Someone Else's Wendy and the Volcano Family

They call them "blended families" families like ours. Families where parents bring themselves together, with their already in existence children, and put themselves together in a big blending pot. Even when sometimes it's like mixing oil and water or jam and rocks. They should be called Volcano Families. Noone ever said it would be easy, but seriously, sometimes it's a fucking nightmare. Into our family I brought a two year old Rabbit. Mr G brought a twelve year old Contessa. My little Rabbit and Mr G fell in love, became Daddy and Daughter and blood became totally irrelevant. The Contessa is a whole different story. It seems sometimes the harder I try, the worse it becomes and not only is blood relevant, often it is boiling, and occasionally I wonder if it should be spilt as I slash my wrists. Time and time again I wonder 'what is the point?'

Years ago I used to have a flatmate, Wendy. She moved into a flat that I and the homeowner lived in. We lived happily, quietly and tidily. Wendy wasn't unhappy but she unsettled our settledness in quiet wee ways. Generally she was pleasant, always she was filthy. No matter how many hints we left or times we asked, Wendy left a trail where ever she went. While we cleaned as we went and did housework once a week as a team, Wendy cleaned up nothing and never helped out in the home. She never saw mess but she left it everywhere. Every morning she would have toast, but leave crumbs all over the bench and smearings of toast spreads. The bathroom I shared with her was COVERED in her dyed red hair. HUGE clumps of it on every surface. It made me feel like vomiting. She never cleaned it up or cleaned the bathroom. When she cooked she never wiped down the bench or stove, she never rinsed her dishes before she put them in the dishwasher. She never unloaded the dishwasher, or did anything to help out anyone but herself. She was bright and cheery but every morning she took a dump directly before I had a shower, even though there was a separate toilet downstairs.

Not only did I need to shower in Wendy's fecal stench, and clean up after her wherever she went, Wendy not only didn't clean up after herself, she didn't seem to shower or wash very often either. Her benchmark seemed to be every three or four days, when her hair would get scarily greasy, so she'd shower. Pretty much her hair seemed to be walking about on it's own on her head and she MIGHT decide it was time to wash it. Which meant she would need to shower. Which meant it was time to change her underpants. Sometimes her clean washing contained only a couple of pairs of knickers. She never washed her sheets. Eventually my flatmate suggested she move on. She left. We happily got on with our lives, cleanly and freshly never giving Wendy another thought. Until cue some  years later and in walks Mr G into my life and in walks the Contessa, and back I am, living with a Wendy!

The worst thing about step parenting is no matter what you do, you have all the responsibility but no ability to change anything. You get to chew out your own kid. The Contessa is difficult, she is stroppy, she is complicated. She is smelly. Wherever she goes she leaves a trail. A trail that I, the housewife, get to clean up. And since she's not my kid and she does NOTHING that I ask, and does nothing for herself, I get to live with it and lump it. And it drives me INSANE. It drives me CRAZY. Sometimes I am murderous. It's the collection of little tiny things that all mixed together make me want to explode, even though explosion usually comes after trivial. It's just that while I am the housewife, she has nothing but contempt for me and a teenaged right of passage. If she eats, I get to clean up the mess. There is always mess. If I ask her to clean it up, she wipes it onto the floor. If she showers she leaves the mat in a heap on the floor so I get to pick it up. She drops hairclips everywhere for me to pick up. She leaves her chair out, any cupboard she opens open, any door she opens open, she leaves heaters on, lights on, you name it. There is a trail. And it all leads to her room, the Stench Pit.

The Stench Pit is something you only read about in horror movies. Mr G minimises it by saying "all teenagers are like that" but honestly, they're not. I was the Queen of the messy room and the unmade bed. I was terrible and lazy and unconcerned about mess. But the difference was my mess was clean mess. My clothes were clean, my sheets were clean, my room and I did not smell. If you walked in the house you wouldn't immediately know that my door had been left open. I did not have plates and cups and cutlery growing mould and fungus hiding in my drawers and under my washing piles. I didn't keep used sanitary products in my bedroom and I didn't sleep in a smell that brings bile to my throat. The Contessa is different. Nigel Latter may claim that the messy room is a sign that a teenager is finding her identity in the world. I fear the identity she is finding. She showers, at best, 2 to 3 times a week. Her bed is changed, under duress, maybe, MAYBE three times a year. Her clothes are washed, at best, once a month and even then it is only a small percentage of what is worn. It is always at someone else's insistence.

I did used to do her washing. Once every 8 to ten weeks she would throw a pile of clothes all over the garage floor near the washing machine. Some of them were the still neatly folded clothes I had washed last time which still remained unworn and un-put-away. The rest came with tissues in the pockets, sanitary pads attached, and I would be expected to collect them off the floor on demand and sort them. I didn't last long doing this. She turned 14, I went on strike and I went very close to walking out the door. Very close. I spent many days sitting on the garage floor crying and wondering what the hell I had got myself into. These days she hasn't changed overly, but I try to not make it my problem.

What made me think that I could try and help her change for the better, I will never know. I made the mistake, some weeks ago, of telling her that I would make her a new blind (to replace the one that she has broken and is mouldy), if only she would thoroughly clean and wash her room. I also told her if she got it all spotless and packed everything temporarily and tidily into the spare room, I would wash her carpet. I have tried being gentle, I have tried being encouraging. I have tried to suggest that if she was clean and cleaned her clothes and bedding and didn't hoard food scraps and used sanitary products then her room wouldn't stink. She responds with a 'yep' and then carries on the same way. She has made miniscule, piece meal attempts but she hasn't exactly bothered and she has never maintained what she's done and managed to get any further.

To carry out my end of the bargain I spent days hunting for fabric to make a new blind. I thought, since she was going to clean and the blind and carpet would be smell free, I would get her a new duvet cover and make some art work for her walls. I have spent hours making a blind, I have had nightmare after nightmare with staple guns trying to make the art work, I have bought cushions and a duvet cover, I have looked at sheets, I have encouraged my husband to buy me a carpet cleaner, I have explained to the teen exactly what I'd like her to do. I am sick of waiting for her to do it. Day after day she comes home and watches tele. She demands rides all over town from Mr G, never with manners and always at changing convenience only to herself. She showers only if her hair needs washing, even after dance classes. Last time she changed her bed she used dirty, hidden sheets and she has not, for as long as I can remember, changed her pyjamas. And while I am growing forever frustrated and disgusted, Mr G wants to know when I'll put her new blind up so that she doesn't burn the house down when the broken one covers the heater. I can't explain how exasperating it is when regardless of how much contempt she shows for me, she continues to remain my problem. Nothing I do is ever good enough.

I feel for the teenager. She's now 16. She doesn't fit in so well in our wee family but really she doesn't want to either. She wants to be the negative centre of attention. She wants to be waited upon. She wants me to fuck off and die. It hasn't been easy for her to gain a new step mother and a new, exceptionally cute, step sister. She loves the sister but she struggles with me. I get that. But I also think she needs to step up. I wonder at times if I am the only person in her life that has ever expected her to step up. Certainly Mr G, her mother and don't get me started on her grandmother, expect little from her and resign themselves to her behaviour. And she lives up to their expectations. She just doesn't live up to mine and certainly I don't live up to theirs. But I didn't create the problem, I just live with it. Even though I know that she is just a kid, she is stuck with me, just like I'm stuck with her, and she came as part of the bargain. Blended families can be like little, bubbling volcanoes. Life as a step mother can be soooo disempowering. So most of the time I get on with it, sometimes I do my nah-na over the tiniest but always cumulative things and pretty much always I count down the years until she becomes someone else's Wendy.