I just had lunch with my dad, where we talked about the same things we have talked about at every lunch we've had since I can remember. Why don't I come out to the house anymore. Why I chose a life of struggle instead of college and what he calls a good start. Why I don't try to be part of the family.

I've told him a million times that I find my stepmother unbearable. I don't think she's satan incarnate, at least not most of the time, but she's the polar opposite of me. She always finds something wrong with everything that I do. She tried to tell me one time that my husband was cheating on me. And it seems like everytime I try to get along with her, she throws it back in my face. The time before this, when I had lunch with the both of them, I asked her if we could not get along for the sake of getting along and she looked me dead in the eye and said "NO". She took our wedding pictures and won't give them back. She's done countless things to me (and others I love like my husband and mom) in my life, that when you add them up, start to be pretty unforgiveable. The largest of which is the fact that she slept with my dad while he was still married to my mom. I hate being around her and honestly if she disappeared from my life, I couldn't be happier.

But yet again, here I was, explaining all this to my dad. I know that he wants to see his grandkids and me but I don't know how I could ever get past her. He finally said today he understood and that he wouldn't ask me anymore. But I feel so guilty, almost like I've let her win. And I don't want to hurt him, but I feel backed into a corner because she brings out the worst in me. I wish more than anything that this woman had never came into my life or his because maybe then I would never have to hurt like this. I wish my dad could just be my dad, and not her husband. He could have married anyone after mom, and I don't know why he picked her. And its sad that after all this time, 20 years, I'm still wishing for their divorce. Nothing that has ever happened has hurt as bad as this.