I feel like being a step-mom is akin to walking on an elusive and invisible tight-rope. The role demands one to maintain a very precarious balance: How much "involvement" is the *right* amount of involvement? Too much and we become the hated, militant, evil step-monster; or too little and we become a cold hearted, child hating ogre.

My life as a step-mom feels like a dream, nay a nightmare. A nightmare in which I am blind. I am blind and I am stumbling around in a dark abyss, tripping over unknown objects and running into unforeseen walls.

In this nightmare, nothing is as it seems or as I thought it would seem. My own senses betray me at every turn.

What I thought was the right direction, is really just a dead end.

Is that a brick wall I just skinned my knee on? I feel my own hearts blood drip down my leg. I'm unable to stop it. The pain alternates between a pulsating throb to a dull ache to totally numb.

In the darkness, I know that there are people watching me. I can *feel* them staring. I can *feel* them pressing in, their presence both unnerving and menacing. Sometimes, when I stumble on something, I can hear them laughing. But they don't laugh too loud, just loud enough to let me know how my failure pleases them.

Then, sometimes they throw things at me... rotten tomatoes. It must be rotten tomatoes. I slip in the mess. I stumble. I fall. I falter to get up, slipping again and again and again. They laugh.

I can't see a thing, even though I *feel* like I should be able to see. Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of what could possibly be the tight-rope I know I'm supposed to be walking on, but when I make my way to where I thought it was, I find that it was only a mirage, an illusion. It was never there.

In the darkness I feel another presence. This presence is at once both warm and bitter cold. I'm confused. One moment, I can feel it, the next I know that it is gone and I am alone with those who throw the tomatoes.

I'm walking in a circular room. Going around and around and around. I'm getting no where. There's no where to go.

Was that the tight-rope I felt strum against my fingertips? Maybe? Possibly?

I pull at it. It seems sturdy enough.

So in the darkness, I climb, as best as I can, abroad the rope. One hand, the other. One knee, the other. I wobble. Getting my balance enough to stand is difficult. But stand I do.

Painfully, arduously, I put one foot in front of the other. Maintaining this balance seems impossible. My foot slips. I see darkness ahead of me, around me, and below me.

If I fall, what will happen to me?

All too soon, I find out. I fall. I fall for a while, it seems there is nothing there to catch me. The snap from the broken tight-rope rings in my ears and echoes in the emptiness.

Suddenly, I'm in the circle room again. I'm stumbling. I hear the laughter. I feel the tomatoes and I slip in the mess.

And I realize that I have accomplished nothing.