was four when I met her. Now he is fifteen. He was a cute kid, and although I don’t have any kids of my own, I don’t mind them. I tend to have the kind of energy and attitude that little kids find fun.
When I first met my future wife, her boy and I would spend a lot of time running around, wrestling on the floor, playing hide and seek, things like that. The three of us played together a lot, too.
My wife had a stuffed monkey named Brown Monkey, and I took on a stuffed dragon that I named Calzone. These animals were not real at first, but soon became so, and they remain real today. The three of us would play nightly, Brown and Calzone and her son would go on nightly adventures, both mysterious and mundane, we all were having fun most of the time, and all seemed well enough.
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Although her son drove me crazy quite often, I kept that to myself. I didn’t want her to know that he bugged me sometimes. I wanted to keep up the façade of what a good stepfather I would be.
Everything about me was fake back then. You see, I was an addict, and very active in my addiction. I wasn’t ready to let anyone see who I was, or what I was up to. It was extremely important to not let people really know me.
I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if my soon-to-be wife knew the depth of my problems, she would leave me. And eventually, of course, she did. Not because of my problems though, but because of my dishonesty around them.
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Shortly after we met, her son started experiencing a lot of problems himself. He started to bite, kick, and rage, and he would freak out if he was alone. He wouldn’t sleep by himself, he yelled, and he cried. When we would go out, he would melt down more often than not. He would often attack me or her.
Things got worse when he went to school. He fell behind everyone, socially and academically, and had the hardest time with simple things. He couldn’t tie his shoes. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t keep up with the other kids.
The family activities, the things we did together that were supposed to be fun, often turned into nightmares. Trick or treating, for example, would often end in us going home early, him screaming the entire way, tortured by something that only he could see.
I started to dread doing things with him. Anything could turn into embarrassment and shame.
I was all about appearances back then, and he was cramping my style. This was not how it was supposed to be. I didn’t sign on to be stepfather of a special needs child.
My wife did everything she could. She brought him to therapists, specialists, psychiatrists, energy workers, and world class hospitals. We received lots of varied and differing advice:
He had ADD.
He had bipolar disorder.
He was on the Aspergers spectrum.
He had separation anxiety.
He was dyslexic.
He had crippling anxiety.
He was put on medication. We tried doing things differently, and we hung in there. Every day.
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Well my wife did anyway.
I was too busy being insane.
I couldn’t hide how wrong I felt inside forever, nor could I hide the scope of my addictions. I was a world-class liar, but even though I was very good at deception, my behavior was so over the top that I couldn’t keep it secret forever.
I loved my wife very much, and I still do. But I still chose my addiction over her, and over her son. After a short time she kicked me out of the house and we got divorced.
We had a few stops and starts, where I would stay in her life, and in his, then I would hurt her again, in the same way. I blamed him, and her, for a lot back then. It was a hell of a lot easier than looking in the dark pit of my soul. I thought often of how bad I had it, of how difficult it was to live with him.
Then there came a time where she did not see me at all. And for quite a while she didn’t. I had lied to her too many times, and I had done too many horrible things. I had hurt her, and I had hurt her son.
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During this time we were apart, when we were not friends, her son still struggled. But he did improve, and he always tried.
Even when we lived together, he tried harder than I did.
I barely tried at all to fix myself back then.
At one point, after our divorce, I went off to rehab. Things had kept getting darker, and I had kept getting worse. It didn’t take the first time, but just the fact that had gone to rehab meant a lot. It meant that I was trying, that I was not giving up.
I kept emailing her.
I missed her very much.
I was different. I was changing. I was sober, most of the time.
At one point she wrote back and told me that her son missed me and that she would allow me to see her, and him, but only if there were no romance, and if we were just friends. True friends.
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We got together once, the three of us, a few years ago. His voice had changed. He was in a different school, one that understood kids like him and he was thriving. He was still a challenge, but he had grown and changed so much over the past few years.
We all hang out a lot more now.
We are just friends, my ex and I, but we are family, the three of us. I spend a lot of time with him and his friends, I see him 3 or 4 times a week, and offer the same type of fatherly advice as I did when we all were together all the time. He continues to be a challenge, but he continues to progress and to try.
He calls me his step-dad, as he always has.
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I still have a long way to go before I am whole again, and a lot more work that I need to do on myself.
Writing pieces like this is part of that work.
The thing is about her son, the thing is that always amazes me, is that he has never judged me. Not then, and not now. He is, and always was, appreciative of me being in his life and what I bring to it.
He didn’t want a step-dad who wasn’t an addict. He wanted me.
He just wanted to me to be me, and to be in his life.
And now, after all these years, that is all I want from him too.
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Originally appeared at The Good Men Project
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Also read: From Love of His Life to Not Even Friends
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Photo Credit: Flickr/Nissha A
