Melissa Durrant
Instructor Sylvia Johnson
English 0090-08 (final draft)
September 14, 2012
Living a not so fairy tale Once upon the time, in the capital of Brazil, two sisters loved to enjoy their childhood. One of these girls was me, Melissa. Since I was small, and like most girls that age, one of my favorite hobbies were watching Disney movies where the main characters were usually princesses. My sister Etinha spend a lot of time planning and having fun in our childhood and pretending that we were famous people or top models and always we preferred pretending that we lived in a land far, far away.
In our imagination, we lived in a huge castle that would have made any princess of Monaco, or England, want to become our best friends forever. In our royal bedrooms had what was the most glamorous architecture. My room was in pastel shades with golden details and had pillows everywhere. My sister opted for a room with pink and details in pearl white, but my favorite thing in her imaginary room was the pink hot tub. In the enchanted forest there were blue rabbits, cows that produced delicious chocolate milk, and unicorns. The caramel apple trees were beautiful. There were delicious chocolate grapes, cotton candy pears, rainbows made with licorice. There were cookie flowers everywhere. Inside of our minds everything was all very beautiful, but what made us the most excited was in the end of the story, we had the royal ball and like all fairy tale princesses, we were to meet the two princes that were from the Charming family. The Charming boys were from the same family that produces the best professional princes in the books, and after we fell in love with them, we had our royal imaginary wedding and lived happily ever after.
Over time and as we aged, playing princess made less sense, but the desire to find a prince charming and feel like Snow White or Cinderella, and to live happily ever after was always in my heart. In December 2009 the most special day of my life came. There were no unicorns, or a huge castle, or chocolate grapes. But what did match a hundred percent with my dreams, was the fact that I had found my own prince charming. Joseph was 6.5 foot tall, slim, with sparkling blue eyes, and wavy red hair. I was in my sister’s house watching my favorite TV show, “What not to Wear,” when he came and knocked on the door. After I opened it, he came in, got down on one knee and said: “I know that we have only known each other a short time, but I feel that I would love to spend eternity with you, my Brazilian beauty queen. Would you please be my wife?” This made me feel very special, and of course I said yes. In my mind I was sure that, as in the case of the royal children in the books, I could also have experiences that may include obstacles and trails, but that I would always be the princess of the story in my own life. Was I right? No.
Two weeks after the wedding, my dear Joseph continued to be the Prince Charming of my dreams, but two new characters parachuted into my life, which I was not expecting in that moment; at least, not with that behavior. These characters were the two children of my husband. The girl was 9 years old, very skinny, had short hair, and brown-eyes. Her attitude was bossy and snobbish. The boy was 13 years old, with long arms and legs, a round face, with hazel eyes, and a pimply complexion. His hair was cut close in a bad crew-cut style. They would stay with us every other week. In the weeks that the children spend with their mother, they also lived in low conditions of hygiene, with seven cats, two dogs. The children spent a week without showering or brushing their teeth, and she allowed the children to sleep with stuffed animals, play with blocks. This would be normal if they had 4 years of age, and they played video games for as many hours as they desired. Furthermore, no need to comment on the type of unhealthy food they ate, or the kind routine they kept. Everything was completely disorganized and the consequence of all this was, the kids act extremely socially awkward. This broke my heart.
Obviously our interaction was influenced by the dynamics of the house, and consequently our relationship was not the best. I tried everything to help them feel welcome in my life. But it seemed all was in vain. Any kind of discipline or opportunities we presented, to help them to get out of their garbage life was received and repaid by them in a very rude way. As a result, this chapter of my life, that should have been fantastic, turned into a horror movie!
Some examples of negative experiences I had were: When I came to live in the United States I did not speak English, and to learn this new language, that has a very high degree of difficulty, was hard. I had an experience that was a little bit traumatizing before this. It was my first time shopping at Wal-Mart by myself. I decided to buy one of my favorite treats, a Butter-finger candy bar. At the register, a woman around 65 years old, with grey hair, and a contagious smile, greeted me with a, “Hello. Is this all for you?” I said, “No. I need also 5 condoms.” The woman looked at me, in shock, and said, “What?” I repeated, “I need 5 condoms.” and to try to explain better, but only making it worse by saying, “I need to call my friend.” Her face went red, and I felt that I had said something that I shouldn’t say, something was wrong. To be more clear, I said, “I don’t need paper money, I need Condoms.” With a beautiful smile of relief, she said, “Oh, you mean coins!” Everything now being understood, I was able to get quarters, and called my friend. Although an amusing story, this left me feeling a little insecure. With my husband’s kids, their favorite sentences were, “I don’t understand you”, “You speak funny”, and they were constantly trying to correct me, and sometimes teasing me. This continued until the day I learned the best sentence ever, which was, “Dear kids, I speak with an accent. But I don’t think with an accent.” Quickly, after one month of marriage, my part as Cinderella was replaced by that of the evil stepmother. That was exactly how my step kids made me feel. One especially frustrating episode was on the girl’s 10th birthday. I did a spa theme party with some of her friends from school. Some activities that were planned were, a ‘make your own pizza’ contest, an ‘ice cream sculpture’ contest, a nail polish station, a makeup and hair salon, a dressing closet with high heels, jewelry and accessories. All the time that the party was going on she treated me very badly. She was bossy and told me many times, “I want you to put more juice for my friends”, or “clean the table” or “You’re not doing it right.” She ordered me around like a maid, and told me to do things, or not to do things. She also destroyed some of my makeup, and when I asked her, “Dear, what are you doing? This makeup is expensive.” She answered, “I’m just having fun.” I could not even say that I was feeling like a maid, because I was not being paid to take this abuse. Actually, I was feeling like a slave.
Every week they came, I witnessed attacks of jealousy from the girl, in relation to her father. One night, I was cleaning the girl’s room, when I found a piece of paper that looked like it had been ripped in half. Immediately I asked my husband to come and look, because of what I discovered on it, and I told him, “Honey, look at this.” She had drawn me on one half of the page. On the other half, she had drawn herself, her brother, and my husband. In the picture, I was portrayed as yelling to the family, “I hate you!” and the family was yelling back, “I hate you!” But the worst part was what it said on the top. It said, “My Plan.”
We talked with her psychologist, and he told my husband and me, that she was really having inappropriate behavior. He said that we needed to be firm, and not feed her behavior. I explained to her, that the love that her father had for them, has no end, and it’s enormous. I also explained that the love between a husband and a wife is a different kind of love, then parental love. Love should multiply and not divided. After that, she decided she did not want to visit our home anymore. She did not stopover for almost 1 year. She decided to visit us again, just when Joe and I returned from Brazil, from our summer vacation, to visit my family. The week we arrived, she came with her brother expecting presents from South America. Everything for them was interpreted as abuse. Doing the homework was abuse. Not being able to play video games for more than 2 hours was torture. Bathing daily, brushing their teeth, eating food cooked at home, going to the ISU music concerts in the summer, going to church, and cleaning their rooms; were all considered to be major trials. The girl also once told me that, “I do not want to eat because I don’t want to get fat like you.”
Actually, when I got married I had an average body, but being put in a situation where, rather than step up and say what I was thinking, I spent hours crying and eating. I felt uncomfortable to say anything in such a new environment, culture, and experience, so the food became a comfort for me. In the beginning of our marriage, I did not feel confident to share with Joseph what I was going through, because many of the expression of bad attitude, and the rebellions were done behind his back. The boy was not as mean as the girl, but he seemed to feel more comfortable trying to find a million excuses for not doing anything, or helping with anything, in our house. He was there as a character to be helped and served, and relax the whole time. His dad told me that the young man had Asperger, but after I studied about the symptoms, I had suspicions that he did not have any such problem.
Their mother does not work. She is on disability, and receives her money from the government, and her wife did too. We suspected that their plan was to put the boy on disability as well. Personally, I did not think it is fair to destroy the future of a young man, by training him to fake something for a few dollars. We asked his psychologist to reevaluate the diagnosis, which had been done 5 years before. Besides being a princess, I could be a psychologist or psychic, because I was right in my suspicion. Now he could be dreaming of what he wanted to be, and stop giving excuses that life was so hard. Even if he had any problems, we tried to teach him that he should not use them as a crutch, or allow them to stop his progress. After talking with a professional, Joe started to realize that love and parenting is much more than just living from day to day.
After three years of living in this not so fairy tale, I realized that the job of a stepmother can be thankless sometimes, but the most important feeling I can have in my heart, is to not give up; and I hope that one day they comprehend that the imaginary evil stepmother was someone who just loved them.