No, it’s not from any memory disease.

When I first moved into the house I rent-to-own from my real mother, I was excited to see it was a quiet neighborhood and that my half of the duplex (the other half is not owned by us) had a small but nice back yard to garden.

At the time, I was still married to my ex-husband.

The first time we met our shared-wall Boomer neighbors, Pam and Cas, Pam would not stop asking us if we were Catholic, believed in God, etc. Well, after ten years together and six years married, my ex and I realized we were just too different to stay married. I wanted to socialize, get into the cigar industry, work on my art business. He was a homebody who wanted to work in finance and doesn’t like going out, even with friends. I was his first ever relationship, he felt like he wanted to travel, explore dating other people, maybe even move back to his home state where his family was. I didn’t want to move from Pennsylvania to Minnesota. So he eventually moved out and we got divorced.

Pam immediately became insanely ‘involved’. She told me that she was my mother, and that I was her daughter. I told her I had a mother, but she insisted that because I was a young woman, she was ALSO a mother to me. Whenever I went into my yard, she’d hurry outside and openly get weepy over my divorce. Told me she prayed for my husband to return. Kept inviting me over for coffee. I was so uncomfortable with how intense she was about my personal life that I declined all invitations.

Then she started coming into my house. When I’m in the garden, I keep the back door open. She started walking in. The third time it happened, I had closed but forgotten to lock the door after I came inside, and I was in the shower when I heard someone rooting around in my house. I told her to never come inside uninvited again, and she started to cry.

When I startedd dating again, she’d ‘confront’ my date as they left, to ‘see if he was a good man.’ She confessed to waking up at 5am to ‘make sure his car hadn’t been there overnight.’ One morning, I came home from a date’s house to her waiting for me on her porch. She told me she ‘thought I had fallen ill’ because she hadn’t seen me all day, so she ‘listened through the wall’ to see if she could ‘hear me coughing’.

Now, every time I’m outside, I’ll see her curtains move aside, and she’ll hurry out to try to demand I tell her personal information.

My current partner and I are not monogamous. This has caused a hell of a lot of issues for Pam, as she decided she’s free to ‘confront’ us whenever we are in our yard. She weeps, talks about Jesus, tells me that God wants us to be husband and wife, etc. Ironically, the most difficult part of non-monogamy has been Pam.

The thing that enraged me recently is that my mother went through a bad intestinal infection that took her a year to recover from. She lost about 30 pounds and became very skinny. Pam will NOT stop intercepting my mom when she walks into my house. Pam always greets my mom with a weepy, ‘Joan, you are SO skinny! You look SO sick!’

My mom was so sad on Mother’s Day that Pam hurried outside to comment on how ‘sick’ my mom looks.

We’ve told this woman dozens of times to mind her own business, stay out of our yard, stay out of our home, and stop commenting on my mother’s body. And she just refuses to stop! She told my mom I was ‘cheating’ and my mom told Pam that she had prayed so hard for God to send me a husband that God decided to send two men instead of one. (My mom thankfully has a great sense of humor.)

I’m so sick of this. Pam refuses to accept boundaries. And yes, she has children and grandchildren who regularly visit. I’d be friendlier if she wasn’t so stressful and judgmental.