That house, then, was a trailer that we bought on my neighbor's land, which belonged to her mother. Possibly the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life was moving here. Incredibly foolish on my part because I already saw and understood that she was a control freak who desired to have power over my husband.
The three years we spent there were the worst, most miserable, and most absurd times of my life due to everything I had to go through, but it was also the beginning of my fightback. That was the moment I started speaking up and decided to stop putting up with this nonsense!
The tipping point came when my neighbor decided that, simply by virtue of our shared residence, she would adopt a maternal role toward my children. She would ask them not to listen to us and that they didn't have to, telling them that we were going to do things that I had made it clear we weren't going to do. Things that I had told them they couldn't have, she would give them. For example, my daughter's teeth have silver caps on them. Despite the dentist's explicit warning that she shouldn't eat sticky foods, she continued to do so with my neighbor.
I consider myself to be an amazing mother, so it irritated me that someone was attempting to take away my title and play mother to my kids. I have no negative behaviors that detract from them. I essentially gave them my entire existence, and I would be damned if she ever achieved anything beyond her title.
She would act like their mom at school and challenge the teachers about the students' education. The teachers would eventually start going to her rather than me, and this began to irritate me. Even more homework and notes regarding what's going on in the classroom were supplied to her and by more than one teacher.
By now, I strongly sensed that she was attempting to replace me in my family and cancel me out.
I was genuinely in prison. I was peering out the window of my detention cell when I noticed the warden's house. After we moved in next door, she became even more insistent in telling me that everything I did was bad. She was always finding fault with whatever I did. Being myself wasn't acceptable. It had nothing to do with my upbringing or parenting style, but rather with my principles and identity.
Her favorite thing these days is to tell me that because I don't attend church every Sunday, and she does, I'm going to hell. She frequently makes statements like "there isn't room in heaven for people like you." She seems crazy to me, and that's probably why I don't choose to be in a connection with God. I don't believe that any mortal person has the authority to dictate to another person where they will spend eternity. That is entirely within God's purview and his alone.