Hello there all. There doesn't seem to be an area in which my situation fits on this board.

I have been reading here for a couple of weeks, but just not sure if me, and my problems, fit in here anywhere...

The short version of my story:
My husband and I were both widowed in 2005, within 6 months of each other. We met on a discussion board much like this one...for people who had been widowed young and wanted a support network of people who knew what it was like. We became email friends, then phone friends, then more-than-friends. We were married in Feb of 2007, after I moved from the US to the UK with my daughter who is now almost 18. He has two daughters from his marriage, now 10 and 14.
It was supposed to be a second chance for us both...it was supposed to be happily ever after.

The "problem":
...is my stepdaughter who is 10.
I swear I just don't know what to do, what to say, how to act or to re-act, or where it will all end...

I didn't expect it to be like this. I have experience with other peoples kids...have been babysitting since I was 10, been a mother since I was 18, and for a brief 3 year period in the 80's, I even owned my own day care center.
Despite all of this...am completely out of ideas & resources.

The other problem:
Is that I personally place a lot of the responsibility for this kid on the BM. Unfortunatley she's not here for me to tell off. I know most women here think it would be a blessing if the BM went away. But it's not necessarily better. It means that there is no one to hand the kid off to...ever! And no one to blame...because if one of you complain about the BM it's expected, but if you do it when she's dead...then you're a monster!

I sound selfish to my own ears, so cannot think what conclusion others might come to...but this is just SO not what I signed up for!
I feel like I am in a room full of people...screaming my fool head off...and no one even glances up!

There is something so very wrong with this kid... yet I can get no one to see it, to hear it, or to acknowledge it.

I feel like I am in one of those movies...where the heroine finds herself mistakenly locked up in a mental institution...but can't convince anyone that she is the only sane one...because all the nuts say that.

I swear that sometimes I feel like my life has become some weird sort of psychological experiment to see if I can be driven crazy by the idea that everything I know to be true, my intuition, my instincts, my common sense...are all wrong.
That I am making things up because I am the only one who sees...the only one who talks about it. (Damn emotionless, uncommunicative Brits!)

If I am in the wrong place, could someone just give me a heads-up so I can perhaps make the appointment I have been avoiding and see if I should be the one to be medicated?!?!? (Possibly on an in-patient basis!)
I would really appreciate any feedback...don't worry about hurting my poor-little feelings. (No one else seems to worry about it!)
But don't take too long, okay? 'Cause I think I can feel myself losing the will to live...