My Mom Removed My Bedroom Door So Her New Boyfriend Could “Monitor” Me. She Said I Was Making Up Lies About Him. Then I Found My Father’s Secret Journal Hidden In The Attic.
A New “Dad”
My mom thought she could replace my father with her creepy new boyfriend and make me call him dad, but she didn’t realize I still had contact with my actual dad. I was 13 when my mother got engaged to Brandon. Dad had been convicted for manslaughter five months ago.
He called someone at the bar, but he wasn’t even drinking. I was there with him. He went into the bathroom then came out minutes later looking panicked and covered in blood.
He shouted for someone to call the police and they arrived quickly, but then without saying much, they put him in handcuffs and took him away. The next time I saw him was behind bars. It never made much sense though; Dad never had a violent bone in his body.
He swore he didn’t do it. And the way mom acted after his conviction made me even more suspicious. She brought home Brandon instantly.
On day one, she said he was my new dad since the other one was clearly a monster. She told me that my dad was a killer who I needed to distance from for my own safety. I wasn’t sure what to believe at first, but when 5 months later my mom announced to me that they were engaged and I needed to start calling Brandon daddy, I became quite convinced of dad’s innocence.
Around this time is also when it started. Brandon got comfortable. He began staring at me while eating, slowly saying things like:
“You’re growing up so fast, becoming such a pretty young woman.”
The worst part was my mom thought it was sweet. Even when I told my mom for the first time that Brandon made my skin crawl, she told me I was dramatic. She must have told him what I said though, because that night while she slept, Brandon came into my room.
He grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave marks and said:
“You know what happens to naughty girls who snitch.”
I was terrified, but I knew I couldn’t trust my mom by telling her, so I kept it a secret. I also started keeping a different secret around this time. I started writing letters to dad.
I’d hide them between my textbook pages and mail them from my friend’s house after school. Dad would write back through the prison email system to an account I created without mom knowing.
The Warning Signs
Things got really bad one specific Thursday though. I came home from school one day to find out mom had changed my last name on all school records to Brandon’s without telling me.
“You’ll thank me when you’re older,”
she said.
That night Brandon came into my room to celebrate being a real family now and sat on my bed. He put his hand on my thigh and said I should be grateful to have a dad who cares. I pushed him off and locked myself in the bathroom until he left.
I remember writing to dad about that incident. The letter I got back from him was on real paper this time and parts of it were damp and see-through, almost as if he had cried while writing it. That almost broke me.
But luckily there was one thing I looked forward to: the chance to see him. His birthday was coming up and I remember enthusiastically asking mom if I could visit him. I told her I knew she didn’t like him, but it was his birthday.
“Just today and for a few minutes. Please,”
I said.
But of course, I got told no. Actually, I got told something even worse. Mom said we couldn’t go because that exact weekend Brandon coincidentally had car show tickets and expected us all to go together.
He specifically requested us to have adjoining hotel rooms. When I told them I’d rather visit dad, mom exploded.
“He’s a killer. You’re not visiting a murderer.”
When I said he’s innocent and he’s still my dad, Brandon backhanded me across the face while mom watched. She said nothing. I was forced to go with them that weekend.
