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Around mid-morning, there was sudden loud noise from a pneumatic drill and I looked outside to see a lorry from the water company and someone digging a hole right in the centre of the end of our driveway. Only a few moments before, there'd been a knock at our front door, which my mother had answered, therefore, when the noise started I went to ask her if she knew anything about it. She feigned a look of puzzlement and claimed to know nothing whatsoever.
So I made towards the front door, saying I would go outside to see what they were doing – as you would naturally do when someone is digging a hole right in front of your driveway and it isn't for you - and I believed my action was protecting her, “the householder” – and to ask why they were doing it on a Saturday.
Only then she begged me not to do anything - truly in panic - and admitted then that she knew it was for the next door neighbour. I still wanted to know what it was, why this needed to be done in our driveway and why at the weekend with no prior warning. Then there was still the possibility that, even if she did know about it, that she might have been coerced into agreeing to something that was not necessarily in her own interests through not understanding. So I stand by my actions, confidently, in the full belief that they are entirely reasonable and exactly what any reasonable person would do in these circumstances.
Before I went outside, logically, I retrieved my front door key. My mother looked at my hand with an expression of alarm, as if she thought I'd picked up a weapon or something. It was neither the look nor the reaction of a rational person.
Once outside, at a volume appropriate to be heard over a pneumatic drill (I was later accused of shouting), I politely asked the workman what the work was, why there in our driveway and why on a Saturday (it did not appear to be as a result of an emergency necessitating urgent weekend work). The workman told me it was because the company has a backlog. To be honest, that was still not great, given it’s a day when people should be able to rest. Then while I was simply asking who I should contact to discuss this further, out came the neighbour.
With breath smelling strongly of alcohol (note the time of day) and using a threatening manner, he proceeded to be verbally abusive to me, constantly using the word “fucking”, ordering me to "get inside now" or he'll call the police, pushing his face to within two inches of mine. He then tells me he believes that I am not ill and accused me of laying around doing nothing, as if this is a crime. Unprovoked, out of nowhere and irrelevant to the events of the day.
Now clearly, he could not know that I “lay around” inside our house … unless my mother has been telling him that this is what she thinks I do. This would be when I'm laying down in agony and exhaustion, of course, but clearly she refuses to believe that I could ever lie down for any justifiable reason.
When this neighbour had called to the house a week or so previously, allegedly to read our gas / electric meters, I'd caught him peering into the window of my room. When I complained about this, my mother was adamant that he was only looking at the meter, but this could not have been the case, because the meter is below window height and his gaze was quite clearly straight ahead through the window, with his face virtually pressed up against the glass. He would have seen that I was lying down at that moment, but seeing me for one split second would surely not be enough for anyone to have drawn such conclusion? Indeed, logic suggests that he wouldn't have even thought to look in the window, unless someone, had told him a) which room I use and b) given him some reason to want to look. This alone makes me feel that my privacy has been abused and invaded. For this and various other reasons, I no longer open the curtains.
(One of those other reasons was because my mother used go outside the front door and press her face up against my bedroom window to peer in, if ever my bedroom door was closed - because she felt she *had to* have access to my room (for no logical reason). Remember, I'm a 52 year old woman. No she doesn't have that entitlement. As soon as I removed the ability for them to spy on me that way, my mother began barging into my room, without warning, at any time of night or day. So, to try to be able to rest, on a couple of occasions, I closed the door and added a wedge so it couldn't be opened from the outside. So she banged and battered constantly on the door and pushed and pulled on the handle, and screamed and shouted and paced and utterly proved categorically that she had not one shred of sanity, but, of course, nobody sees or believes that.)
The wife then came out and, once again, added similar false assertions, cruelly dismissing my illness, even when told that I have a diagnosis from a specialist, in writing and thus irrefutable and then she went off on some unintelligible tangent about how my parents must love and have wanted me because “they did not put me into care.” I asked her what care had to do with anything and she gave no clear answer, but walked away. Again, her opinions and judgements can only be based only on some twisted and false information my mother has fed her.
The neighbour also spouted some rubbish about “you always stand by your parents.” Er, what the feck does she think I'm doing here then, when I could - and clearly should - have told my mother where to get off with her crap years ago? Then she made a very serious false accusation: that since I've come back to the UK, I've been killing my mother. Mother claims she is “only just alive” and is portraying herself as the victim. This is common amongst abusers.
The drunk from next door then said – still only about two inches from my face - that he did not care if I was a woman, if I didn't go indoors immediately (as if he thinks he has some right to bully me and dictate where I am permitted to go), he would … and then he threatened to punch me. Whilst I made great effort to remain calm and stand unmoved under this unprovoked attack, all three; the husband, the wife and my own mother all accused me of needing “mental help” - my mother was screaming this like a banshee - in front of the two workmen.
The husband then said he'd been told about things I have written about them. This is not true. I've written on my blog – necessarily to create a dated record - about the day when I was verbally attacked, unjustifiably and slanderously, in front of another neighbour, in the middle of the street. I haven't named anyone in the report, so if this neighbour thinks it's about them, it can only be because they believe they're guilty. And I told him so. He shut up then. Since what I wrote is true, my conscience would be entirely clear even if had named them.
At one point, my mother had taken one of the workmen by the arm to tell him to “take no notice”. Bearing in mind that I'd merely enquired why this job needed to be done on a Saturday and, while doing so, a male neighbour, his wife and my mother (behaving like a mad woman): all three began verbally attacking and threatening me and bringing up personal matters of my health, my alleged laziness, accusing me of needing “mental help”, etc., which to any onlooker will have seemed unprovoked and out of nowhere, one wonders what he will have thought he should take no notice of? My mother's ham acting, putting her hands to her head, wailing and pretending to be the mentally injured party, perhaps?
Once the neighbours had slunk back into their house, not wishing this situation to continue any further, I marched my mother back round next door to have the air cleared, insisting she tell the neighbour that she'd been wrong to tell them that there was nothing wrong with me. Naturally, she resisted at first, then she said that she would go alone. (She thinks I'm stupid enough to fall for that one, so she can say nothing?) In the end, she did so, whining and insisting she did it through ignorance: she did not know what my illness was. (Crucially, now it exists!)
Five minutes earlier, once again doubting I'm ill and – again in conversation with the neighbours and in front of the workmen – she'd been saying how one minute I'm lying down, the next minute I'm “running around doing all sorts of things.” On the one hand this is an absolute lie, as I am not capable of “running around” at all and, most importantly, that is the nature of ME. Anything I do is painful and causes me pain and fatigue (by medical definition). Thus in order to be able to do anything (even to go to a medical appointment), I have to pace myself (as recommended by doctors / my rheumatologist), by resting (as best I can) before events and I'm forced to do lie down to recover, often for days, afterwards.
At the neighbour's front door my mother went on an on wriggling pathetically to excuse herself and not letting me get a word in. So much that the neighbour (who five minutes earlier had been ready to hit me), told her to let me speak!
There appeared to be a fleeting moment of understanding as I impressed upon him that no matter what she says or whether it's true or not, it’s still wrong to make assumptions based only on what a third-party (i.e. my mother) was telling them and all I ask is that they make judgements only when they know me.
Later in the day, mother came into the kitchen and tried to talk some lightweight nonsense about playing with the cat. I told her not to pretend that nothing has happened and to stop believing herself to be the victim. She stormed off. Again.
Whilst I know the truth, my mother is able to manipulate these people into believing that black is white and day is night, it seems. I am PHYSICALLY unwell, and no amount of her trying to convince either herself or others will change that. Heck, I wish it would! It would be bad enough if I were healthy, but I just cannot get across how difficult and frightening this is and to have absolutely no means of protecting myself against it. What I didn't yet get a chance to explain is that, whilst I managed to be assertive on this occasion, this is not easy. Partly because of the bullying I've been subjected to all my life and partly because the “brain fog” of illness that prevents me from remembering words becomes worsened to the point of mental paralysis under stress. After this event, I held it together for a few days, but was in the high street one afternoon, when I just suddenly dissolved into floods of uncontrollable weeping and ran out of the shop I was in. A homeless girl came up to me, put her arm around me, held me and talked to me for ages. She got me to go straight to the doctor and, for her caring, I shall forever be grateful to that girl. All this stress had pushed me to a mini-breakdown.
