Argh, she's coming back to town

[claudiaduffy]

Summary of current status: 70-year-old uBPDmil, always abusive but mostly unchallenged in it, lost her husband 1 week before her son and I married in late 2013. A couple of months and some really really really crazed behavior (resulting in a couple of months worth of professional attention) later, she left the home my husband owns (he and I live in an apartment complex elsewhere) and "moved" to Colorado. While she was there, my husband officially cut all ties with her, sent her a loud-and-clear letter outlining his boundaries, only leaving open the avenue of USPostal mail if she needed to contact us for any business reasons. We put her entire houseful of stuff (that she hadn't taken to Colorado) into storage here in our state and sent her info so she could do with it as she wished. We put the house up on the market.

Fast forward through 2014: She continued sending emails (which we filter) and tried contacting us through other people (in a manner that caused the bishop of our parish, who fielded a lot of her harassment, to recommend we alert the police about her threats.) She moved to another state, just a couple of hours from us, and got married to someone there. She continues to send us emails, packages, cards, et cetera. She's tried reaching us through my own uBPDmom. There is a complete lack of touch with emotional reality. We have not contacted her in over a year for any reason, and we do not intend to.

Occasionally I check my filtered messages just so I can get a heads-up if she says she's coming to see us. Today, that's the email I saw. She and her husband are planning to come to our town after Easter, to liquidate the stuff in her storage unit, and to visit one of his grown sons who lives within 20 minutes of us (we've never met her husband or any of his family.) In this brief email, she says we need to meet this brother-in-law, and that we need to have lunch with her and her husband.

We need to do nothing of the sort, obviously. Still, both my husband and I are struggling not to fear the possibility that she will just show up at our doorstep. It IS a gated apartment complex - not difficult to follow someone in, though MIL might not think to try it (several of her emails once upon a time bewailed how she was locked out of our lives by those gates). And we're not actually afraid of any power she thinks she has over us. We're just... .still not healed enough over the whole experience to be able to stomach the idea of just having to deal with an attempt to break into our world again. If she knocks on our door, we will not let her in. We are willing and able to call the police if things escalate past that.

Sigh. We're actually planning on moving when our lease is up, here - looking forward to the day when she no longer has access to our physical address.

Until then I will just keep on telling my fear that I thank it for its pains but that I don't need it to rule my mind.

[sarahsoon]

I know that feeling. My NC uBPD brother just moved to my town, and I have this constant nagging fear in the back of my head that I'm going to run into him somewhere, or worse he'll just show up at my door. Luckily I'm not the target of the majority of his issues, but he focuses on my parents who live somewhat nearby to my house, so there's a chance I'd see him in that kind of situation too.

Is it possible for you all to just be gone that weekend? Maybe you need a weekend away somewhere, or you could just go stay with friends or rent a hotel room in town for the night. That way if she shows up you don't even have to see her. I couldn't tell if you're fully NC with her or maybe do send some messages to her, but if you do you could use the "so sorry, we'll be gone" reason too. If you fear violence, it may also be good to alert the police ahead of time and also see if they can do a "drive-through" in your neighborhood a couple times that day, whether or not you're at home. My neighbor did this when she suspected her abusive ex may have been lurking around, so every day for a week or two we had a cop make the loop on our street, and it made her feel a little bit better.

[claudiaduffy]

Yeah, we're thinking through some of those options. She and her husband are retirees and they didn't give us a specific date (just "after Easter", so there's no guarantee it'll be a weekend. And, actually, with her track record of saying she's definitely going to do something and then not really doing it, who knows if it'll be this month or six months from now when they finally come to liquidate the storage unit?

We're deciding to just not obsess/worry about it.

[Kwamina]

Hi claudiaduffy

A few days have past since you posted this. How are you feeling now?

Fast forward through 2014: She continued sending emails (which we filter) and tried contacting us through other people (in a manner that caused the bishop of our parish, who fielded a lot of her harassment, to recommend we alert the police about her threats.)

This says a lot that it was even clear to someone outside the family that there'is something seriously wrong with your MIL's behavior. What did she threaten to do that caused the bishop to recommend alerting the police?

We're deciding to just not obsess/worry about it.

That sounds like a good approach, especially considering the pattern you identify in her past behavior of saying she's gonna do something but then not actually following through on it. Besides that, you can't control what she does anyway but can only control your own behavior and prepare yourself as best you can for dealing with her. Have you checked any of her e-mails again since you posted this? Filtering her e-mails seems like a very wise thing to, also considering the strong emotional reaction reading her e-mails still might cause you.

[claudiaduffy]

Hi claudiaduffy

A few days have past since you posted this. How are you feeling now?

We are pretty stable on this front, though between this and the totally unrelated but uncomfortable news that my own uBPDmom's cancer is back after being gone for a decade, I find myself a little more daydream-y than usual. Which happens when I'm processing things I don't want to process.

Fast forward through 2014: She continued sending emails (which we filter) and tried contacting us through other people (in a manner that caused the bishop of our parish, who fielded a lot of her harassment, to recommend we alert the police about her threats.)

This says a lot that it was even clear to someone outside the family that there'is something seriously wrong with your MIL's behavior. What did she threaten to do that caused the bishop to recommend alerting the police?

Oh, she wrote to dozens of people in the church and community and claimed all sorts of outrageous things about the "cult" that I had come from and how I had "brainwashed" her son, coupled with a gamut of threats of how I was going to be punished by God, and a few statements along the lines of how she should hire someone to "take care of" me. We did alert the police, but there wasn't anything solid enough to actually warrant a restraining order or anything; they opened a file on her and we were ready to add to it if she showed up or did anything worse than write crazy emails.

We're deciding to just not obsess/worry about it.

That sounds like a good approach, especially considering the pattern you identify in her past behavior of saying she's gonna do something but then not actually following through on it. Besides that, you can't control what she does anyway but can only control your own behavior and prepare yourself as best you can for dealing with her. Have you checked any of her e-mails again since you posted this? Filtering her e-mails seems like a very wise thing to, also considering the strong emotional reaction reading her e-mails still might cause you.

She hasn't written me since then except to send me random recipes she found online. Getting emails from her does cause strong emotional reactions from me (even when I don't read them; the only reason I read that particular one was because the first line of it said they were coming to town), but I'm finding that I'm quicker to recover from the emotional backlash than I was even 7-8 months ago. Progress! Yay!

[Kwamina]

Hi again claudiaduffy

We are pretty stable on this front, though between this and the totally unrelated but uncomfortable news that my own uBPDmom's cancer is back after being gone for a decade, I find myself a little more daydream-y than usual. Which happens when I'm processing things I don't want to process.

I am very sorry to hear this about your mother. I know she made your childhood very difficult for you, but since she's still your mother I  definitely understand why this would affect you the way it has. Processing or accepting news like this isn't easy but I am glad that in spite all of this, you still feel pretty stable.

How did your mother react to the news? What is her prognosis?

Oh, she wrote to dozens of people in the church and community and claimed all sorts of outrageous things about the "cult" that I had come from and how I had "brainwashed" her son, coupled with a gamut of threats of how I was going to be punished by God, and a few statements along the lines of how she should hire someone to "take care of" me. We did alert the police, but there wasn't anything solid enough to actually warrant a restraining order or anything; they opened a file on her and we were ready to add to it if she showed up or did anything worse than write crazy emails.

Very unsettling to hear one's own mother say something like this  Regardless of whether she really meant it or not, I think it was a good thing that you alerted the police because I find this kind of behavior absolutely unacceptable.

I'm finding that I'm quicker to recover from the emotional backlash than I was even 7-8 months ago. Progress! Yay!

Hooray for progress!

[claudiaduffy]

Hi, Kwamina! Thanks for your continuing questions - helping me process stuff well here. 

We are pretty stable on this front, though between this and the totally unrelated but uncomfortable news that my own uBPDmom's cancer is back after being gone for a decade, I find myself a little more daydream-y than usual. Which happens when I'm processing things I don't want to process.

I am very sorry to hear this about your mother. I know she made your childhood very difficult for you, but since she's still your mother I  definitely understand why this would affect you the way it has. Processing or accepting news like this isn't easy but I am glad that in spite all of this, you still feel pretty stable.

How did your mother react to the news? What is her prognosis?

She doesn't have a firm prognosis yet; the tumor is in a place that is pressing on her spine and needs to be addressed immediately, so her radiation begins this week, even as they are doing further tests to determine the care course.

Mom's reaction to it, as far as I've observed, was to first call me up with the bad, sad news, and begin telling me how it is so much harder this time than last time because she is now "all alone" (since her three kids and husband no longer live with her.) Fair enough. When I refused to enter into that conversation, she got more businesslike on our next phone call, and asked me to be the executor of her will (she's never gotten one together before). We had a decent convo that time, though she did begin to tell me the reasons she wanted me as executor - "I don't want your dad handling the house selling, he'd just take the profits and use them on drugs and booze", "I want your sister to have most of the money [note: I am not sure there will be much/any money to come out of this; she only recently paid off the second mortgage on the house and is who knows how many years from paying off the first - and the house is not in good shape] because she isn't married and needs it most." I steered her away from discussing the will ahead of time, and she didn't blow up about it.

I had an interesting convo with a good friend this morning, who asked me how I was feeling about my mom. I haven't really been feeling much of anything, other than a generic sadness that cancer strikes anyone, and a hope that whether she dies or heals she doesn't have to suffer horribly, and of course a level of irritation that I have to be involved at all. But I don't feel any very strong emotions about it except the one that drives me not to get sucked in by guilting-attempts.

My friend said, "you've spent all this time [the past several years since I learned about BPD] already going through the process of grieving the kind of mother you have and the hope of having a different one--so you've kind of already processed the loss. Which I think is what most kids are typically processing when their parents have cancer---I could lose my parent, how do I feel about that? but before you already "lost" her and have moved into this other realm." I think that was a completely accurate, and helpful, statement.

Oh, she wrote to dozens of people in the church and community and claimed all sorts of outrageous things about the "cult" that I had come from and how I had "brainwashed" her son, coupled with a gamut of threats of how I was going to be punished by God, and a few statements along the lines of how she should hire someone to "take care of" me. We did alert the police, but there wasn't anything solid enough to actually warrant a restraining order or anything; they opened a file on her and we were ready to add to it if she showed up or did anything worse than write crazy emails.

Very unsettling to hear one's own mother say something like this  Regardless of whether she really meant it or not, I think it was a good thing that you alerted the police because I find this kind of behavior absolutely unacceptable.

This was my mother-in-law, not my mom. But yes. It was a true last-straw for my husband to see her saying such things so publicly. He handled all the police interaction - really good of him.