I am usually a lurker here, but I got a blast from the past yesterday and it prompted me to post on here. My former sister-in-law is part of the lunatic fringe that even most die-hard dubs cringe at.
So I received some business correspondence from Ms. Looney Toons yesterday and at the very bottom is the note "Read your bible daily." I started remembering some of the crazy she inflicted on all of us around her. She would show up at school for lunch every day for her teen daughter so she would not be tempted to have bad association, she would take the phone cord with her when she left the house (re:teen daughter), she wore full length gloves and rain boots out in service (well, everywhere actually) during the height of summer in the mid-west for no known reason. She would show up at my house when I was newly married and just sit on the couch. I guess I should explain that during lunch, my ex and I would meet at home for some time alone and she would pop in every single freakin day and just sit on the couch and stare at us.
Her teen daughter moved in with the ex and I for a while (else she was going to run away). My niece-in-law started to actually smile and act like a normal teen (and sadly I was able to even get her to participate in the meetings willingly--wonder if she ever forgave me that). Well Psycho-mom just couldn't handle the lovely changes in her daughter and put an end to the arrangement forcing her to move back home and niece became depressed and morose once again. Psycho-mom decided she needed to home school the teen and her youngest daughter and she mostly used JW pubs (not sure how that worked with state regs, but she seemed to get away with it). Psycho-mom is not well educated so the quality of that home schooling is beyond awful. The youngest child (aged 8 at the time) begged me one day not to send her home with her mom--I cried.
We thankfullly moved away from the Crazy, but she rears her psychotic head in my life every once in a while. I hope the youngest will eventually have an opportunity to be a normal socialized person, but I think the damage is rather deep. I wonder if I did enough, but there were no signs of physical abuse, just whacked out emotional abuse due to lack of parenting. Maybe I should have called social services at the time? We all tried to temper her psychosis with a semblance of normality when we had the girls away from their mother.
Anyone else have some lunatic fringe in their dub closet?