That escalated quickly.

I loved my job. I loved what I did. I loved my students. I loved my coworkers. But to get close to a living wage, I had to have five stipends. Most of them required me to be at work late at night. With a child, I couldn't afford to work there any more. I'd always called it my happiness tax, but I had to take care of my family, first.

I tightened my social media pages and stuck my inlaws in that tighter security group. It was something I'd always wanted to do. I just wasn't sure when would be appropriate. I never wanted to accept their friendship on there because I felt like it was too much. Mark isn't friends with most of my family, but since he's more of a public figure due to work, he's a little less strict with who can see his stuff.

A few weeks went by and I was back at work. One day, we got a phony call demanding that I allow them access to my page. Um? What now? Mark informed them that I was job searching, hence the heightened social media security. That is 100 percent correct. I didn't block or unfriend them. I just locked them down. No more pats pr photos were visible to them. A little more time passed. And at Easter, Mark called to wish them a happy one. And instead of exchanging pleasantries, they chose to tear into him and rip him a new one. He, who never raises his voice, raised his voice to them. He tried setting boundaries and explaining that we feel like they do not respect us as adults. That they don't respect us as parents. Every time we ask them not to do something, they do it. If we ask them to do something, they don't. Like buying the base for the car seat, for instance. Spoiler: that base could only be used with the bucket seat. When we upgraded to the bigger seat, those were useless. They never once used it and were miffed.

Anyway, I refused to try to tweak my settings because I was job searching. I'd planned on eventually letting them back in, but I decided against it. Eventually, unnoticed his mom unfriended me, based on the fact that she popped up as a person I may know, haha. C'est la vie.

At this point, I said they needed a time out. They were not exhibiting sane behavior or wise actions. I banned them from the house until further notice. They were going to be allowed here for his birthday, but that's a more tragic story yet to come.

Basically, they are allowed supervised visits and they must be in public. If it's something in their hometown, I chaperone.

I'm sorry. This is too unstable.

After some time, they claimed that when Mark called them out on condemning us to hell and saying what they said about the miscarriage, they denied it. They began a gaslighting campaign that keeps rearing its very ugly head. Gaslighting is scary.