Dee, I am so sorry for what was done to you. You wrote: "For some reason she just did not want to give me permission to do anything that was normal during my teen years." It seems to me that she did not want you to become a woman 1) then she'd have to "compete" with you 2) then she could not control you. Di, that's a good question: "Do I need to start wondering why they don't include their Dad so much..is there something "hidden" that I do not know? Or, is it just the "divorce thing" that has ruined this family???" MA, what makes you wish you were adopted? You're adopted here, you know. My father married a much younger woman; she was not old enough to be the "mother" of my older brother, and she would have to be 13 to have me. She bewitched me. At 10, I fell in love with her. She was everything my mother wasn't. (well, my step mother was a prositute. That's a hard word to learn when you are 10,11.) My step mother also had a daughter who she did not know who the father was. The daughter, about 4 years younger than I, could do no wrong. I trusted my step-mother when I met her at age 9. When I was 19, she betrayed me. My stepmother ****"She zapped me with her witch’s brew of bad luck and ill will. She took my worst fear and threw it back in my face. She turned a friend into an enemy. For nearly a decade, we had been allies as we witnessed the worst together. With her attack on me, the daughter of my father, she was ending our enigmatic relationship as adversaries.****I could never be a step mother. I don't have the inner security it takes to "step" in and parent. My step father was a tyrant, but like Dees and her step mother, he and I have had our moments of forgiveness, now, while my mother is on her death bed. I'm getting myself depressed. Dee, I was only going to say I feel for you, I embrace you. I took the sugar cube.