This blog will start off sounding a little different than all the previous ones. We had a great Christmas, and my stepson was so so excited to see the Dungeons & Dragons CLUE board game, and the swinging chair he loved from Cabela’s.
Between Christmas and New Years, we went to visit my sister and her family in Georgia. My stepson has known for months that we were driving down because I had bigger presents from my two grandmothers that I wanted my sister to finally have as both grandmas passed away back in 2019. But as time went on and we got closer to the trip, he just kept complaining about why he had to go and why we had to drive down. We also wanted to stop halfway to visit family friends that ended up moving earlier that year. We made the trip going down fun. We even played the License Plate game. See how many states you could see throughout the trip. We ended up seeing 41 States as well as Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the Beautiful British Columbia.
One thing we didn’t fully know was all while we were supposedly having fun, he was texting his mom constantly, and some of the things, yet again, were not true. It didn’t matter if he had the blue notebook or not.
We only really had one incident that I wanted to talk about in this blog. My stepson seems to not have a problem helping others, or even helping others cook, yet he has a problem helping us and helping myself cook. The incident I am referring to happened on 12/29/23. Due to the stress of everything that had happened and was still happening, I did, unfortunately, start to cry in front of my stepson and for two reasons. The first was because it made me happy to see that he is willing to cook and help out when it came to my family. The second was because it made upset at the same time because it hurt that he was willing to help his step aunt and step uncle right in front of me, but never helps me when I make the same foods as they do. I did mention earlier that day that I did appreciate him helping my sister make breakfast and that I looked forward to us starting to cook again hopefully. Hopefully that was the word though. I highly doubted it was going to happen. It just seemed like a crime that once I married his dad, he didn’t want to not just help me anymore, but really do anything with me anymore. It came to the point; he didn’t even help his grandparents after a while or even eat at their place. And Ben for a moment felt bad that my blood sugar was acting up due to the stress, yet later found out that he texted his mom that I use my diabetes as an excuse to get away with how I react and speak to others. That most certainly is not the case. Prior to all the colluding, my blood sugars were great, but because of all the stress my stepson, his mom, and her lawyer caused, it messed my blood sugars up so bad. I had so many nighttime lows and even gained weight.
But the day that this happened, and my blood sugar spiked, it caused another conversation I will remember. We were in the car and my stepson was being so rude to me and even his dad. It came to the point that my husband told us we weren’t getting out of the car until we talked. My stepson of course didn’t want to talk. But we finally did. And we couldn’t believe what was said. I confessed my blood sugar was high that morning, but I was also upset over him helping others, but not me like he used to prior to me marrying his dad. Shockingly, he did apologize to me in the car and said he didn’t realize that it made her upset. But when I asked him why he doesn’t anymore. He couldn’t answer. The only thing he could say was that we had to finally listen to him now and that he would always get the final say in things. The truth came out that his mom shared all the legal stuff with him and when it came to my husband telling him his son isn’t supposed to know these things, my stepson didn’t care and said he has every right to and that his mom even said he’s allowed to know these things. I may have been a little harsh, but I did mention to him that I am not of any court order that him and his mom have come up with. My stepson is just a child and children do not run the households and I most certainly wasn’t going to bow down to him as if he was a Prince, or King.
Overall, though, my stepson had a blast and even told my sister that he can’t wait until next year when his stepcousin will be talking more. We went to the Zoo, a Chinese lantern festival, Coca Cola Museum, and the Aquarium (which we all believe was my stepson’s favorite)!
However, once we were back home from the trip on Sunday, 1/1/23, my stepson’s attitude changed, and he was back to not wanting to talk to us, not being happy to be around us, not wanting to help out, and not wanting to eat any of the meals Victoria provided (some examples are poptarts, waffles, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and even a similar dish her sister made on the trip that he devoured, but instead of salmon, she used shrimp). It’s almost like he puts on a show for everyone else in public, but in private, he did not do the same. Even my sister and brother-in-law didn’t understand why he would be acting differently when he is alone with just myself or his dad either because they were asking for basic help like we try to do daily, but my stepson seems to not have a problem when it’s others asking, only us. He didn’t even want to take his things out of his dad’s car or even help unload the car in general.
His attitude completely changed, and he just wanted to stay in his room and talk to his mom and Manny for hours to the point I had to reach out to Jessica to state that he didn't have breakfast or lunch yet because she wanted him to keep reaching out since the night before. We thought he was talking to his friends, but he says he doesn't like kids and prefers his adult friends. His adult friends, being over the age of 40 and two, are Manny and Danny. Even Victoria's sister and brother-in-law didn't think it was right that he had adult friends and was surprised he did not have that many friends his age when they asked him what he was going to do for his 13th birthday. Overall, the trip was wonderful, and we all have a lot of great memories now, but it was almost like a fantasy because the minute we came home the colluding started all over again. Just like all the other “fun” few moments we had that I will be talking about more in the future. As the months went on, having fun started to become a problem. He just wanted to lock himself in his room and be on his phone with who? His mom of course and her once fiancé, Manny. I say once because we found out through my stepson that her fiancé slept with 16 other women while with his mom and she wasn’t sure if she should still be with him or in an open relationship with him. Of course, this is another topic and not appropriate behavior for a parent/child relationship.
I was able to get him to eat dinner with us and have us watch a movie, but this started to become a problem as well. I was glad that he ate the pizza he normally had with us, or even with just me prior to the marriage, and we all sat and watched Back to the Future in our living room. It was good, but like I said, his attitude had already changed back to where things were prior to the trip.
We did enjoy eating together and we laughed a bit together throughout the movie as well. The one thing that started to happen though was my stepson became very anxious not even halfway through the movie. He kept being fidgety, and even asked things like “When is this movie going to end?” or “How much longer with this movie?”. My stepson started to act as if he needed to be somewhere, but at the same time wanted to spend time with us. We started to get frustrated with him asking these questions. Mainly because we knew that it was because he wanted or needed to go back into his room and on his phone to be in communication with his mom. Sure enough, after the movie ended, he ran back upstairs into his room and stayed in there for the remainder of the night.
We almost ended up barging into his room with the way he was talking to his mom. That’s of course who he was talking to. Surprised by now? No! And we weren’t either. You literally could hear the conversation through the wall. Between the swearing and hearing, “Mom, you’re the one that kept telling me to call you back, so I have.” It did not sound like a good conversation. She also sounded like she might have been under the influence and kept talking about how she wanted to do certain things, but Ben was trying to tell her not to and that she could go to prison if she did it. We couldn’t hear the whole conversation because his door was closed, but we could hear bits in pieces due to the high volume of some of it. My husband and I almost couldn’t go to sleep because we could hear the talking through the wall, but by the time my husband was going to go in there, the conversation stopped, at least phone wise.
Like I mentioned there were other fun things we did but they were undermined by my stepson needing to be on his phone in full communication with his mom. It was as if he couldn’t be away from his phone for more than 5 minutes. And did it matter that she was violating the divorce decree by interfering with communication and day to day decisions? No, the courts didn’t and still don’t care that she’s violated so many things. They just also let her take my husband to court for making them believe he was the one violating all this time.
My stepson unfortunately always felt on edge while he was with us, and it was because he had to be in constant contact with his mom. You will see soon what the next escalation was and also see that they were smart to delete messages to cover up and hide what they were doing to get away with it. And the next thing that they claimed was true was also falsified as well and it was even something that was really fun yet twisted into being bad.
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