Loyalties torn.
Find a Conversation
| Wed, 07-27-2005 - 9:03am |
I'm in a real jam. My fiance and I rent the bottom half of a house from his mother. We're planning on moving out in about two months as he just got a raise and as soon as we can get some money together we should be able to afford something better. I'm just not sure I can wait two months.
When he and I first moved in his mother pretty much ignored us, as he told me she would if we just avoided her, but lately she's become extremely harassing. She's a single woman and had my fiance shortly after dropping out of high school. He and I are both in our mid twenties but she has two other smaller children by two other men. She's an alcoholic and used to beat the sh*t out of my fiance when he was a child. I guess she's mellowed out a bit as she's aged because she never touches her younger children but you can imagine the type of individual she is.
She drinks and gambles away all of her money and so lately she's been harassing us for extra money for this or that. For example: she's tried telling us that we are using too much water and it's costing her too much - but the house has a well - she doesn't pay for the water. She's always telling one of us that we need to run to the store to get this or that for her - which we normally do because usually it's something for the kids. God knows that they don't get well taken care of. (Ages 7 and 13 - she leaves them alone all day and sometimes the night and there's never a regular supply of groceries in their house) Well last night his mother came home from the bar completely wasted and started harassing my fiance. First she started demanding our rent check a week and a half early and then tried to give him a large grocery list to go buy for her. He refused to go buy a load of groceries for her but after continued harassment he did finally go buy the kids a pizza because she said she was too "tired" (actually, drunk) to cook and she was not about to let ME care for HER kids. Then he and I left and just drove around a while to avoid further confrontation.
Part of the feeling of futility is that I know that she's lied in the past to get out of legal problems and it's worked for her. She's been reported by her neighbors for child abuse/neglect and that's always disappeared. One of the things that angers me the most is her drunk driving. I know that 4 to 6 days/nights a week she gets completely wasted at the bar and then drives about 10 miles home. About a month ago one of my cousins was killed by a drunk driver her age. I desperately want to just sit across the street from the bar she always drinks at some evening and call the police to report her car as a DUI as she leaves but my fiance has begged me not to do anything like that until after we move out.
He has several reasons for asking this. First, he's afraid that she'll get house arrest. Besides just being there all day every day to bother us that will mean she'll lose her job and not pay the mortgage which would leave ALL of us homeless. The other thing complicating this issue is that he works as a guard for the local correction facility. State law requires that if anyone he knows gets any kind of sentence there he is not allowed to have contact of any kind for two months after their release.
Right now at work he's on a rotating shift and for the past two weeks (and next 6 weeks) he's on third shift. I work during the day and so I sleep while he's at work. For the last couple of nights he's been at work she will start stomping up and down the stairs down to our part of the house and pacing outside our bedroom door while I try to sleep. That's one door I'm always sure to lock. As soon as he leaves for the evening I lock myself in there and don't come out. Last weekend she bumped me - you know the "deliberate but I'll try to make it look like an accident" shoulder shove. Since then I've gone out of my way to never get anywhere near her. My fiance has told me that I really have nothing major to be worried about and that if she ever did try to hurt either of us then he'd simply cuff her and have her arrested but this woman is really starting to make me nervous. She's obviously not a well balanced individual. If there was a gun in the house, I'd be sleeping in my car before going back there but I'm just not sure what to do. Any advice that anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
| Wed, 07-27-2005 - 8:23pm |
