Crazy Train

I'm standing at the station of the crazy train. My MIL who requires so much explanantion is suddenly (after 4 years) concerned that she doesn't have a place in her son's family. My suspicion is that she has finally figured out that I will not engage in her mind games, that I will turn around, shut down, leave altogether and take my daughter (her "granddaughter" by biology but not anything else) with me. She is also about to lose the last foothold she has into our lives, the house she and my partner jointly bought.

I finally said F-it, in the midst of the falling real estate values, in spite of it having been my daughter's home for her whole short life, regardless of loving the town and the neighborhood and getting to say I live on an island, I finally said, let's GO! Over the last year my partner's mother has engaged in the most manipulative emotional blackmail and I just couldn't take it any more. She's financially set, living in a completely paid for multi-million dollar home, stocks, rental units, social security and a pension. She decided that she wanted her "half" of the equity in the place we were living in. The place that, almost a decade ago, (before I entered the scene) she and her son shared a downpayment on. Since that day, she hasn't paid another penny. Most unfortunately she is on title as a joint tenant. And since her original demand last year she's vacillated between demanding "her half" and telling my partner that she plans to put her share into a family trust and it would go to him upon her demise (which couldn't happen soon enough says the bitter woman I'm becoming). Someone had to stop the madness.

Maybe she fears losing her baby boy. She won't. He's incredibly forgiving and tolerant. I'm not.

What she should have gotten a whiff of is that I came from crazy, lived with and survived crazy, rejected crazy in my own mother, with whom I have chosen to not have a relationship. She's never met her granddaughter, I haven't seen her in 20 years, haven't spoken to her in longer than that. She was physically and emotionally abusive and when I escaped I made the decision to not go back. As a result of my upbringing, I have an acute aversion to crazy and drama queens. My partner's mother is both.