Living with a Hoarder is Hard Even After De-Hoarding

Good lord. So I have spent the past year or so in a CFS relapse, not useful for much. I admit things got out of control again. Things got way out of control again because I just didn’t have the energy to deal with anything. But I am starting to claw my way back out of that and regain sanity and well…. it makes me want to scream if I am perfectly honest.

I don’t at any point want to live in filth but it got that way over the months as I fell farther and farther behind. I couldn’t understand why everything was getting so bad… I’m only one person… and yet it seemed like nothing was ever done-done, only half done. What was going on?!

Over the past two weeks, as I have felt better, I have started to haul ass as best I can and get this place cleaned up. And it seemed like everything was just crazy. I’d do all the dishes and then more would appear from seemingly nowhere. I’d do the laundry and the same thing would happen. And the more I cleaned the more I realized at the bottom of every problematic pile was some sort of starting point.

The most obvious of which was a giant Tupperware tub sitting in front of my wardrobe. It’s been there for months. I had no idea what was in or it or why it was there because I didn’t put it there. But my subconscious coping mechanism to my mother’s hoarding is apparently to just go around things like they were always there. I don’t even know I’m doing it. But here’s what happened with that one clusterfuck. Because it was in front of my wardrobe I stopped using my wardrobe. Laundry piled up in the laundry room and everywhere else because nothing was being put back. Meanwhile on top of the box trash and random clutter piled up making the blockage all the worse.

So after cleaning all that up what was in the box? WELL. It was a box full of mop heads because my mother thought that’d be super useful in helping me clean up down here… months ago… I threw them out. They belong to a mop that was already broken at the time she gifted them to me. Even if it wasn’t I never would have used them because they were gross used mop heads. They’d already lived a long life mopping up dog piss from her little bundles of joy who think they’re too fucking special to do their business outside. NO. JUST NO.

And I found this over and over. It was as if at the bottom of every traffic jam was some obstacle she’d placed there. No wonder I have spent the past six months overwhelmed to the point of absolute paralysis. It took me a long time, too long, but I am getting ahold of it and I am not going to let this happen again. I am going to maintain a space clean enough to wander around barefooted in every room. That’s totally reasonable! It shouldn’t be this hard!

I remember years ago when I was a teenager I fled into the basement to get away from my mother’s hoarding and to get some damn privacy. I never thought I’d be back here in my thirties, especially after moving out once, but here I am – a product of the body that hates me – so I have to make it work. Back then she’d bring furniture she was no longer using down here – a tsunami of chairs migrated into my room at one point, then it was old beat up tables – many now that fill one of the several sheds outside. I’d be going around doing my own thing and CHAIR. Why is there a random chair here? And then TABLE. Obviously they didn’t match. I’ve managed to stop the influx of furniture down here but she still collects it for herself trying to find the perfect match for her needs… which she still insists is a problem of storage. It makes me want to pull my hair out.

Still… after finding my countertops and floors again I am have refocused myself into fixing this place up – putting the molding around the edges of the room, and door frames, and handles and knobs on the cabinets. I want to repaint the walls and just make it look… nice… down here. I want to live somewhere I am not embarrassed to bring people. Not that I would. My mother’s still a little too involved in my life for me to want to but just the option would be a relief for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future but I am trying to keep my hopes up and just plow through. There has to be light at the end of the tunnel at some point.

I’m still looking for properties I can afford. There isn’t much. I’m still trying to start earning an income… writing, drawing comics, selling art, anything. At this point literally nothing is working and if I am honest it never has. Am I dreamer or just desperate to find something I can do with a body that barely functions?

All I know if I can’t stay here forever. It’s crushing my soul. This house depressed everyone who lives in it even the animals. It’s why I have for a long time jokingly said it’s cursed. It’s because of this that I have to remain positive, happy, and making progress because every fucking time I slip so does my mother, and then her husband, and then there’s three people in the house doing nothing but sitting around. I don’t want or need this extra responsibility. And who do I get to look to to cheer me up and keep me motivated?! Oh yes, no one. Because I have no local friends. Because I can’t bring anyone home or work a steady job where I can meet people in the first place. Something has to change. I am crawling out of my own skin here.

**The illustrations for today’s post come from my weekly web comic Glen the Caterpillar which you can see more of at www.GlenTheCaterpiller.com. As well as a photo of the moon I took while taking out the trash.