Usually one would think being outdoors on a Spring day would be relaxing. What I have learned being around Jill is that when you around her you are never relaxed. She is tension in all forms. Her rules and her control issues squeeze their way outside her doors. She has a system for absalutely everything. Nothing at all comes natural or with grace. It is tense and stressful and rigid. Although she gets up, makes her daily list after hemming and hawing over a piece of paper for an hour, she acts as if she plans on having a restful Saturday.
Get out of her way because she has no social graces and no desire to even think of returning your hello and smile. Their is no exception to this rule. She makes herself stressed by planning each and every moment in detail while checking it off proudly and sternly. “Who IS this person”, I’ve asked myself a million times. Blown away over and over by her inconsiderate, cold personality. Anyway, that’s another rant.
She puts on her boots that are waiting in their designated corner. Off she goes into the back yard. She grabs a shovel and randomly begins to dig where she has a flower garden. It’s an angry, scowling event. Her face is serious and literally by now an hour has gone by and she is in the same place. A load of wash goes in at this point. She doesn’t keep an eye on her wash. remember everything goes in. The whites the underwear, the hose, the darks and yes the kitchen towels.
Off she returns to her scowling grimace. Her hunched over body wearing the perfect attire for the event. What happens next is she pulls up a lawn chair and lays in the sun to sun her angry face for the rest of the day. I am not kidding. It is this huge event with the list, the perfect clothes and the energy then she lays down and mopes and mopes. She comes in to get food I’ve made, eats it sitting on the porch and mopes some more. The hole is there, the shovel stuck in the ground. She might come in to take out her clothes on a warm day to dry, hopefully. Even though I will wash those kitchen towels again in secret.
She will grab the phone after a few hours and tell her Sisters that she has been working alone all day in the garden and is beat. Not just that ,but she will borderline cry over the exhaustion. After I witnessed this a few times, I lost even more respect for this shell of a person I thought was my friend. This routine altered a little over Spring and Summer but I tell you what, it was the same.
I told her I wanted to plant a vegetable garden for us all. She seemed supportive and very OK with it. This made me nervous. She followed it up with saying “it’s all yours, do whatever you want, I’ll stay out of it”. This was worse because she has so many control issues and is so passive my entire innerself set off an alarm. I went ahead with it mostly because my oldest Daughter has the greenest thumb I’ve ever known and she truly loves the earth under her feet. We had it tilled . I bought some horse manure and in went the seeds. I had gone to the store to purchase a tiny greenhouse a month before and seedlings had begun inside by the southside window. This wasn’t easy to pass with the “rules” person. She claimed it to be hers so I suppose it was OK then?
Gardens are alot of work. We put many hours into this plot. Turning it from a rock garden to an area that held beans, peas, carrots, onions, leeks, kale, lettuce , cucumber, melons, tomatoes and potatoes . I felt terrible for my Daughter. Simply out of the sake of torment and jealousy, Jill would go into our garden with a destructive goal. She would “accidently” step on babies. She would want to “help” weed and pull the vegetables. While my daughter was out their doing her best to protect her hard work, Jill would pluck off new blooms to “show her” how to garden. She knew so little about so much it was mind blowing. I have learned the true definition of ignorance by getting to know this person I thought I knew.
Was their any reason she couldn’t just stay in her flower garden and give us a little peace? After some time passed, i realized that any super control freak with a huge ego like herself would find that impossible.
We gave up on the garden out of pure sadness and frustration with Jill. She won, she sucked every ounce of pleasure that all of our hard work should have given us. We salvaged a few things and let the weeds cover the rest. the weeds drove her mad! This was great revenge. She would take one of the girls aside and tell them she wanted it weeded. So I would mow it over with the lawn mower. This she hated but wouldn’t tell me directly, because she is passive. I have to confess, I loved it. I was determined to get as much enjoyment as possible out of every day and not allow her to bring me into her negative abyss.
With her severe issues, now and again she would “pepper” the routine with an occasional , seemingly, kind deed. This made me highly suspicious. I would find out later my suspicions were right on the money. So I am not even going to mention them. I would smile as much as I could , hum a tune while washing the dishes and joke with my girls daily. It was my goal to keep our personal space void of her dark and dismal energy. Our Spring and Summer outdoors was a challenge at that house. The good news is, is that she wasn’t always home. I worked from home and we had many hours to feed our happy spirits.
The outdoor rules were many, even outside of her garden. You can only imagine how many rules came with “her” tools, “her” clothesline, “her shed” that she calls a barn . She is also a very, very fearful person. So afraid that she hadn’t gone past a certain point in her yard to explore her own land! I find this, I don’t know, unbelievable. We discovered blueberries, raspberries, strawberries , wild grapes and apples. She never knew she had these on her land. Why? Because the little control circle goes around and around and it is super tiny with very poor vision. This was an eye opener for us. When she saw us eating berrries or she helped herself to berry cobbler that I made, she refused to believe we got them from her property. Why? Pure ignorance is the only explanation I can dig up. Have you ever had someone you thought you were close to deny something right in front of their face? Deny the obvious to a point you might just pull out your hair or run screaming? I’ve had several of these “points” with her, several. I have learned so much about myself. It has been a learning experience to say the least. Because Jill had not seen these for herself , she did not believe they came from her land. When we offered to show her, she went into a shell and said maybe later. It never did happen. She chose to remain ignorant in her very irrational fearful, controlling ,freakish mind. Irrational is a perfect word to help describe her personality. The funny thing is, she openly prides herself on being very rational, figures.
We were living with a crazy person.
A Year With Jill 