The Vacation Saga, a huge subject, but background-only for this post:  Spring Break 2016, our umpteenth family vacation blowup.  Who could be miserable at a five-star luxury resort?  A skid.  Killjoy12 spent the first few days playing the Guess Why I’m Pouting Now game, with a smirk on her face.  She got in a lot of trouble for all the tantrums she threw, then walked away from me when I was reprimanding her.  After the second day, DH enrolled her in the Little Kids Club Daycamp, resort kiddie jail, and she was the oldest kid there, chronologically at least, how embarrassing for her.  We also cancelled the excursion she’d wanted to do.   Done with her repeat vacation shenanigans, I spent evenings by myself for the rest of the vacation, until the last day, when DH claimed he had set her straight, and then she did the pouting game yet again, harder, and got in trouble again.  I’m not sure if all this made her even more butthurt than her usual covertly rageful self, but things continued to escalate from then on.  Maybe because I was just Done.  (Two weeks after this trip is when she abused my GD.)

That Summer, I was sitting in the familyroom one day watching TV with her, only because I thought it would be rude not to, and I noticed she was wearing a pair of my shoes.  And I said, “Oh wow, those are my shoes.”  I was shocked, because despite her constant snooping through my things, she was snarky every day about the way I dressed, and she was already slightly bigger than me, so I never expected it.  Killjoy, like the robot she is, got up without saying a word, left the room, returned my shoes to the rack in my office, then resumed watching TV, like nothing happened.  I told her to leave my things alone, then I retired to my room for the day because I felt queasy.  DH wasn’t home. 

After that, I wanted to believe she wouldn’t steal from me again, but I was suspicious.  It was an uncomfortable feeling that went on for a year, and I blamed myself for it.  I was just being paranoid.

My shoes were all neatly put away in a cube rack in my office.  On the rare occasion I was working in there, I’d glace up and notice that some shoes were hanging out or had fallen to the floor.  It’s weird how gravity and a lack of earthquakes here can cause that to happen.  After a few times, I had to admit she was still snooping through my stuff and invading my privacy, which also made me angry, but I knew she’d deny it and gaslight me, so I didn’t bother to confront her about it.  She never did it in front of me, so she had to know it was wrong.  I keep a lot of personal papers in my office, so I was uneasy.

I hadn’t seen any of my things on her or anywhere around the house, but I still had this feeling she was taking things.  It was bothering me.  I was afraid to find out.  I could barely contain my hatred as it was.

That Autumn, I bought myself a new pair of boots.  They were in the style Killjoy likes, the only style she likes, because she’s ridiculously picky, tantrum-throwing, and inflexible as fµck.  She already had a few pairs of her own, but I knew she’d want these.  So, I hid them carefully in the guest bedroom, which no one uses.  I had to sneak in there to get them, so I only got to wear them to work a few times before the end of Winter.  They were nice boots, and I only wore them on dry days when there was no slush or salt in the parking garage, and I put them away before Killjoy got home.  I work hard for my money and cherish my things.

Well, the next Spring Break was Satan’s, so DH and I decided to take a long-awaited first honeymoon together.  The way the flights worked, we ended up needing to leave at the crack of dawn on a Friday morning, and return week later, late Sunday evening, so we had to ask DD27 to be there for the few hours of overlap on both ends.  I was nervous, because I knew Killjoy would be enraged that DH and I were going on a vacation without her, but dammit, we were four years married, and deserved a fµcking honeymoon.  She is obsessed with me, I’m always the target, never DH.  She constantly asks him why he took me out for dinner when she wasn’t home, etc, which is weird because I can afford my own meals and entertainment.  She tries to act casual when she asks, but there's always this underlying menace in her voice.  I told him to stop telling her stuff we do, even if she asks.  My intuition was telling me she was going to vandalize my things.  PTSD plus my anxiety made it hard for me to relax on our vacay.  She manages to ruin even the vacations she doesn’t go on.  I kept assuring myself that she’s bigger than me and hates my stuff.

Guess what greeted me by the front door when we walked in the house very late at night on our return, like a giant middle finger?  Not only had she taken my boots, she’d worn them outside in the slush and salt, and left them by the door, dirty and stretched, for me to find.  She hadn’t wasted a minute, just two hours after we’d left, she’d gotten up for school and taken them.  Her lame explanation was that she was just borrowing them.  They’d just happened, coincidently on that very day, to go with an outfit she was going to wear.  And she’d used her powers of mental telepathy do divine their exitance, I suppose?  DH never asks these most interesting questions.  She’d never given me any indication before that she knew I owned them, never asked me if she could borrow them.  Just secretly coveted them, and creepily bided her time.

Well, I was pissed.  In the wee hours of Monday morning, I picked up every pair of shoes and boots she had by the front door, and there were several, and took them out to the trash.  Including her pair of Nike slides, which is a topic for yet another post. For good measure, I dumped coffee grounds and compost on top of everything.  I broke my foot falling down the garage stairs while I was carrying out her crap, the only time I’ve broken a bone in my life, and it took forever to heal, a constant reminder of that night.

The next morning, when I was sleeping, DH told her that for stealing, we took her shoes away, but didn’t say what we did with them.  So, without a word, she secretly found them, and went ahead and took the Nike slides out of the trash.  I noticed, reported it to DH, and he had her turn them over when she came home from school.  He asked her WTF she was thinking but didn’t give her any further discipline.  He told her the consequences would be worse next time.

She claimed she understood, "of course!" wouldn’t do it again.  Brightly asked him if we had a good vacation, pretended to be happy for us.  Pretended to be pleasant.  Creepily bided her time.  I locked the door to my office, which was a PITA, having to have lock and unlock a door in my own home.  I wondered if she ever got into my things in my bedroom, worried what she was getting into when I was at work.  Assured myself there was nothing interesting in there.

I locked the doorhandle to my office, but the latch wasn’t fully engaged, so if you pushed on the door, it would pop open.  I had a pair of shoes in there I knew were trendy, and I thought she would steal them if she could, because she’s a VIP, but I checked occasionally, and they stayed where they were.  Months went by, I never go in her room because, ironically, I respect her privacy.  Then one day I stopped by her room to drop something off and saw that trendy pair of my shoes in her room, right by her door, like a big middle finger.  So, I took her door off its hinges, tossed her room, and found about a dozen pairs of my shoes in there, most were not even her style, and none even fit her.  So weird.  And my noise cancelling earbuds, and a lot of other things, from my office, the guest room, my bedroom, etc.  I confiscated everything, left her with only the gym shoes she wore to school that day.  Even though, I’m sure she was just “borrowing” all that stuff.

When she came home from school, DH called from work and chewed her out.  She denied going into my office.  "How could I, the door was locked??"  Well, how could she know the door was locked unless she’d tried it.  And if she tried it, it would’ve popped open.  So, she planned this, knowing she would use that as her excuse.  She tried to claim she had those things all along and was just too dumb to bring them forward the first time this happened.  Well, I wore some of those things during that time.  When DH got home, she cried and had DH believing her there at first.  It’s all a game to her.  Who do you love more?  I was furious, in our very dark bedroom trying to sleep before my 3rd shift job, and he opened the door with the bright hallway light blaring on my face as he stood over me with her next to him, and he kept saying, “She says she didn’t do it….she’s crying….she knew she’d be in trouble…”. And Killjoy was bawling at him “Why would I do it…I knew I’d be in trouble… I didn’t want to get in trouble….the door was locked…”    My response was, “Get the fµck out of here, close the door, I’m going to hurt you…”.  I literally didn’t get any sleep, and when I was pulling out of the driveway to go to work, DH followed me down the driveway, blubbering, and got in my way, causing me to scratch the side of my new car against the garage, the only time I’ve ever damaged a car. 

The next day Killjoy complained to DH that she didn’t get to pick out the one pair of shoes she got to keep, claiming the pair she wore to school that day were too small for her.  Makes perfect sense.  She thinks she can negotiate the terms of her punishment.  She has to win.  I told him to tell her to pound sand.  He told her any more infractions and she would be removed from her travel sport.  He put a lock on our bedroom door and fixed the lock on my office door.  If only he'd done that sooner.

Two months later, Satan her savior, gave her a new pair of boots for xmas.  So Killjoy went the entire Summer without Winter dress boots, but got some in time for Winter again.  The same kind she stole from me initially, plus extra stupid adornments.  Putrid.  They were too expensive for Satan to afford, so Satan had played victim to Mealticket’s mom and gotten her to pay for them.  The narrative was, I went nuts on Killjoy for innocently borrowing something from me.  I’m so abusive.  She’s so oppressed.  The situation was a bonus for Satan, because conning people and playing the victim are her favorite games, and she got to give Killjoy a big gift paid for by someone else.  She got so much sympathy from them.  Satan also sent over an old pair of her own Nike slides, you know, because a welfare recipient should be able to afford new name brand everything.  It became Satan’s celebration from undermining our rules and sowing discord in our household.  And now we had Satan-The-Serial-Killer’s putrid old shoes sitting by our front door.  But DH let her keep them and the boots, which was a big mistake.  He told her to keep them in her room, but she ignored him.  Typical.  She left the boots right in the middle of the floor, so I walked all over them, hard, every day, until they fell apart.  So Satan conned another pair out of Mealticket's mom the following xmas.  Her annual celebration of ruining our family.  Imagine playing the victim and getting rewarded for being a sociopath.  Recently I found out she complained to Satan about my taking her door off its hinges.

I still don't know if she ever went through my personal stuff, I think that's the worst part of this.  She's so cold and unemotional and lazy and disinterested in anyone besides herself, I don't know if she'd bother reading my papers.