I invited my stepmother to my wedding because my dad begged me. I tolerated her cruelty for years and told myself it was just one day. I should’ve known better. Some people wait for their moment to hurt you, and when she got hers, she didn’t waste it. She grabbed the mic and read my childhood diary.
My name is Lindsay. I’m 28, and last month, I married Ethan, the man who’s been my rock for six years. He knows all my scars, including the biggest one: Diane, my stepmother.
“You sure you want to invite her?” he asked one night as we finalized our guest list, his finger hovering over Diane’s name.
I stared at her name until the letters blurred. “Dad would be crushed if she wasn’t there. He begged. It was miserable.”
“It’s our day, Linds. Not his.”
I kissed his forehead. “I’ve handled her for 18 years. I can handle her for one more day.”
God, I was so naive.
Diane entered my life when I was ten, barely a year after Mom’s funeral. Dad was drowning in grief and two kids, and Diane, with her pressed pantsuits and calculated smiles… seemed like a life raft.
For Dad, maybe she was. But for me and my sister? She was the slow poison in our childhood.
“Lindsay, sweetie, maybe leave the second helping for someone who exercises,” she’d say at dinner, her fingers brushing my shoulder.
Or: “That outfit is… brave. I admire girls who don’t care what others think.”
When I was 13, I overheard her on the phone: “John’s daughter is going through an ugly phase. Poor thing takes after her mother’s side. Did you notice how much she eats in one serving?” Dad never heard these things. Or he pretended not to. When I tried to tell him, his eyes would cloud with exhaustion.
“She’s trying, Lindsay. Can’t you try too?”
So I learned to be quiet and wrote my real feelings in a little pink diary with a flimsy lock. I challenged myself to survive until I could escape.
And I did, at 18, with a scholarship and two suitcases. I kept my distance for years, showing up for obligatory holidays with an armor built from therapy and distance.
“You’ve changed!” Diane noted last Christmas, her eyes narrowing over her wine glass.
“That’s what growing up does,” I replied, and felt a small victory when she looked away first.
Fast forward to the morning of my wedding, my sister Rachel zipped me into my dress, her fingers steady against my trembling back.
“You look like Mom,” she whispered, and we both pretended my tears were just pre-wedding jitters.
Dad knocked on the door, his eyes widening when he saw me.
“My god! You’re beautiful, honey.”
For a moment, I saw the dad from before… before grief hollowed him out. And before Diane filled those spaces with her sharp edges.
