{"id":1019,"date":"2019-11-16T17:23:56","date_gmt":"2019-11-16T17:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2019-11-16T17:25:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-16T17:25:45","slug":"living-with-a-hoarder-is-hard-even-after-de-hoarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/2019\/11\/16\/living-with-a-hoarder-is-hard-even-after-de-hoarding\/","title":{"rendered":"Living with a Hoarder is Hard Even After De-Hoarding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Good\nlord. So I have spent the past year or so in a CFS relapse, not useful for\nmuch. I admit things got out of control again. Things got way <\/em>out of control again because\nI just didn’t have the energy to deal with anything. But I am starting to claw\nmy way back out of that and regain sanity and well…. it makes me want to\nscream if I am perfectly honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ndon’t at any point want to live in filth but it got that way over the months as\nI fell farther and farther behind. I couldn’t understand why everything was\ngetting so bad… I’m only one person… and yet it seemed like nothing was\never done-done, only half done. What was going on?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Even Boris was crying.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over\nthe past two weeks, as I have felt better, I have started to haul ass as best I\ncan and get this place cleaned up. And it seemed like everything was\njust crazy. I\u2019d do all the dishes and then more would appear from seemingly\nnowhere. I\u2019d do the laundry and the same thing would happen. And the more I\ncleaned the more I realized at the bottom of every problematic pile was some\nsort of starting point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmost obvious of which was a giant Tupperware tub sitting in front of my\nwardrobe. It\u2019s been there for months. I had no idea what was in or it or why it\nwas there because I didn\u2019t put it there. <\/em>But my subconscious coping\nmechanism to my mother\u2019s hoarding is apparently to just go around things like\nthey were always there. I don\u2019t even know I\u2019m doing it. But here\u2019s what\nhappened with that one clusterfuck. Because it was in front of my wardrobe I\nstopped using my wardrobe. Laundry piled up in the laundry room and everywhere\nelse because nothing was being put back. Meanwhile on top of the box trash and\nrandom clutter piled up making the blockage all the worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So\nafter cleaning all that up what was in the box? WELL. It was a box full of mop\nheads because my mother thought that\u2019d be super useful in helping me clean up\ndown here\u2026 months ago\u2026 I threw them out. They belong to a mop that was already\nbroken at the time she gifted them to me. Even if it wasn\u2019t I never would have\nused them because they were gross used mop heads. <\/em>They\u2019d already lived a\nlong life mopping up dog piss from her little bundles of joy who think they\u2019re too\nfucking special to do their business outside. NO. JUST NO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nI found this over and over. It was as if at the bottom of every traffic jam was\nsome obstacle she\u2019d placed there. No wonder I have spent the past six months overwhelmed\nto the point of absolute paralysis. It took me a long time, too long, but I am\ngetting ahold of it and I am not going to let this happen again. I am going to\nmaintain a space clean enough to wander around barefooted in every room. That\u2019s\ntotally reasonable! It shouldn\u2019t be this hard! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\nremember years ago when I was a teenager I fled into the basement to get away\nfrom my mother\u2019s hoarding and to get some damn privacy. I never thought I\u2019d be\nback here in my thirties, especially after moving out once, but here I am \u2013 a product\nof the body that hates me \u2013 so I have to make it work. Back then she\u2019d bring furniture\nshe was no longer using down here \u2013 a tsunami of chairs migrated into my room\nat one point, then it was old beat up tables \u2013 many now that fill one of the\nseveral sheds outside. I\u2019d be going around doing my own thing and CHAIR. Why is\nthere a random chair here? And then TABLE. Obviously they didn\u2019t match. I\u2019ve\nmanaged to stop the influx of furniture down here but she still collects it for\nherself trying to find the perfect match for her needs\u2026 which she still insists\nis a problem of storage. It makes me want to pull my hair out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still\u2026\nafter finding my countertops and floors again I am have refocused myself into\nfixing this place up \u2013 putting the molding around the edges of the room, and\ndoor frames, and handles and knobs on the cabinets. I want to repaint the walls\nand just make it look\u2026 nice\u2026 down here. I want to live somewhere I am not embarrassed\nto bring people. Not that I would. My mother\u2019s still a little too involved in\nmy life for me to want to but just the option would be a relief for me. I don\u2019t\nknow what\u2019s going to happen in the future but I am trying to keep my hopes up\nand just plow through. There has to be light at the end of the tunnel at some\npoint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m\nstill looking for properties I can afford. There isn\u2019t much. I\u2019m still trying\nto start earning an income\u2026 writing, drawing comics, selling art, anything. <\/em>At\nthis point literally nothing is working and if I am honest it never has. Am I dreamer\nor just desperate to find something I can do with a body that barely functions?\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All I know if I can\u2019t stay here forever. It\u2019s crushing my soul. This house depressed everyone who lives in it even the animals. It\u2019s why I have for a long time jokingly said it\u2019s cursed. It\u2019s 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\u2019s three people in the house doing nothing but sitting around. I don\u2019t 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**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<\/a>. As well as a photo of the moon I took while taking out the trash. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when I got my own space cleaned something came along to fuck it up again… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[259,268,1],"tags":[34,41,45,326,554,101,102,553,140,474],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living-with-a-hoarder","category-living-with-chronic-fatigue-syndrome","category-uncategorized","tag-cfs","tag-chronic-fatigue","tag-chronic-illness","tag-clutter","tag-health-problems","tag-hoarder","tag-hoarding","tag-how-hoarding-happens","tag-living-with-a-hoarder","tag-relapse","wpcat-259-id","wpcat-268-id","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/11\/gloomy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paOpxN-gr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1027,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}