“Remember, I have a big house with a lot of room. You'd have your own room and plenty of space. You're both welcome anytime.”
It has felt as though I have a bottleneck of thoughts and emotions inside. The past few weeks have been turbulent. I write about a situation best when it is close to the surface, when it is happening now and is in sharp focus. But two issues have been warring as to which should be purged next. And both have taken turns one after the other as the current issue, sometimes occupying the same space simultaneously. A sort of paralysis has resulted where I haven't been able to write and so I've continued on without the relief that writing down these experiences sometimes grants.
I've started writing and then stopped multiple times over the last few weeks. Sometimes I've just wanted to scream.
I will try again now.
The airline changed the plane type for the long haul flight we were taking. Overall, we had taken that leg 4 times (2 round trips) and even in economy, the experience had been glorious.
No longer.
Perhaps it was the airline attempting to recover from decreased revenue brought on by the pandemic. Whatever the reason, leg room had diminished and there were no more “gaspers” above the seats. We were forewarned about the latter, so my husband found and purchased a portable fan for me before our departure. Without it, the lack of a breeze and any kind of air flow would have driven me out of my mind.
At about an hour and a half, my husband began to experience a burning sensation in his legs. The man is in shape and this did not happen during our previous flights. He had to get up and walk up and down the aisle frequently to alleviate the feeling.
I shifted over and over again in my seat to find positions that were still not comfortable.
We had made sure to book this airline because of our previous positive experiences. We were disappointed.
When we finally arrived back in the U.S., my legs were killing me. For the next few months, my left knee bothered me and made climbing stairs or climbing out of a car a literal pain. The only remedy for it was simply staying off of it.
In all of our previous homes, everything was on one level. At my husband's mother's house, the bedroom we would be staying in was upstairs.
We had no income. We weren't sure how much my husband's last paycheck would be or whether it would be a simple matter of withdrawing it from an ATM using his foreign bank debit card.
We had our storage space to pay for and a dwindling amount of funds to pay for it. No one in his family could or would help. We had a limited amount of time. If our money ran out, would our storage unit end up on a trashy reality program where people bid on the remaining items that connected me to my childhood and mother?
These were the thoughts that went through my mind.
It was imperative that we hit the ground running. We'd agreed that within 3 months, we would be out of his mother's house and back in our own home. We hoped to be working remotely but my husband would look for in person employment as well. Once we had income once more, we would replenish our savings. We would recover our health, our financial independence and in a couple of years go abroad again, wiser and more careful.
That's what we agreed to.
It started nearly immediately.
Now that my husband was “back,” his mother wanted him to visit this family member or that. Reasonable.
He just had to go to his niece's softball games (his youngest brother's daughter) two to three times a week. Less reasonable.
During the frequent times the same brother dropped this niece and nephew at grandma's and disappeared, my husband was summoned urgently to play with them, each and every time.
We currently have all the children we want right now. And that amount is 0. We are not the babysitters when his brother and his brother's wife want to pretend they don't have kids. We have our own affairs to attend to.
My husband's mother “needed” him to spray pesticides around the perimeter of the house.
She wanted him to try to go up into the crawl space in the ceiling for some outlandish reason. That was not happening.
Could he check the leak in the downstairs toilet.
The water from the dishwasher was backing up into the sink or spilling out of the front of dishwasher. The lightbulb in the fridge has gone out. The microwave door fell off.
She needed him the pick pears from the pear tree in the front yard, otherwise hornets and wasps would increase. That ended up being handled by neighbors who wanted free pears and the lawncare company. Hardly an emergency.
She needed him to help her with her taxes because she believed she might owe the IRS (this is part of the other story that's been warring with this one). The grass needed mowing. The house needed pressure washing.
It was an endless litany of items she wanted him to do or items she hadn't gotten around to doing yet and needed to bring them up every single day.
Every item was urgent.
It was the middle of the month when we returned. We slept a lot. But by the start of the next month, we began to feel some semblance of ourselves again.
That was the moment to begin job-hunting, rebuilding our savings, and securing our way out of his mother's house.
His mother repeatedly asked us what our plans were. We kept our aims close to the chest and responded with vague answers. Her history was not one of encouragement and we did not need a negative pall hanging over our efforts.
However, in the early days of our time here, we considered multiple options. Perhaps the past was the past. My husband's mother may prove more supportive than she once was. People change. And this environment could be just what we needed to boost our efforts towards being financially and location-independent. Without having to worry about rent or having to clock in to a 9-5, all of our energy could be dedicated to this goal.
This notion was entertained for maybe two weeks.
When we finally did share our intention to move to a nearby city which would have more opportunities and amenities we were accustomed to, a sour expression spread across her face and her voice dropped. “You both like to live rough huh?”
When she returned home from work and found us working in the living room, what I can only describe as an expression of panic crossed my husband's mother's face.
My husband and I sat beside each other, looking at our laptops, each perusing job listings and sending out resumes and applications. The television was set to one favorite program or another, playing in the background, the rest of the house quiet as we focused.
Enter my husband's mother.
She sat in a free chair but couldn't seem to make eye contact with me. Her eyes often shifted up and away, rolling anywhere except my face and eyes when she initiated conversation.
Then the rambling began. Cycling between telling us we should slow down and not move so fast, denigrating our time abroad, going on about house prices in the area, telling my husband he should accept any job even if it's a janitor's position, speaking about deranged events that occurred at her job, regurgitating the latest political drivel she'd binged from the internet.
When we'd inevitably grow tired and quiet, attempting to focus on our work once more, she would continue to talk almost unabated. Short of pausing to ask a question and going “huh? huh? huh?” over and over until some sort of response was given.
If, on the off chance, she ran out of things to say, she'd pull out her cell phone and play clips from YouTube, Facebook or Instagram at the highest volume, cackling loudly and then waving her phone at us going “look look!”
My husband would have to repeatedly tell her the volume was too loud and that we were working. I did not appreciate having to nudge him to do this more than once.
Eventually, she would trundle down to the den, where she would raise the volume of the den television so loud that it seemed as though that television was playing in the living room, and higher than the moderate volume the living room television was playing at.
The den is not a basement room but rather is the house's master bedroom at ground level that is being used as a den. The living room and kitchen are 3 – 4 steps above it. If my husband closed to den door, his mother would open it, walk into the living room/kitchen area, do absolutely nothing, and then return to the den leaving the den door open.
We took to pausing whatever was on the living room television and sitting quietly nodding without input as she talked in the afternoon. Annoyed, she would slam cabinet doors, room doors, and bang pots and pans while we were working as we simply let the silence speak for itself that she was interrupting us and doing so rudely.
In the beginning, I avoided going up and down the stairs very often to give my knee and leg a chance to heal post-flight. My husband's mother seemed bothered by this choice and would ask skeptical questions as to the state of my knee.
Additionally, handling that time of the month, in a stranger's house, was something I wished to keep private, so during those times I also kept to myself in the bedroom in which we are staying.
My husband's mother would ask my husband repeatedly “Is she ok?” and “Is everything ok?” and “Can I see her??”
Her bedroom is across from the bedroom we are staying in. Once, she stood in the hallway between the two bedrooms' door, speaking to someone loudly on her cell phone so it could be heard through the door “Yes, I haven't seen or heard her for the past week.”
On more than one occasion, without waiting for a “come in,” my husband's mother burst into the bedroom, while I was alone and in a state of undress. I had not thought it would be necessary to lock the door to the room we slept in if the door was closed.
I started locking the door without fail. And I only shower when she's at work.
Edit 1: The television in the living room showed pictures my husband's mother had taken on her cell phone. One day, she exclaims to me “Look, look! It's you!” pointing towards the television. I looked to see pictures of me in home clothes, without a bra. I stated plainly, I do not take pictures of myself while in a state of undress indoors. “Oh, I don't share them with anyone.”
The invasion of privacy and disrespect was off the charts. I spoke to my husband who then spoke to her. I could hear her yelling at him that it wasn't “normal” not to take pictures of others and snarkily that “I better be careful so I don't offend anyone again.”
We were able to withdraw my husband's final paycheck after some difficulty involving an exorbitant international fee the foreign bank imposed, which caused the withdrawal to be declined initially and we had to wait a few days to try again.
My husband was able to get a part-time position, which enabled us to pay for our storage space and buy our own groceries.
My husband's mother's response to him getting this job? She acted as though someone had died for the entire afternoon of his first day. “Well, I guess he has to work. I guess he needs to have money.”
I guess that's a horrible thing. Better for us to be beggars who she can parade around as the sad ones she had to rescue from their own poor life choices. Better for us not to have any agency, lest she be unable to scrutinize, dictate and control our every breath.
As more time passed, my husband's mother began to sleep in the living room on the weekends. Where we had been able to come down mid-afternoon and relax together, his mother was now camping, blanket and all, in the living room from midnight Friday night until Monday morning right before she left for work. The television watched her sleep and when the eco setting turned it off, she would turn it back on and go back to sleep.
It was preferable to stay upstairs than to interact with that behavior in any fashion.
When she did use her bedroom, she started playing her television loud enough to be heard in the bedroom we're sleeping in at all hours of the night.
Edit 2: My husband's mother did not like opening windows or blinds. The living room was in a perpetual state of darkness unless my husband and I were down there. The air in the house was stagnant unless we opened the windows to let a breeze in. She would make comments like “You guys really like fresh air huh.”
She preferred to run the A/C even if the temperature outside was moderate. In other words, if she was hot, she would turn on the A/C even if it was 65 °F or less outside. Her electric bill was a level I didn't think was possible for a small residence. She complained of hot flashes yet seemed oblivious when the vents were closed when she had turned on the A/C. And when it became as cold outside as the temperature she had been setting the A/C, suddenly she was cold and needed heat at a higher temperature than she had set the cold air on the A/C prior. It became obvious that it had nothing to do with the house temperature and everything to do with sending a message that she was entitled to be as irresponsible with her finances as she'd like while still expecting us to help her get her bills under control.
Last week was Thanksgiving in the United States.
My husband's mother took two weeks off of work. Together with her youngest adult son, she bought a flight to visit her middle adult son in another state during the second week during Thanksgiving. It was announced that her youngest son would be driving her to an airport an hour and half away as well as picking her up when she returned.
We were looking forward to it. A week without this oppressive presence and time to enjoy our successes and progress towards our goals as well as relax.
The first week was interminable. As was to be expected as this point.
Then suddenly she needed to ask my husband a question. Her youngest son had a “previous engagement” and could not drive her to the airport. Could he drive her?
A likely story given she had said he was driving her and they had arranged the plane tickets and him driving her to and fro together.
Instead of us being able to enjoy some freedom immediately, my husband was to be saddled with ferrying her and being on the road for 3 hours.
I decided to go. Sat in the seat beside him as he drove. She didn't seem pleased. The irony made me smile.
As we prepared for her departure the following day, suddenly she needed my husband to log in to her IRS and make her monthly back taxes payment while she was away, even though she had been told unequivocally in July that neither him nor I were involved in any aspect of her finances any longer and it was her responsibility to handle every bill and every account and debt she had in her name.
It was infuriating to me, that though my husband and I had agreed to this path, he could not say definitively in the moment “no, as we discussed before, your finances are completely your responsibility.”
He ended up sitting with her before her trip so she could see that she could schedule her payment before she left. Once again the conversation ended with “this is the final time.” However this has not been the first time of “I just need help just this one time.”
Next, she needed him to get her tires rotated while she was away. Which was responded to with a more firm “you can handle that when you return.” She had every opportunity to do this while she was sitting at home for her first week off, yet she did not.
When it was time for my husband's mother to return from her trip, surprise of surprises, again, suddenly her youngest son couldn't pick her up from the airport. He was going to be “out of town.” Could my husband go and get her?
This time the answer was a decisive no. Work was used as the excuse.
My husband's brother told him he would have to “figure something out.” The “solution” was that he drove down to the airport and left a car for my husband's mother to drive back when she landed. She drove it back to the house and arrived at night.
For someone who was going to be “out of town,” it seemed unbelievable that he had the time to drive to leave a car at the airport, but could not pick up his mother when she flew back in only a few hours later.
Even that one week off did not offer much relief or room to exhale due to these shenanigans.
We'd also heard back from one job prospect post interview and it was one of those “we regret to tell you we went with another candidate.” That set a sad tone for the week. Dashing hopes of possibly, by some miracle, being able to move out of here during the first week of December, saved by a new job.
I made a couple hundred dollars more than I had in October online. Not enough to live on. It will take time.
But it is hard to take any joy from these steps forward.
I hate it here.
Entry # 5
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