Thank you everyone, it means a lot. Well it's a very long story, to sum up briefly, yes right now I am living with them. My parents divorced when I was young, after I graduated high school, I was my mother's caregiver after years of juvenile diabetes and heart disease took it's toll. After she passed, I had no where to go, and so after exploring every option possible including homeless shelters, I decided to move in with my dad and his wife as my last option.

I have been working every day to move out, but unfortunately lost my job after the economy took a dive, so I find myself right back where I started. When I DID work, my father took most of my money. One year I even paid the house taxes. I pay rent and utilities to him every month.

I feel much more like a a boarder than anything. As far as my stepmother and her religious beliefs, basically to sum it up. I am overweight, have been my entire life, it is very hard to fight the battle of the bulge, my mother's side of the family are all obese. I lost well over 100 lbs before even moving in with them. However, my stepmother views this as "lazyness and gluttony". During the slapping incident, she had a neighbor come over and they had a "prayer service". The neighbor knocked on my bedroom door and demanded I come out for prayer. I went apprehensively. She handed me a picture of Christ, google Veronica's Veil for the photo, ordered me to stare into the eyes of Jesus, and tried to pray "the demon of gluttony" out of me while channeling various dead relatives such as my paternal grandmother from purgatory telling me how sinful I was eating by eating and how "gluttonous" I was. She ordered me to stare into the icon's eyes and if I moved from it, she would slap me.

In general, they are trying to convert me to their religion. I've gone to church a few times. I realize this is extreme behavior on their part, in fact, for a protestant I have Marian sympathies, but this has definitely soiled my view of religion in general right now, which makes it even harder as it used to be a source of refuge for me and has now been used against me. My father used to make fun of me for going to church. I just can't stand the hypocrisy of it all.

In fact, my problem is lots of undereating in an effort to try and lose weight. My father frequently makes fun of me for this.

At any rate, in general the whole thing is unbearable. I was raised protestant Christian, and my father was always an atheist. Now they are both born-again Catholics I guess you would say, Catholicism with elements of pentecostal and charismatic things such as speaking in tongues. At any rate, when my father converted he had my mother and his marriage annulled without even consulting me or my mother, and thus I guess I'm classified a bastard in the eyes of that church.

And, I am just disgusted by all of it since he is so pious now and that woman believes him to be a saint and I'm just a "heathen" in her eyes. Other things involve her being as rude as she can possibly be, telling me how lazy and ugly I am and not trying to have any kind of basic relationship at all. She even tried to force me into a marriage to her niece whom I had never met, that was as soon as I moved in.

It is completely unbearable, but I really don't have a leg to stand on financially, it beats being homeless, so I really have no alternative or any way to stand up for myself. At the same time, even if I WASN'T living with him, I do want some sort of relationship with my dad and this woman on an equal and respectful footing.

As far as the rest of my family, they have their own lives. There was a jealousy issues when my mother was ill, that my grandma doted on her more than them, so they have "washed" their proverbial hands of me and left me to my father. And, I'm just trying to hold my head up and realize I am a good person, but that has left me with very little emotional support for grief and whatnot. It can be hard to just not want to give up sometimes.

When I had my job, that gave me a strong emotional support system and good friends. In fact, I grew very close to one of my co-workers, however because I have such a dearth of relationships within and support my own family, I question myself whether to burden her with being that kind of support for me. Feelings get confused.

So that's the short, embarassing version in a nutshell.

Larry