If you don't want me to act like your mother, stop acting like a child

Last Tuesday my mom wrapped a gift. She found some tissue paper and curling ribbon, picked a flower from the yard, and got the tape and scissors out from the kitchen junk drawer and wrapped the gift on the kitchen table. I was out of town Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday - volunteering at a theater a few hours away. I came home for a whirlwind fifteen minutes on Friday before leaving again to spend Memorial Day Weekend with friends at their family cabin. When I returned home - six days later - the tissue paper, curling ribbon, and tape were all still spread across the kitchen table. The scissors had found their way back to the junk drawer. I'm sorry, but I can't write that off as a symptom of hoarding disorder; that's called being lazy. 

Two friends came to pick me up for the cabin trip. I was still throwing a few things in my bag, so I told them to come in for a minute. Kate I've known since college and she knows about my mom, but Shana is a new friend so I quickly added, as they entered, "Please excuse the state of the house. My mother is a hoarder and I'm only staying with her temporarily; I would never live like this." At the cabin I was sweeping the kitchen after a large group lunch, as I had also done after breakfast. "Damn," Shana proclaimed, "you're always cleaning, you're making everyone else look bad." Kate and Anna (who's family owns the cabin, and who I've known forever) laughed; "That's her style - don't feel like you have to keep up with her. She doesn't expect you too, and neither does anyone else." And it's true. I completely understand that I "see" mess differently than other people and I feel much more at ease putting in a quick bit of work to clean a mess than I do trying to actively ignore it. So when I'm among friends, that's what I do. This makes new friends a little nervous, but my good friends understand that I'm not playing the martyr or secretly judging others for not picking up the broom before me.

"Can I ask a question?" Shana began. "If your mother is...the way she is...how did you get to be the way you are? I mean, how did you even learn to clean at all...let alone be as clean as you are?" I have always thought of cleanliness as common sense. The kitchen table, for example, is for eating. If you need to use the table as the surface for a project, you clean up your tools an supplies afterwards, and put them in one designated place so they are easy to find the next time you need them. This makes so much sense. I don't remember having to be taught this, but I guess I learned it at school. I've read blog posts by other COH though, who would not consider themselves hoarders as well, but who struggle to understand the line between clean and dirty and how to keep on the clean side. My excessive cleanliness is most certainly a direct reaction against the way I was raised, but is my capacity for cleanliness in general genetic or was it learned - can't say.

At any rate, however, cleanliness is a lesson my mother has never learned. I find this particularly *amusing* since it was a lesson she taught, as a kindergarten teacher. She would sing songs about cleaning up as her students picked up after free play, while her supply closet was so cluttered it was deemed a fire hazard year after year, and I would come in every spring break to clean it up. How do you teach children a skill you are "incapable" of yourself?

Often in our fights my mother will yell, "You are not my mother, so stop acting like you are!" I have no desire to be my mother's "mother," but it's hard to know how else to act towards someone who is behaving like a child. Asking someone to put away supplies from a project they completed six days ago is not an adult conversation; it's a conversation you have with a child, who is just learning the concept. If you don't want to be reminded to clean up after yourself / be treated like a child, then you act like an adult and do it without being asked. 

Responsibility, What's That?

Anybody catch the song lyric? It's from an MxPx song, which was on the first CD I ever bought. Anyways, not the point. I've been thinking more about how being a COH has affected me, and how it might affect others. 

Take a look at this pamphlet:  http://www.childrenofhoarders.com/COHBrochure-081811.pdf (found via the Hoarder's Son blog - http://www.hoardersson.com/)

They list several key issues that COH may be dealing with, including:

• The fear they may be removed from the home and separated from their parent if the secret is discovered.
• Shame, and unhealthy guilt it’s their fault.
• Believing that objects or animals are more important than they are.
• A feeling of responsibility for their hoarding parent.

As a child I was very afraid to tell anyone about my mother's problem, "for fear of being removed from the home." It was a fear of the unknown really. I knew I wasn't happy where I was, but I also understood that I was, fundamentally, safe, and that I would eventually get out. My mother fed this fear. When I threatened to tell someone, she would say, "Go ahead, but you'll be put in foster care, where you'll probably be sexually abused and nobody will pay for your fancy education." Who knows what kind of foster family I might have ended up with, but I did have to agree with her about my education. My mom did sacrifice a lot for my education (although by sophomore year of high school I was on a full-ride scholarship, and I paid - rather, I'm still paying - for college and grad school all on my own), and I really enjoyed my private school. Still, I would fantasize about getting up the guts to tell an adult, and having them rescue me. 

Shame - of course, or maybe mostly embarrassment. Are they the same thing? They're related at least. I don't think I ever really thought it was my fault that it happened, but I felt it was my responsibility to help hide it, if only just for the selfish reason of humiliation.

I never felt that objects or animals were more important than me. Thankfully, my mom doesn't hoard animals, and she's relatively good about not keeping rotting food (note the "relatively"). The things my mother hoards - particularly in the house I grew up in - are so obviously trash. Paper is the biggest culprit. She can't throw away magazines, or newspapers, or any of her college papers or notes from when she went back to school. I knew she loved me, and I knew the paper was trash, so I never felt like she loved the stuff more than me. I'm sure I had moments of wishing that she would dump it all as a show of love for me, but, in general, I don't think this weighed on me too heavily.

Responsibility though...this one I felt / feel. But, well, maybe I'm a bad daughter / person, but I felt / feel responsibility for the places my mother has trashed / is trashing more than I felt / feel responsibility for her. By the time I was in high school I understood the concept of rent, or the amount of money required to own a home, and I was aware that my mom was not paying rent to my grandma. She claims she did, off and on when she could, but clearly she wasn't paying what anyone else would have had to pay to rent that home. As I looked forward to moving out when I reached college, I became consumed with guilt at the idea of leaving the house in that state. I knew it wasn't my fault that it got that way, but I also knew that my mom wasn't going to do anything about it, and so, in my mind, it became my responsibility. When my mom slowly started spending more and more nights at Jack's house, and I eventually did as well, this feeling of responsibility increased. Were we really just going to walk away from a house, full to the brim? Apparently so; my mom seemed to feel no responsibility towards that home. My high school diary is FULL of these thoughts. 

My mom's siblings broke in an dumped everything shortly after I graduated college. I remember when my mom found out and called me in a panic. All I felt was sad that they hadn't thought me adult enough to call me ahead of time and have me help. I had truly failed my responsibility to the house and my grandma. 

I think I could just cut ties with her now if it weren't for Jack. I've never met my father, and while Jack and I aren't very emotionally close (he's not a big talker; it's kind of hard to get close to him), he's been very good to me - and my mom - and I guess he's the closest thing to a father I'll ever have. I feel a responsibility to him. She is a problem, and I can't just walk away and leave her for him to deal with all on his own. I'm also scared shitless of the moment when his patience finally breaks and she ends up on my doorstep, so this sense of responsibility to him isn't entirely selfless. Again, maybe I'm a bad person - already admitted it. 

Sentimental Objects

A year or so ago I was home for a friend's wedding. I have one trunk stored at Jack's house, in the basement (well, it was in the basement, till my mom decided it was in the way - because she needs the entire basement - and had him move it to under a pile of her junk in the garage). It contains ALL of my sentimental objects from childhood to the present. Every time I've been home since leaving to live back east I look through it and reminisce. But if I don't remember why a particular note that contains an inside joke between friends was funny anymore, I throw it out. If I want to add a stack of love notes from a current boyfriend, I cull through my stack of love notes from the last boyfriend and only keep one or two that are particularly special. Every time I throw something away from this trunk my mom howls about what an unfeeling person I am. It's gotten to the point that I carefully destroy things before I throw them away so she won't fish through the trash to rescue old letters to me to keep for herself. Or, I pack things and fly them back with me so that I can dispose of them in my own trash, where I know they will not grow legs and climb out.

So anyways, I was out for a friend's wedding and I was looking through my trunk, and I noticed a bag of clothes nearby. They looked familiar, so I opened the bag up. It was a bag of my old clothes from high school. Nothing particularly special, like a prom dress or anything, just some old sweaters, jeans, etc. No chance they will fit me again, and no chance they ever would have fit my mom. I was surprised they were still around. They must have been things I didn't take to college with me, so I obviously wasn't attached to them. "Can I donate this somewhere Mom? They're my old clothes...I don't think you need to keep my old things on top of your own." I pointed out. "Well, you might have worn them, but since they're your clothes from high school, I probably bought them, so I think that they're mine to decide what to do with, and I want to save them." By high school I actually had a job and bought much of my own clothing at thrift stores, but that's really beside the point; yes, she may have bought some of those clothes...not a reason to hold on to them. I queried, "Do you think I might fit them again at some point? Are you saving them to one day give to my hypothetical future child? Do you have project ideas to use them? Do you think a t-shirt from the late 90s might one day be worth money?" The usual response: "I don't have to justify why I save what I do."

Before moving back I went through all mine and my boyfriend's things and made a hefty donation. I do this every time we move, and sometimes just for fun. No point moving things you haven't used in a while and probably won't start using again. This weekend I'm going to the Maker Faire (a convention with crafts people and DIY technology, etc) with an old friend of mine. We used to go when we were in college, and this is the first time I've been in town for it in six years. Our favorite place to visit there was a giant clothing swap. There are all these silk screen stations and sewing machines to alter clothes you pick up right there. I think the first time we went we spent most of the day there. But, it's a swap, so to get in, you have to bring something to donate to the pile. Since I just moved, I don't have any spare clothes lying around. 

Light bulb! You know where I'm going with this? "Hey mom...you know that bag of my old high school clothes that you wouldn't donate last year that have stayed sitting out on the patio untouched for the last year? Could I possibly take that to Maker Faire so I could get into the swap meet?" No. "What about just some of it?" No. "Why not?"

"Because you'll never be in high school again. Stop pestering me."

So I tried a gentler tactic. "I won't ever be in high school again, but do those clothes" (which I guarantee she hasn't looked at since she bagged them up and put them downstairs) "help you remember the person I was then?" I suggested, "What if you just keep my high school uniform? Or we could go through the bag together and see if a particular piece or two hold particular memories, and donate the rest." No. 

She went so far as to pull out a few of her own pieces of clothing (that still fit her...one blouse that still has tags) to give me for the swap to shut me up about my old high school clothes. I'm glad for anything to leave the house, but is that not ridiculous?

If I told this story to a stranger they might almost think it her answer was sweet. But for a hoarder, EV.ER.Y.THING. is a sentimental object. How does anything hold meaning if everything holds meaning? 

A Place for Everything, and Everything In It's Place

A few nights ago we had a short blackout. My mom pulled out a flashlight from a junk drawer. Days later, the flashlight was still sitting in the bathroom, where she last had it when the power went back on. I put it away this morning. This happens a lot. If she's looking at a book, it doesn't go back on a bookshelf when she's done. It sits on the couch cushion next to her and a pile of other discards grows around it until there's a big mess, which she "deals with" - only when it becomes inconvenient to her - by shoving it all in a bag or box. 

When I first got here, I told her a story about a friend of mine from grad school. Jess is a little bit scattered, but organized in her own way. I would never have been able to borrow notes from her, for example, because they wouldn't have made any sense to me, but you could see that there was a structure present. She was hired to clean and organize the theatre department's prop storage the summer between our first and second year (I have an MA in Theatre Arts). Nobody was supervising her, because Jess is a hard worker. Late in the summer I got a call from Jess. She asked, "Santina, what playwright do you associate most with stoves?" What? Why? "Well, I've organized everything by the playwright I most associate it with; so, like, all the chairs are in the Ionesco room, because he wrote The Chairs." "Um, Jess..." I responded, "does Ward [the prop master] know you're using this...'system'?" 

Ward was pretty pissed when he found out, but to Jess's credit, she knew were everything was right away for the next year. She took big piles of dusty props that were in no order and she sorted like with like - in a system that made sense to her - and put everything on shelves - in a system that made sense to her - and it was visibly much neater, and was easily accessible for her - because the system made sense to her. The point is that she did a lot of work, and she did use a system, it's just that when she graduated a year later nobody else could find anything in prop storage because the system only made sense in Jess's mind. 

I shared this story with my mom soon after I returned home because I wanted to stress that I was there to help her do things in a way that made sense to her. I am a really good organizer, and my systems are more generally logical - other's tend to be able to find their way around a space that I've set up. However, I don't want to force my systems on my mom. I want the mess to be cleaned in a way that makes sense to her, so that she will be able to maintain it. 

Sharing this story with my mom was a mistake. It has since been twisted; any time I move anything I am "imposing my system instead of letting her do it her way." But, no system is not a system. Jess did actual work, with a visually measurable impact, that created more space and made finding things easier (for her). My mom leaves things wherever they land till they are in the way, then she bags them up, shoves them in a corner, and re-buys things because she can't find the things she's already bought. This is not a system. 

Baby Steps

This blog is turning out to me more negative than I had hoped when I began it. I don't know why, but when I moved home from the Midwest, I had really really high hopes that my mom and I would achieve some kind of breakthrough and I would be able to be a positive force in her life, and show her the joy of a clean living space. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been away for six years and hadn't come face to face with my mom's stubbornness as often in those years, or the fact that I as so miserable in Chicago that I started to see home with overly rose tinted glasses. At any rate, I was sure that I was going to have the one COH blog that was happily recording progress stories.

Things have not gone according to plan. But, on the eve of Mother's Day, I thought I'd take a break from the anger and frustration to celebrate a tiny baby step I saw my mother make the other day. My mom has been recycling a good amount of paper the last few weeks - filling the bin. For someone who has a particular issue with paper, this is a step in and of itself. In particular, the other day I saw her recycle half of a ripped up Christmas cracker (those tubes with little goodies inside and you pull on either end of the paper to open them). Why is this significant? Because it wasn't an old receipt that you couldn't read the numbers on anymore, or a TV guide so old that some of the shows aren't on the air anymore; it was a solid 6" x 4" ish piece of pretty gold paper with an embossed design and embedded glitter. "You could do something with that."

For a woman who refuses to throw away an expired coupon in the kitchen junk drawer because it features a one inch picture of the Campbell's soup kid in a graduation cap (an old version of their "labels for education" logo) that is "so cute!...You could cut it out and do something with it," throwing away a solid scrap of quality paper is a step.

Happy Mother's Day to all those out there who may be struggling with their own mothers as well!

Drug of Choice

I don't know a whole lot about dealing with a drug addict - fortunately I've never had to. But I have a feeling that you don't pat their hand and say "there, there...I know this is hard. I won't take your drugs away from you; you just slowly get rid of them on your own time when you're ready." A hoarder is addicted to stuff. Why is it not ok to take it away from them, even slowly? Let them experience a little withdrawal. Why is the "treatment" for this addiction so catered to the addict's "feelings"? 

I've been reading a lot of other blogs by "COH" (Children of Hoarders), and I read a really powerful entry last night on http://www.hoardersson.com. It was an entry about COH "talking points," or points about how a child of a hoarder is affected by their parent's disorder, as a child, and long into adulthood. 

He writes: "As a final thought, children of hoarders sometimes are portrayed as being inappropriately angry, impatient, or otherwise unsupported of family members who are undergoing treatment for hoarding. Professionals, in particular, are reminded that many children of hoarders have suffered a lifetime of neglect and abuse and are desperately in need of support. In such cases, expecting COHs to be patient and respectful participants in the treatment of hoarders may be likened to expecting victims of sexual abuse to help their abusers to get treatment, without acknowledging the damage done to the victims, much less getting treatment and support for them."

I've read so much about forming a caring support team for your hoarding loved one. In Digging Out they even have a sample scenario where a hoarder's landlord patiently joins a "harm reduction team" aimed at making his tenant's crowded home easier for her to maneuver...YEAH RIGHT! Any landlord who knew their tenant was a hoarder would evict them - as they rightly should. All the info out there is about forgiving your hoarding loved one for past harm and gently doing things on their terms to make their life easier. Reading the quote above was a breath of fresh air. It was such a relief to read about hoarding "treatment" from the point of view of a COH. 

Happier Times

We had a rough morning. Mom's still mad that I cleaned up in the kitchen. She's still mad that I am interfering with her TV viewing because I want to sleep. I think she proposed to Jack that she box everything in the bedroom up, probably asking him to buy her more large plastic bins, and put it downstairs so I could have a place to sleep, and she could watch TV late into the night. She pulled him outside for this conversation, but bits of it came up in the ensuing fight the three of us got into. 

I lost my patience. I kept the yelling and swearing to a minimum, but I said some mean things. Except, they weren't mean so much as true. She said she hated how Jack and I "gang up on her." Jack, ever diplomatic tried to reassure her that he and I were not a team. "Fuck that," I responded. "We are a team. We want the same thing - a comfortable and presentable house for everyone that lives here. Maybe you won't stand up for yourself, but I will. It's your house and I hate seeing her fill it with shit." Ok, maybe it wasn't necessary for me to stand up for a grown man; he can stand up for himself if he wants.

She left to tutor. Later in the day I pulled down the photo albums of my childhood. All these photos were in a box at the old house. Many years after we had abandoned it, I got the idea to dig them out and put them in an album for my mom for mother's day. I was in college then. I took the bus back to our old house and snuck in the bathroom window. I was shocked by what I saw. The entire bathroom floor had sunken in in our absence. There were mushrooms growing around the toilet. I walked around the little paths of the house for a few minutes, freshly overwhelmed by it all. I saw mouse droppings, but thankfully didn't encounter a mouse (there were no mice when we lived there - lots of bugs, but nothing bigger). I found the box of photos and got out as quick as I could. I took the risk of leaving through the front door and being spotted because I was scared to cross the bathroom floor again. 

Looking at those photos now is such a mix of emotions. There's a relatively clean house in the background of them, but I never remember it looking like this. Apart from a collection of school portraits, the photos end when I'm three or four. There's family in our living room for birthdays, laughing and eating cake. There's me taking a bath in the kitchen sink, and you can see the counters. There's my mom and I, happy and smiling, like any other parent and child. Where did it all go so wrong? Why couldn't anybody stop it before it got out of control? Why can't we get back there? She was clearly happier then; why won't she even try to get back there?