She had a childhood where she didn’t have much but I don’t think her family life was unhappy. We think she was institutionalized for mental illness in 1970 and dropped my SO into the care of his aunt and uncle. When she came to pick him up a year later he didn’t remember her, of course, being a baby, and that was distressing for her and probably made him very detached from her, because those primal bonds are so important. She had a bad relationship with her husband but it seemed to be because she was continually provoking him when he actually was home, which wasn’t hardly at all because of his job. Like I would not say she had it easy, but also that a lot of things end up the way they do for her because she enjoys what I call stick poking. She has done incredibly provocative things to provoke conflict between her children, for example not telling daughter #1 that daughter #2 was having an engagement party, but then ensuring to post photos on Facebook the very next day. Or she’d invite us over for dinner and then sit inside and talk to nobody while we prepared all the food on the barbecue and just sat around trying to figure out why we were there. She won’t have a garbage can in her house and instead walks it all over to the park trash can, which to me is insane.

I’m honestly not sure you could even diagnose her with anything really, she seems to like upsetting people and making them fight and it gives her pure pleasure to do that. I’ve never seen her smile except when she got a rise out of someone, which makes her smile like it’s her birthday. Like it’s an abnormal way of being in the world, but it doesn’t seem to be from trauma or being neurodivergent, she just really likes to seem to be an asshole as much as possible because she likes it. That’s my take on her. It’s just what she likes to do.