I can't stand my in-laws!

There, that's so much better.
Well, not really. Hubby knows about it but I don't expect him to understand or do anything about it because they are his parents after all.
Perhaps it is the way I was raised. Or the amount of freedom I was given in my childhood. Or that my dad is more of a strict and stern disciplinarian than a nagger while my mom is more or less a free spirit who allowed me immeasurable freedom. Even the years I spent with my grandmother (whom I truly loathed but that is another story) seemed like paradise compared to the agony of having to stay with my in-laws just several years ago before we finally moved into our own place after much begging on my side. (and several cold wars between yours truly and the in-laws).
Over here in Asia, it is the norm for children to continue staying with their parents even after they are married and over here filial piety means staying with your parents until they depart this world. Since, hubby is an only child, it was assumed that we would continue living with his parents till the end of days.
Oh, it was indeed the end of days. FOR ME! I was stifled, suffocated and literally tied. I could not step out the door without having to explain the whys and wherefores. Sure, I have often been told to be a good and obedient daughter-in-law but heck, if I was never an obedient daughter from the start, how could anyone expect me, of all people, to be obedient to a pair of strangers who became relatives through marriage??
My father-in-law nags. A lot. He is worse than a fly buzzing incessantly in your ear. Much, much worse. If ever there is a mission to get a spy to talk, he will be the perfect candidate to grill the spy as I am certain the spy will definitely buckle under all that non-stop droning of his nagging.
So imagine the torture. I think I would have enjoyed tearing out all my hair, rubbing salt in the tender scalp and scalding myself with hot boiling water more. So, in light of all his nagging and negativeness (oh, he also specialises in being Mr Wet Blanket of the World as in everything will eventually turn out wrong or bad and the glass is always empty, not half empty), my seemingly normal mother-in-law seemed, well, normal.
The two of them don’t get along. If not for some archaic notion that divorce is taboo, they would probably be staying on different sides of the globe by now. But too bad, that is not the case. They would quarrel over the littlest thing and it amazes me how they managed to stay together, sleep on the same bed, for so many years!
Anyway, the mother-in-law would treat me as a confidante and complain about her good-for-nothing husband and how he never contributed anything to the household. I listened and felt like shaking her and telling her to just get a divorce but wisely I kept quiet. I thought she liked me. I even sorta liked her (after all, we sorta share the same ‘enemy‘) and tolerated her complaints about her husband and even her gossips about her relatives. Until I found out she had been complaining about me behind my back to all and sundry. Why, that insidious, obsessive compulsive witch! Hubby is the one who tipped me off. When I asked him why she couldn’t just tell me face to face instead of complaining to the whole wide world, he said she told him that she didn’t want to ‘spoil’ her relationship with me.
Fine, I tried to forgive her. The last straw was after LR was born and she all but told my other grandma (the one I simply adore and not the one I loath) to get lost. We have already moved out by then and I have arranged for my grandma to stay with us for the first two months after LR was born to help us take care of a newborn. The witch, no doubt, became green with envy. She felt that since LR carries my husband’s family name, LR is her grandchild while my grandma, who is by right the great grandmother, is considered an 'outsider'. She actually went up to my grandma and told her to get lost and stop ‘keeping’ LR to herself. My grandma was hurt and initially she did not tell me. She packed and gave some excuse that she wanted to go home. It was only later that she told me (after much badgering from me) the whole sordid truth.
My mother-in-law is no longer in her youth. She is nearing 70 for goodness sake! And my grandma is nearing 90 so couldn’t she show at least some courtesy to my grandma? What she did was unforgivable. It made me realized that she is the type of person who will not stop at anything to get her way and that includes bullying her son and back-stabbing and hurting everyone around her.
Yep, I can’t stand both my in-laws and having to call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ is the worst thing I was forced to do in my life. Now, I avoid them like the plague and prayed that we do not ever have to stay with them again. I would rather drink rat poison, scrape my eyeballs out with a blunt fork and slowly pull my fingernails out one by one.