Every weekend, my husband’s kids from his ex took over my home. I begged for space, but got nothing. Callum would just shrug and say they were “only children” and that I needed to be the bigger person.
But it wasn’t just about kids being kids; it was about the total erasure of my boundaries and my peace. My house, which I had worked so hard to make a sanctuary, became a chaotic playground where I felt like a ghost in my own kitchen. I had tried to make it work for two years, but the resentment was starting to rot my heart.
His teenage daughter, Sophie, and his son, Noah, treated my belongings like community property and my rules like suggestions. Callum never backed me up, fearing that if he set limits, they wouldn’t want to come over anymore. I felt like I was being held hostage by his guilt and their entitlement every Saturday and Sunday.
So, I started skipping weekends at home. I told Callum I needed “me time” and began staying with my sister or booking quiet Airbnbs in the countryside. At first, he was annoyed, but eventually, he stopped arguing and just let me go.
It felt like a temporary fix, a way to breathe without the suffocating weight of a family dynamic that didn’t include my needs. But deep down, I knew I was just running away from a house that didn’t feel like a home anymore. One Sunday, I came back earlier than usual because a storm had cut my hiking trip short.
I walked through the front door, expecting the usual mess of shoes and discarded hoodies in the hallway. Instead, the house was eerily quiet, though I could hear music thumping upstairs in my bedroom. I walked up the stairs, my heart starting to race with a mixture of dread and growing anger.
I pushed open my bedroom door and found Sophie standing in front of my full-length mirror. She was wearing my favorite silk emerald dress—the one I had saved for our upcoming anniversary dinner. She was clumping around in my designer heels, and my grandmother’s vintage pearl necklace was draped around her neck.
She didn’t even look guilty when she saw me; she just rolled her eyes as if I were the one intruding. What broke me was finding my husband in the doorway of the walk-in closet, holding a garbage bag. He wasn’t stopping her; he was helping her.
He was handing her my expensive skincare sets and a stack of my designer scarves from the top shelf. I stood there, paralyzed, watching the man I loved dismantle my identity to appease a teenager who didn’t even like him that much. “What are you doing, Callum?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
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