I waited a really long time to have my own home. My first disastrous marriage ended in divorce after nine years in which was I was left standing with only some furniture, my clothes and about $4,000.00 in debt. I count my blessings because there was nothing to permanently link me to the man, such as children. We didn’t have to sell a house, we had no children to fight for custody, and we didn’t even have a savings account to split. After that marriage ended, the things I wanted for my life didn’t change. I still wanted a home. I desired many things that I felt like I should have had already by the time I reached 30 -- a home, children, security, etc. All of that.
Eventually, of course, I did end up having those things with DH and with DH is where I belong. For the first two years of our marriage, it was complete happiness. We were together planning our future and intertwined with each other’s lives as it should be. The first year we spent incorporating our belongings and our personalities into one. As we approached our one year anniversary, my biological clock was ticking and knew that if children were going to be a part of our life, then we needed to get on with the gettin’ on. In early summer of our first year of marriage we began looking for a new home. We loved our current home, but it wasn’t large enough or family friendly enough for a baby and all its belongings.
In October of 2002, we closed on a house that we had basically built from the studs up and we moved into our new abode with excitement. During that time, I’d convinced DH that we needed this adorable, all but abandoned dog that I discovered. Never one to tell me no, DH agreed and our new pooch came into our lives. He must have been our fertility charm, because two months later I found out I was pregnant.
I have no real recollection of MIL during this time frame. All was well. She was far away and if we had to deal with her it was over the phone. She still called DH way too many times a day but that could be ignored for the most part. The only interaction I do recall was one time when the phone rang, and when I answered WWW said “are you fat yet?” That’s her. No tact. She thought she was being funny. I just thought she was acting entirely too familiar. Like … it might be amusing if my best friend called and said “hey are you fat yet?” because I would know she meant that in a loving and humorous way. With WWW, we were not close and her comment wasn’t funny and I didn’t take it that way and I doubt she really meant it that way either. I took it for what it was, spew from the mouth of Mount Vicious.
Almost all of our immediate family members live far away. WWW, Crunchy and my sister “Middle” live over 1,000 miles away. My other sister “Oldest” lives an hour away. My parents were gone and DH’s dad (when he was alive) and step-mom live six hours away. If any immediate family was to visit after our baby was born, it would mean that they were staying in our house during the duration of their stay as we have room to accommodate guests. However, DH and I agreed we didn’t want any family around the first week after the baby was born. I specifically didn’t want the pressure of guests, even family, staying in our house while I healed and we bonded with the baby that first week. I don’t believe that was an out-of-line request and I still don’t. Also, that request applied across the board, no matter who they were in our family. We informed our relatives of our request a few months in advance. Everyone in our family understood and respected that request — except WWW. Not surprising after what I know now. She doesn’t like boundaries. She doesn’t like being told she has to do something (or not do something) that she feels she has every right to do. Approximately two to three weeks or so AFTER everyone had been told of our request (including her), WWW totally-on-purpose mixed our request up. It was her view that we had said that we didn’t want her to visit after the baby was born AT ALL. She believed this because she had spoken to Crunchy on the phone and that Crunchy told her that we didn’t want her there at all. This of course was not true and Crunchy did not say that. DH had told his mother with his own mouth what our request was and she didn’t have much of a response. As I have learned over the years, a non-response by her to something that should produce a response only means that she’s really pissed and is thinking up any number of ways to blow it up in your face LATER.
What really happened was that after WWW’s alleged discussion with Crunchy, WWW chose to believe that particular version of the request, rather than the one specifically told her by her own son. In her fury over this imagined slight, she emailed DH and said: “If I am not wanted then I will have nothing to do with your baby ever and will walk out of your lives forever!” She said some other things too, but that was the extent of the message. DH was immediately upset and I was appalled. I had never dealt first hand with such knee jerk, in-your-face brutal selfishness before, especially over something that was patently false. That his mother believed we’d even think such a thing was absurd. That she would make the request regarding the birth of our first child all about HER had me taken aback. Worse, was she really set to walk out of our lives and have nothing whatsoever to do with her grandchild? I laughed because her threat, at least to me, was no threat at all! Not so much DH. I don’t think she really believed we said that. I think she dreamed up some bullshit so she could play the “wounded mother” routine so everyone would feel sorry for her and turn everything around from being about DH and I and our new child to being about poor Mommy Dearest. What was so infuriating is that I saw what she was doing and I would never have tolerated someone like that in my life for one more second were it not that she was DH’s mother.
After the baby arrived, WWW came almost immediately after the first week. While she was visiting, WWW happened to notice the real estate lot across the street from our house was for sale. It was the last lot in the neighborhood that had yet to be sold. She bought it. She bought it, picked up her entire life from over 1,000 miles away and plopped it 30 yards away. I could do nothing to stop it, because why? Because I didn’t know what she was yet, I knew she was a bitch and really annoying, but I didn’t understand the horrible dysfunction and evil she could do. Because she was so good at manipulation, she was able to smoothly lie her way in until it was too late.
When she purchased the lot, WWW indicated that she was only purchasing the lot for real estate investment purposes, which could have been true. WWW was heavily involved in the real estate area at that time and had three or four other properties in CA, AZ and FL that she owned. I mentioned my apprehension about this to DH and he placated me with “it’s just an investment.” A few months later WWW stated she was actually going to build a house on the property, but not actually live there. She was going to flip it and make some money. I was alarmed by this time, but DH assured me she’d never live here because she hates cold weather and the snow. A few months after that, she announced that she actually was going to live there, but only live there a few months out of the year because she hated snow. By this time, I’m alarmed as hell, and DH was at a loss. He told me she’d only be here in the summer, but NEVER the winter or fall -- remember she hated the snow? It wouldn’t be that bad. By the time the house was finished she gave up all pretense of living here part time, and began behaving like she was going to be living here permanently. There was no announcement or informing us that it changed. She just suddenly changed ALL of her information to her new house as her permanent residence, changed her health insurance, and began to make the plans to move EVERYTHING in a semitruck here including her vehicle. There was no opportunity to say “hey, ummm, no. You can’t live there forever.” There was never consultation or discussion with us about if that was something we wanted. Why would it? She doesn’t give a shit about what any one wants but herself. She did, however, KNOW damn well it wasn’t a good idea, which is why she never asked us outright, never indicated what her real plans were and hid it from us. I was sick to my stomach about it. I was learning to hate her and did not know how I was going to deal with that. I hated everything about her. I hated her haughtiness, I hated her know-it-all conversations, I hated her voice, I hated that she treated my husband like a slave and our marriage like an inconvenience. My biggest fear was that I was going to resent my husband for allowing all this. And I told him so.
Another huge factor that arose out of her building a house across the street from us was that I didn’t realize that all that planning and building would require her to fly back and forth countless times, at which point each time she visited to do business she stayed IN OUR HOUSE no less than 10 days at a time. All added together, she lived with us for approximately four months over the span of a year. By the end of all the building, no description can begin to cover how badly I was beginning to lose my mind with the constant interruptions of our newly formed family. Whenever she came to visit, our life was turned upside down and she demanded all of DH’s time. She and DH were CONSTANTLY going over the building plans, driving here and there to Lowe’s or Home Depot helping her pick out every little fucking thing in her house. He had to meet with the builders every time that she did. I tried to get DH to see how intrusive it was, how it bothered me. He just nodded and didn’t say much and never even tried to set boundaries with her. He continued to let her constant interruptions upset the flow of our family life. What’s more, the interruptions didn’t even stop when she was gone. Because if she was gone it was up to DH to meet with the builders on his mother’s behalf, his job to cruise around town looking for the perfect tile she’d picked out at the right price, his job to check the work being done every day on the house. It was never fucking ending. I couldn’t escape. Ever.
I know some people will not understand why I didn’t stop her or tell her no. Or put my foot down. Confrontation was never my thing and this was his mother! I feel like a coward. But for the most part, I was kept out of the loop as to what was going on. DH had two jobs and was extremely busy and when his mother was in town, there was no room for me, not that I cared. This was mother/son bonding over this house and they were apparently just fine doing all of this without me around. As WWW’s plans changed about her living arrangements, the excuses just kept pouring in and gradually getting worse until it was too late and she was moving here permanently. By this time I was pregnant with our second child.
Once she moved in across the street, our marital life was flipped upside down. No more did I feel like it was our marriage and we were building it together as one unit. Once the old bat moved in, I felt like I was sharing my husband with another woman. And I was!! Countless hours. Hours upon hours he spent with her BEFORE she even moved in, and now he was apparently to spend countless hours doing work for her to make sure her moving in experience was just perfect. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of hours he spent doing shit for her. Time that was taken away from his own family and from me. It didn’t seem to faze him. Even if I complained. It was normal for him. No big deal. So constant has DH been at her beck and call for the last 10 years, so ceaseless have her phone calls been every day, sometimes five, six, seven calls a day even though she lives within shouting distance, that the resentment I so feared came to fruition. It was clear she felt DH was her property to claim and shove around and claim and she was going to prove it by doing exactly as she damn well please. Her unending need of him for this and for that, and come here and fix this RIGHT NOW that sometimes I felt like I hated them both. More times than not I seethed under my breath that if she’s so god dammed important to him then why doesn’t he just move in with her.
So many nasty things this woman has done and said to me. So many now I barely remember 80% of them. I think I’ve just blocked them. I think I blew them off to some dusty place in my mind because to think about them was painful. However, some of them I do remember and the one I’m going to tell next was particularly heinous.
It should be no surprise that by this time, I was learning to keep my distance from WWW and that I didn’t like her much. I think that WWW was sensing a change in me and she tried to reach out to keep me in her clutches. One night during one of her many visits, she did something that once I got away from her, I sobbed and sobbed. I think one of most eye opening things for a woman who has a baby is that once you have a baby of your own, you can now comprehend just how much your own mother loves you. Mother love is kind of overwhelming. How could any woman really know what a mother’s love is like until you are one? When a woman first becomes a mother, I sincerely believe that it becomes a time when you want your own mother around. I didn’t have mine. She was four years gone. It was a gaping hole that could never be filled. I struggled (and still do) to learn how to be a parent without being able to share my children with them.
That night while talking, WWW had the audacity to try and use my mother’s memory in some bullshit ploy to get me to accept her. WWW had never met my parents. She has never, not even once, asked about them nor has she ever appeared to have the slightest interest in them. I doubt she even knows their names. But that night she spoke about my mom as if she and my mother had been fast friends. WWW leaned in to me, putting her hand on mine and said in a syrupy voice:
“I wanted to tell you that your mom came to me in a dream last night. It was obvious that she was very happy that I was now in your life and she wanted me to know --- I believe that she was showing me that she was wanting to share you with me as a mother.”
I wanted to vomit. I was mortified. For her to assume that SHE as a MOTHER is somehow comparable for the loss of mine was incomprehensible. My mother was a saint compared to her. This woman can’t keep a relationship longer than six months. When my mom died we had to have the funeral service in a ginormous chapel to accommodate everyone and, even then, they had to add chairs to the back of the chapel, and then when the chairs ran out, a line of standing room only guests snaked out the door into the parking lot where people stood in the wet drizzle anyway even though they couldn’t see anything. That is how much my mother was loved. There is no comparing my mother to her. While my mother had standing room only at her funeral service, I guarantee there won’t even be one person to who will give enough of a shit to spit on this woman’s grave when she dies.
This is why I loathe this woman. My mother was not perfect but she was the epitome of a real mother’s love. She knew how to show concern, and selflessness, sympathy and caring. Her kids came first. That this hag masquerades as some sort of “mother” is a fucking sham that I can’t stand. Worse, is that DH can’t even see how foul she is.
This is why if nobody was watching and I knew I could get away with it, that I would shove her off a cliff and dust off my hands and feel no remorse. She is a pox on humanity. A vile, vicious alcoholic bitch who serves no good purpose on this earth. AT ALL.
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