All I feel is pain

I was searching through the girls room last night, attempting to find my new red nail polish (I had let the girls borrow it, and surprise, they had actually put it back in my bathroom) and I came across SD's journals.

I haven't seen them in a long time. One I gave her when she was erasing, as an outlet for her feelings. The other was apparently a birthday present from one of her friends this past October. Now, due to the way SD has been behaving in the past, I read them both. I won't tell her that I read them, but I think that it doesn't hurt to make sure that everything is on the up and up.

Most of it was your typical teenage bullshit. Boys, boys, and more boys. No mention of the 17 year old, which I found interesting. But plenty of mention of the rest of them.

However it was the entries after the whole blow up with her mother that basically brought me to tears. It's just so painful to read. The poor kid has been through so much stuff. I mean she has been the center of this "war" that BM has been waging against DH and everyone else since she as seven years old. BM is in an emotionally abusive relationship and she's condoning it by using the excuse (get this) that DH treated her WORSE. Which even SD knows is a lie, but BM continues to tell her own child this. BM uses her for a friend and condifant. Hell, SD spends more of her time mothering BM than BM does mothering SD. SD never got a chance to be a child.

It breaks my damn heart.

She made the comment that the therapist has made her realize that it's not her mother, it's her stepdad. Or her stepdad's influence on her mother. Which I agree with to a point. BM is still batshit crazy and a manipulative bitch, but now I wonder if she doesn't act so mean to DH because she realizes she screwed up. Grass wasn't greener on the other side, was it bitch?

Being a stepmother hurts all the time. The heartbreak from watching this and always being on edge just makes me hurt all the time. I worry so much for these kids. And ALL I can do is just hold on and hope that I'm promoting a peaceful enough household to sustain all of them....*sigh*