Monster in Law

14 Years with the same man (give or take a couple of months and substract the months away) and here I am.

Usually being faced with a blank page would make you feel as though there is pressure to fill it and you could suddenly be struck with ‘writers block’. But in my case I have too much and I’m wondering where to start first.

My Life is consumed by alot that I need to get off my chest and a great deal that I want to shout from the rooftops. Years of therapy taught me many things; one of which was; to get it off your chest. Write it down. Get it out. I think Oprah did a show about it once and gave it a fancy name that I can’t remember now.

I could write about my Mother who has played a pivotal role in my life. Or perhaps I could blog about the many illustrious men that I have had both the pleasure and the misfortune to encounter. Or I could blog about my longstanding boyfriend, who on the 1st of December 2005 became my fiancee.

But for now I want to focus on the person I think I should blog about first. The thing I most need to shout about and the load that seems the hardest to bear.

My Mother in Law.

Technically Jay and I aren’t married yet, so technically she isn’t my Mother in Law yet, however I’ve been referring to her as such for years and it’s just sort of stuck. For the purposes of this blog however and given my current mood, she will now be referred to as my Monster in Law.

Oh the tales I could tell of her. The endless sentences that pour out of my head as I sit here and try to type fast enough to get it all out.

She doesn’t like me. That’s not paranoia, it’s the truth. She’s told me before. Up until just over a year ago, it was a suspicion that I had, even though I recall her saying it once or twice in the past, but I’ll refer to the most recent for the purposes of this blog.

Jay isn’t your typical boyfriend. We never go out unless I beg for a week in advance and then it either has to be a special occasion or a way for him to apologise for something awful that he’s done. He’s 34 years old and still insists on living at home. It takes him more than two months to return a Library book and usually his mother has to continuosly remind him. Every month she reminds him to make his car payments and she checks his mail to see what bills he’s paying. She says that she opens them accidently, but once is an accident, every month is a habit.

I know what you’re probably thinking, I thought this was about her and not him, but for you to better understand my dislike of her (yes, it works both ways) I thought an explanation was in order. She failed to arm him with the tools he needs to be any kind of self sufficient man and she constantly babies him and I’m the one who has to live with it!

Back to why I say she doesn’t like me. I don’t agree with alot of the things that she does. And in the beginning it was fine, I could live with it, because it was only on weekends. I had my own house and my own rules and seeing her only on weekends was fine. I have to add that in all the time I had my own house, which was 2 years (the other years are for future blogs) he slept over 3 times, twice was because my alarm wasn’t working and the other time, oh well can’t remember the reason, but I think you get the point. The reason he didn’t sleep over ‘Mommy doesn’t like it’ (he was 32 at the time and I was 30)

He convinced me to give up my house and move in with him and his family, which I did. And that’s when the nightmare really started. She uses the same cloth to wipe the stove, the counters, the floor and on the odd occasion clean scuff marks off her shoes. She would lie on the couch, scratching in her ear, her nose, wiping the sleep out of her eyes, take care of an itch in the never regions and then get up and start preparing dinner. (Yes, without washing her hands) It was enough to make me feel ill. This happened more times than I could count and it would drive me insane. I never said anything, although I tried to tell Jay, but he just ignored me.

One day particularly stands out for me. She was having one of her episodes on the couch as mentioned above and then got up to take the spaghetti off the stove. I was sitting at the breakfast bar watching all of this and feeling quite ill. I’d seen her make pasta before and I knew what was coming. I knew better than to confront her because whenever I did, because she couldn’t stand up to me (get into a intellectual debate) she would pick on my 4 year old instead, so I would avoid confrontation with her at any cost. But I knew she was about to toss that spaghetti with those hands and I was starving and couldn’t refuse dinner on that particular night. So of course as her hands went for the spaghetti I blurted out ‘Sorry, but aren’t you going to wash your hands first?’ Without turning around, she ran her fingers through the food, a little water running over them onto the spaghetti and replied ‘Well, now I am washing them’

I didn’t have dinner that evening.

When my daughter got home, she started picking on her straight away. (After all, I had the nerve to tell her she was doing something wrong, and she was going to show me) She does it by picking on little things that my daughter does ‘don’t you brush your hair’, ‘dont you tidy your house’ (playhouse) etc. etc. etc.

I spoke to Jay about it when he got home, but he told me just to leave it and ignore her. It doesn’t matter if I tell him it’s having a negative effect on our daughter, he’s more concerned with what his mother thinks.

to be continued…