The Manx Den

Current Mood: Arg! & OMG

God, ten minutes ago an in-law stopped by our front door, asking where his girlfriend’s daughter and husband were. I am so f’ing pissed at the moment that all that keeps going through my head is what I want to say to him and his girlfriend. I feel like I could release such a tirade that I’d be on their blacklist for the rest of my life. >:OThe story sorta develops like this: My husband’s brother is one of those eternal bachelor types, due to some trauma with loosing sight in his left eye back in high school. He got married a year and a half ago to a girl from the Ukraine, who had family issues of her own. She was born with epilepsy, and her mother ended up dumping her in her grandparents’ hands for some reason or another. I guess she didn’t want to deal with the responsibilities of it all.So the epileptic daughter is called Emily, and she spent the first 25 years of her life stuck with her grandparents in a backwater town,m was not allowed to go to school or do any housework, and her mother in the meanwhile just bounced from place to place and boyfriend to boyfriend with different jobs. China, Russia, Germany, etc, and now she lives semi-permanently in west Denmark near the Atlantic with her current beau. Emily’s first foray out of the Ukraine in her adult life was to meet my husband’s brother, Bob. Apparently they hooked up over some christian dating site, and she came up here with a girl’s soccer team or something. They got married a year after getting acquainted, and she’s lived in town ever since. She got a little later unexpectedly pregnant due to her epilepsy medication conflicting with birth control pills, and here in the first week of august she gave birth. Her mother was down to help them move into a new place, and while there, the mother lorded it over the house, decorating the rooms according to her own tastes, and hovering over the baby whenever it cried. She basically only ever handed it over to Emily when it needed nursing. When Emily’s doctor heard how her mother’s behavior and the stress of it sent Emily even deeper down into a post-partum depression, he told Emily’s husband, Bob, that she should not come to visit them any more.Of course, once told that she should not visit any more, the mother went into all the twists and turns of some bastardized female logic to spread blame. She said she hated Bob, and that Emily had married the wrong man, and that she and her boyfriend would take the baby and raise it and she’d find Emily a new boyfriend, and everything…And excuse me, but I feel like really, REALLY cussing out that woman right now >:O…Anyways, Bob overreacted and has been calling my husband nearly every day with this or that worry and ‘what should I do, they are going to kidnap my family’ and everything.. He got really depressed over the whole issue, and in his funk didn’t start loving his baby, and thought his wife felt the same way, and so they had my mother-in-law (Bob and my husband’s mother) taking care of the newborn because supposedly Emily couldn’t do it any more…With the doctors involved and everything up in arms, the doctor in charge of the baby’s welfare said that this was a very bad situation for the new baby, and said that they should consider putting her in welfare. Bob asked us if we would take care of her or adopt her, since they had only a day to mull over what the doctors suggested – and of course we said we would be willing to step in for the baby. We want children anyways.But after reading the laws, my husband pointed out that we couldn’t take the fostering position – we are both legally disabled, and along other factors, we are unsuitable for it. So now Bob and -Emily’s first daughter is in foster care, outside of the family, and Emily’s mother and her boyfriend are still involved in the mess.They drove over here and tried to get ahold of Emily either to talk or take her to their place – I don’t know which. When they couldn’t get into Bob and Emily’s place or find out where they were staying, they drove up here to try and ask my hubby where Bob and Emily were. Of course hubby didn’t tell them anything – he was very calm and adamant about not spreading information to the inlaws. After about 10 minutes of talking and not getting anywhere, the mother’s boyfriend left our doorstop, and they drove away. He lied about being invited up here by Emily, and right now.. Uggh! I was lying on the couch and had to restrain myself from yelling at the boyfriend.Basically Emily has gotten married and had her first child, all on her own, and is just now building up her own life, after being stopped ever from experiencing anything for herself, and her mother still wants to control her life.I’ve already had it out with my mother about all this sort of stuff, and I don’t agonize over my relationship with her in bed any more.. but this just brought back all the anger, frustration and growling back, right away….And thank goodness for blogs, they give me a chance to swipe my feelings onto words and out of my head.. I know this counts as a rant, and I’m sorry all you readers end up slogging through my issues…. but you know what? if you have one of these manipulative, controlling people in your life, just say no. Put up the wall, close the door, refuse further contact. Make your statements clear, and fight the short-term battle to keep your personal ground. They don’t know the meaning of personal boundaries, and teaching them where yours are.. well, that’s called tough love.Tough love, and god bless you Cheryl for teaching me about it.(Cheryl’s my stepmom)Emily and Bob are not their real names, but I think they want their privacy.