Ok. It was first suggested to me by my psychiatrist that K, my SO’s mom, may be borderline.
I suffer from depression, and my psychiatrist has been treating me for about 9 years, following a bout of post-partum depression.
The behavior I described was this - for several months last summer I tried to create some space from K. Meaning I to develop a household pattern where I could come and go without her insisting I spend a great deal of time with her, listening to her talk about her life.
K’s husband has died suddenly six months earlier - December, 2017. I am actually the person who found him, collapsed in the kitchen. I was picking him up to take him to the airport to join K for their big family Christmas. At the time I didn’t live here in the house, but I had become very close with D and K and spent a lot of time here, as did my kids.
Fast forward to summer 2018, my kids and I move in, and my sense at the time is that this is a healthy choice for everyone. S (my SO) and I love each other.
But pretty quickly I started to feel like K was silently demanding a lot of my attention. I would come home from work and she’d be on the porch waiting for me, heavy with the expectation that I would pay attention to her. I need a lot of alone time to recharge, so I started avoiding her at all costs.
There was a lot of anger from her for this. And a lot of trying to get me not to leave the house, even standing in front of the door.
By fall I asked S to speak to her to try to get her to give me space. My kids and I went away for the weekend and he had a conversation with her. Two days after we got back, when my kids were at school and I was trying to do some laundry, she planted herself right outside the laundry room and asked me to look at some paint color for a storage room. I politely told her I was fine with anything, whatever she and S wanted was fine with me, and said please touch base with S about it.
K started screaming at me and sobbing. Screeching “why are you doing this ... why won’t you talk to me ... I’m just trying to show you this paint color so I can give you your spaaaace”
I just backed away, arms full of folded laundry, and told her K, please stop, I am just trying to put my boys’ laundry away. She kept following me, stopping short of my boys’ bedroom, screaming at me. I said, K, I need you to leave. And she did. This was at about 10:30 in the morning.
I spoke to S and told him all this. I was shaking. As I recall I hid in my boys room and slept and cried - but I’m not sure.
I do know that two more episodes very much like that happened later that same evening. By then S was home. My kids and his kids were not. S left the house
7, 7:30 for his son’s hockey practice. K came at me screaming again minutes after S left. I can’t even remember the details of this part. But I do remember the details of the last time she came at me that evening.
It was later, 10:30 maybe. I thought I was safe because she’s usually in bed
then, and because S’s 10 year old son B had had come home with S after his practice. B was up in his room asleep.
I went downstairs to try to relax and unwind in front of the tv in S’s man cave space. This is supposed to be a designated space just for him/us.
K came storming down and sat right on the other end of the couch where I was, arms crossed, demanding to know why I didn’t love her. Mind you - my relationship with S andhis family was only a year old. I literally met K for the first time in June 2017 ~ I was very quickly folded into the family.
I got up, stood at the doorway, and said I do love you K, I really do. She just sharply said back, arms tightly crossed across her chest, no you don’t!. I tried assuring her I did live her, from my post against the door frame, and then I followed up saying something like but I can’t tolerate this behavior from you and I’m leaving now.
I turned and started up stairs and I heard her charge up behind me, yelling at me. She followed me all through the house screaming at me, and I just kept moving, saying over my shoulder, “knock it off K”. She followed me all the way up to my bedroom screaming, waking B up in the process. Poor kid was standing in the hallway asking what’s going on. S was up and in the hallway too - apparently he had been in the shower when his mom came down after me.
I said to B reassuringly, or tried to make it reassuring, “ It’s just delayed grief over D. Grandma’s having delayed grief”
With the two of them out in the hallway, her son and grandson, K stormed by and went up to her own room on the third floor. S went into his son’s room to soothe him back to sleep. I crawled under the covers. K, directly above all three of us, proceeded to storm around her room for a very long time. It felt like an hour, hour and a half, and I think it was at least a very substantial amount of time, even if it may not have been that long. It sounded like she was throwing furniture up there. When S came back to bed we just lay there listening to it. He said he was sorry. I asked if anything like this had happened before. He said never this bad.
The next day K acted like nothing had happened. No apology. No mention of anything. Like nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. I did not say anything because at this point I was terrified of her.
I happened to already have a psychiatrist appointment the next day, so I relayed everything that happened. Dr. R told me she couldn’t diagnose because K isn’t her patient, isn’t there in front of her, but that the behavior I described sounded like behavior of a person suffering from borderline personality disorder.
This immediately rang a bell with me, as both D and K had mentioned to me their belief that K’s mom had BPD. K had also confided in me - back when I thought we were close and I enjoyed intimacy with her - that she thinks S’s ex wife has BPD. When I arrived on the scene of this family, the entire household was living in opposition to S’s ex, what had she done that day, that week, what awful thing had she done in the past, what would she do in the future.
S’s ex is very very difficult, no doubt. But since I have bern around she no longer constantly lashes out at S and is no longer a constant focus of conversation and alarm day in and day out like it was.
I have good mental health caregivers, an excellent therapist, who knew D. (D was wonderful, a therapist himself. Big and gentle and devoted to K’s every need).
I have friends who are conversant in real talk - who validate me and want to see me and my kids happy and healthy and thriving.
This situation is so difficult though, I thought I could use another resource, another outlet, so I joined this board.
Tgank you.
