All This Time I Was Lying to Myself
I had an epiphany this week. Over the time since Covid I'd become somewhat depressed. Not continually, more like feeling uncomfortable in my own skin in my dear home here. Why? Well, the constant demands of our neighbor here I have had such issues with.
Also I've been mourning my old life, my healthy life, a life were walking into a building holding lit cigarettes, fuzzy dogs, strong colognes, and cleaning supplies didn't mean epipen+emergency room. Back almost twenty years ago when I got my diagnosis I went through an extended period of mourning over the changes. Now I'm seeing far more clearly what I've lost, and it hurts.
What's the deal? I watched as they took advantage of my husband, again, again, and yet again. Every time he tried to break away only to have this person push the guilt buttons hard. I've talked to the husband endlessly, including him complaining about this person to me. But the husband could not stand up to this person at all. I had to wait for him to get completely fed up with her. It has happened in spits and fits. We'd cut off all contact, go into avoidance mode, only to have the person suffer some very normal slings or arrows, press the husband's guilt buttons and just like that they were in our home.
Because of how crazy my systemic mastocytosis had gotten I didn't have the energy to deal with this person.
The nadir of this bullshit peaked three summers ago. By the time I hit the summer of 2023, fell out the damned discounted airplane to tear an arm muscle and cracked the skull. Got stitches and told it was a concussion. I came home to find this person had been in my house via the housesitter, rifled the husband's desk and taken his keys. Immediately got them back from the person and changed ALL the locks as soon as Gato the Locksmith could come out.
Ugh, my skin crawls right now thinking about it. Found head imprints on bed pillows and sheets and quilts quite obviously slept in on every bed. Violation of just about every damn boundary for me. Scrubbing washing ensued afterward.
Sometimes when we go to the States I will go first, or return first to CR and the husband will wander off to his high school buddies in Michigan. I don't mind. I treat those weeks like a vacation from real life.
This time though when I saw that a cast of many had been in my home, using my art supplies, screwing with damn near everything in the house I had sort of a mini breakdown. It took me a full damn year to stop crying when I found ruined, something of mine, like my green silk dress, tried on by someone bigger who'd popped seams and ruined the elastic. The person balled the dress up, and shoved it into a basket holding yarns in the living room. They also put the husband's underwear in the same basket. Every single time that year I found something screwed up, moved around the most unlikely of places it felt like an invasion, a hostile home invasion. Boundary violations.
We did what we could. Filed a denuncia on this person, and we banned them from our house. Avoided them, which being a close neighbor is extremely awkward. In the last year they made a quick incursion, pestering the husband for months on end until he agreed to let them swim a few times a week. He figured they aren't likely to destroy the pool. I told him do not involve me. I'm not letting them in or out. I don't have the energy for that bullshit with my chronic illness. As you well know we haven't been home much over the last ten months, so we didn't even have to deal with this annoyance, one of our tenants let this person in and out. House locked up tighter that, well considering they were robbed, the Louvre. Less said, soonest mended.
We came home from our last sojourn down to Louisiana, and they started demanding daily access, making the mistake of asking me for a gate remote. No, hell no. They started being a pest. The husband turned to me and complained copiously. I just replied that buddy you got us in this mess this year you deal with this person. He finally did, telling them they could no longer use our pool because it was an enormous imposition and just didn't work for us.
He didn't mention them wrecking our house by handing out the keys willy nilly to feckless drunken high schoolers and random Ticos we do not know. He just said it didn't work for us.
What followed was a marathon of begging the likes you've never seen. Tearful demands for a gate remote, bargaining, promises. He kept saying no.
The grand comedy of all of this is I was completely uninvolved in any of it. I'd banned them from the house nearly three summers ago. Just like the time I told the guy who drunkenly peed on my sofa he was not welcome in my house. I interfered exactly once, when I overheard them inviting a huge crowd of teen missionaries to swim in our pool. I stepped in and said no because of the problems maintaining the pool chemicals when you have a huge crowd there. Not to mention the legal burden if something happened.
When next we saw this person they were crying, weeping piteously over being told the entire place, first house and then pool, was off limits. They ran about spreading a story that I banned them unjustly from using our own pool. Not me, babe, that was the husband. They told everyone around here I was a cruel bitch who hated them. I dislike this person, but hate's a strong word. Besides, I do have reasons now.
Several weeks ago they started begging, pleading and trying to manipulate the husband to start swimming here again. He said no. Now they're pestering our tenants. Also a no.
Yesterday I attended another art class. They were there. I coolly ignored them even after finding out that they told the host I would not be there. They'd spoken to me exactly zero in the last week. When I'm painting, I'm painting, teaching or as a student. I go to the classes just to pick up new skills, not to talk, drink, or be social. Art is art.
What I realized this last week was that besides mourning my health problems and the trauma of having the house trashed much like what happened in silly teen movies of the nineteen eighties I had been calling a lot angst over this person and they've seriously negatively impacted myself. It felt like a towering shadow of some enormous Godzilla over my life, putting everything in sort of a shadow. My doing things like updating our house was impossible in that state. Even doing a deep clean was fraught with problems. I did it, but it was like doing it slowly moving through a quagmire of cold molasses. I took no pleasure in my beautiful home. They were openly contemptuous of all my efforts to keep the house out of "Hoarders" territory. They employ a full time maid, don't lift a finger or even cook. Someone else does everything else for her.
Some internal switch has been flipped lately. I have taken actions like putting in a new dishwasher, a new high end washer and dryer including protective mats on them to slow down the rust that happens this close to the ocean. Relandscapping, putting in a new deck and expensive canvas cover. I love my home again, this neighbor's presence erased out of my home. Until this week I don't think I actually realized how depressed I'd gotten in the aftermath of the house trashing. I feel safe now.
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