Mein Kampf, if you will
Date Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 11:42 PM PST
Topic Icky People


I used to think my family was fucked up. But I wasn’t alone--everyone had their own stories: of dad cheating on mom, big brother getting busted for pot, fourteen-year-old sister getting pregnant . . . normal stuff, and my stories weren’t much different. Yeah, my 21-year old sister Stephanie was lying about going to college so she could use the money for who-knows-what. Her boyfriend was a white trash, high school dropout with a criminal record. And she was seven months pregnant before I or my parents knew about it (a third party informed us) . . . but all that stuff made for good commiserative stories of family dysfunction. All normal.
It was almost nice, once I warmed up to the whole thing. Steph admitted to being pregnant, and she seemed happy. It was boy, so we sent her blue jumpers with trucks embroidered on the collars along with a hand-quilted blanket. Steph sent us pictures of herself wearing a cute maternity top over a bulging belly. She liked living in Texas with The Boyfriend and his family--according to her, they were her real family and they cared about her. She forbade us to visit her, but that was okay because she kept us updated: “Aden is 8 pounds now!”

A week ago, Stephanie’s and my mother flew to Texas so she could be there for the induced birth of her already-overdue grandson. But Stephanie would have nothing to do with our mother once she arrived. Mother was not allowed to touch Stephanie or accompany her to gynecologist’s appointments. Stephanie demanded that Mom leave before the baby was born because Mom “made her life too stressful.” Stephanie wanted Mom as far away as possible, so Mom retreated to my grandmother's house in Oklahoma.

This afternoon, my family (namely, my sister) went from being fucked up to being severely, beyond-a-doubt-fucked up.

Stephanie’s due date was two weeks ago. Until this morning, she was 9 ½ months pregnant. When I got up for my shower, my dad told me the baby was dead, and had been dead for two days. No one knew why he was stillborn, but an autopsy had been scheduled. I was sad, of course I was sad—he was my nephew. I had planned to take little Aden to punk rock shows, to let him come over any time he was mad at his Mommy, to listen to him vent about his stupid girlfriend who wouldn’t call him back. This morning Aden was dead, and life wasn’t good, but his mommy wasn’t officially fucked up yet.

After a tough day at school (thinking about dead babies) my dad told me he had some very interesting news, and proceeded to explain why my sister was moving back to live with us in Washington and why she would undergo psychiatric treatment.

Turns out Stephanie faked it. She faked the pregnancy, she faked the contractions, and she faked the birth. She now says she was indeed pregnant, but miscarried 6 months ago and has admitted there was no birth today, dead or alive. Everything makes sense now. It's easier to fake a birth if no one is there to witness it. Everything makes sense except what's wrong with her. Is it some kind of factitious disorder? Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy?

To top it off, The Boyfriend and his family have stolen Stephanie’s car. They will press charges if anyone sets foot on their property to claim the car (trespassing, you see.) The Boyfriend’s Father, who has already flown to Texas from Washington, D.C., is demanding that my family pay him 800 dollars to compensate for the work he missed. As my father puts it, The Boyfriend is "a Third- or Fourth-Generation Piece of Shit."

Now Stephanie wants out.

This article comes from Shmeng
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