My mom used to be a clean freak when I was small. And it is odd that she still retained a lot of that even when she was hoarding. She was fine that we had hardly any place to sit because of all the stuff, but god forbid you spill coffee and her dark colored carpet.
I am trying to think, far back. It’s hard. I remember once she was laying in bed all day and I decided to clean. I think I was 9. There were already a few boxes in the bedroom. So I stacked all that up and stacked all my things up. It was a one bedroom small apartment and I didn’t have my own room or any space for myself really. I thought I did a good job. It stayed that way for a while. And every 5 months I’d do the same thing again, it felt like. To keep the stuff at bay.
We moved from that place when the landlords harassment towards my mother had become unbearable. He ended up dying a year after we left and his wife said “good riddance” And sold all his crap. One of the scariest memories o have if this man, was waking up next to my mom on a weekend in the late afternoon. I had trouble breathing and was incredibly groggy. Carbon monoxide. I heard his car in the garage below us. It had been running for hours with the garage door closed. I honestly think he was trying to kill us. It wouldn’t have been the first or last time he tired to hurt me or my mom. So, we had to get out. We literally threw out stuff into boxes and out the windows, we couldn’t get out fast enough.
I had been begging my grandfather for a year to let us move into my great grandmothers unoccupied house. All her things were still there and the place would get robbed regularly because it was obvious no one lived there. All her jewelry was stolen and some other things. Eventually, after me begging for a year and my grandmother scolding him, he let us move in there.
It was really cramped. It was fine when just her stuff was there, but it was.... almost unlivable when we arrived. Besides the house being in bad repair, there just wasn’t enough space. I got the small 8 by 7 foot “den” as my first room. Mom never helped me get a bed or even a mattress for that room so I always had to sleep in her bed next to her. I tried to keep my stuff nice and meet to the best of my ability. For the most that place was clean. A bit cramped, but okay. The bad thing about it though, was my grandmothers bedroom.
My mother has made the bed be disassembled for storage. The bedroom became the storage. There were boxes to the ceiling. It was, had been, a beautiful bedroom. With sliding glass doors facing the back yard, and a windows facing the back porch. All my mothers stuff went into that room. And it’s odd to think of it now, because none of it was my stuff. The cat litter box was also kept in that room so it smelled of cat piss and stuff. I really didn’t realize how much of a problem those boxes would be. I really believed she was going to diet through all the stuff like a normal person. I was very wrong.
My grandfather sold the place not long after we moved in. We ended up only being able to stay a year because the new owner or the rent to 2 fucking grand a month. This was back 3 years before 2010. 2k was still unheard of for that area back then. He was the definition of a slum lord and would call screaming and yelling slurs at my grandfather during the sales process. He was desperate to sell so he put up with it and also sold the property under its value.g mom planned to get out of there ASAP so that both herself and my grandfather wouldn’t have to deal With this guy anymore. When we did move, it was to a smaller place that was 1 bedroom.
A while before we had moved, the storage place my mother kept all her old stuff was closing, so she spent a month going through stuff and throwing out stuff. (supposedly). A lot of it ends up in the bedroom storage room and I have no idea how much of it was there after or before we moved in there. It always seemed like a huge mess.
When we moved, all those dirty, smelly boxes came with us. This apartment had a living room, no dining room, a very small kitchen and a moderate bathroom. (Both kitchen and bathroom were “one butt” rooms) the bedroom was small. This place was under 500 square feet. I was 13 and not really a small child anymore. But I still had no where to exist in this space.
I wasn’t there the day the move happened. I stayed with a friend overnight so I’d be out if the way and all. When I got there the next day, what I saw floored me. There was almost no room to sit. The living room was full of boxes and things all the way to the ceiling. It was like, looking over the furniture that was available to sit on. There was absolutely no room. My mother said she couldn’t afford a space at a storage facility for all this stuff. At that age I believed her. Not anymore there’s no excuse for how we lived in that little hellhole. The boxes were filthy. Absolutely filthy. And they never left. Over the years the numbers became somewhat less, and some of the furniture was begrudgingly let go of. But for the entirety of living there, all 10 years, that space was unusable. I still have pictures of it.
When I would try to get my mom to Go through that stuff, she would become incredibly angry. I knew it wasn’t normal. She would point the blame at me, “you have boxes too” I had two boxes out of I have no idea how many of hers. I could get to them because they were under no less than 10 of her boxes. Hey nearly blocked access to the kitchen. They blocked the windows. Whenever I did get her to go through her stuff, it was always saved to be used for later. Some of it is still on her possession, being saved for later. It’s been 3 years since we moved form that love and she still has some of that crap.
Whenever she would go through stuff and throw stuff out, for a moment it was like she came out do it. She would feel so relieved and she couldn’t believe how easy it was. That was, after she fought me took and nail like a screaming toddler in the depth of a tantrum over finally giving in over having to throw away shit she hasn’t even touched it looked at in years that was absolutely FILTHY. I’m talking covered in black dust with dead spiders inside and their cobwebs the dead bodies of those weevils all over everything. It was bad.
By the last year she had reduced the boxes a lot, but it was still more than normal amount of crap to just hold onto. We moved, because of one of her fuck ups, and to get away from some stalking. That’s a whole other story in itself for another day. But we packed in 3 weeks, I made her throw out a lot because I would be famines if I’d be carrying all that garbage down 4 flights of stairs and into a new home.
So, we moved into a small house. It had 2 bedrooms, which were small, but I was ecstatic to have a room at all. I fight hard to make out search last longer, just so I could have my own room. Finally at the age of 22, I had my own room. I claimed the slightly bigger one(literally bigger by two feet) since all my things had to fit into one space and she had the rest of the house.
This didn’t sit well with mother dearest. I haven’t posted her full history on here yet, but by god, I thought adopting a dog would make her change. It didn’t. I thought moving would make her change. It didn’t. Within the first couple months of having the dog (5 months before we moved) she assaulted me. Tried to strangle me. After we moved, I was isolated and her shit got so much fucking worse. I’ll make poss about that later. Some of it is definitely llama feed.
I immediately knew things would not change for the better when she got josh with me having directed the movers to put my things and only my things on my new first room. She insisted over and over again that we should have put the boxes™️ in that room. That I could continue to sleep with he on her bed. FUCK. NO.
It wasn’t just the boxes that we had freshly packed specifically for the move. It was her mass of filthy that’s he felt deserved a too more than a living breathing adult who FUCKING NEEDS SPACE TO EXIST. It turned into many countless screaming matches. I would not back down. It evolved into her saying SHE deserved that room more than me. That room had a closet big enough to store all my clothes and art/school supplies. I told her if she wanted more space, because her tollmdodnt have enough, she could go through those boxes FINALLY and MAKE herself some space, as she literally had the whole house for her crap and I had a ring room for all of mine.
The fact that I had never had a bedroom of my own my whole life played into her ridiculous argument. I didn’t have a bed, a mattress, or even a dresser. All the things that people have, I had absolutely none of that. My grandfather could understand why it took me so long to pay for their things on my life. I was literally furnishing things for myself that most people have from a very young age. I had none of it. I had my books, my clothes, my book case, a small vintage schoolchildren’s desk from the 20’s. That’s it. Those things took up so little space.
In the apartment I had kept all my supplies and books on and in the desk, on the bookcase, and on a sofa that doubled as my study area, my eating area, and lounging area. It was ants to keep clean. It was my fault it wasn’t clean. Even though all her useless stuff gathered dust and made the apartment filthy. I remember always telling me I didn’t clean enough. I now think it’s because she was projecting onto me her own problems. She was hoarding. There wasn’t much I could do to keep things clean. It was all HER stuff.
Back to the new room. She wanted the room for herself and hated that I made her put her boxes™️ in the dining room. The dinning room remained unused, designated for these boxes for nearly 3 and a half years. There’s still boxes in there to this day. The only reason there are less is because yet again, I made her clean. Some of t because I was tired of looking at it and the other portion of cleaning because we were having my SO over for thanksgiving dinner and I would be damned if we didn’t have a proper place to eat. I did smog the cleaning and arranged her books. The safe part of the stuff she had now is mostly decent stuff. She just won’t go through it or clean it or fare for Amy of it at all. Junk remains but she lets that sit as well.
I remember when she tried to make my room into her peeps l trash storage, she tried to say “it will only be like that for a few weeks and hen you can have it” I knew it was a lie. She still hasn’t gone through her crap. I can’t imagine those years of being there, if I hasn’t stick to my guns on this. I would of never had my own room.
It didn’t stop there. I trie to keep my stuff in order while I didn’t have any furnishings for my room. But it was hard. I love four of trash bags for my clothes and anything she I needed. My books were stacked and so was all my paperwork. It wasn’t the most organized, but it wasn’t dirty. She would often go in there screaming about it being filthy and threatening to destroy my things. I would tell her m, if she didn’t like it, she could help me buy furnishings, or stay the hell out of my room. She flew off the handle at that. Full on Narcissistic injury meltdowns.
When I got my gist job and bought my mattress, all I had was the mattress. But I loved it. I cried a bit. For the first time in my life I didn’t have to sleep next to her anymore. (There’s stories of emotional incest or covert incest that I could get into. Maybe another time in another post)
She never stopped trying to take that room from me. I got my first bed at age 23 and it literally never stopped. She would come in, look at my closet, and say I wasn’t using it and I didn’t have anything in there and she should have it. She would put she dirty clothes and her trash in there. I would put it back on her room and shove her trash and dirty clothes back into the right places, when she wasn’t around.
I don’t love there anymore. Bit a lot of my stuff is still there. Whenever I am there, she makes snide remarks to me about how little I clean and how dirty the room is. She says the same thing to my SO, and claims “she never cleans” like she’s trying to get me to agree with him. He knows I clean a LOT. I can’t stand hanging boxes of Amy kind on the house. I never want to live that way again.
It was only recently in the last head I came to terms with my mom being a hoarder. I’m still discovering all the ways it impacts my life. From a young age, I was and have been so used to having no space to exist in, that I have no idea how to live on the space I do have now. Me and SO have a decent sized house to ourselves. I struggle to keep my things organized now. Sometimes I can’t even arrange my paperwork. It’s like my. Roam can’t even think that far. My brain only knows how to cramp things into large piles and hope for the best. I don’t have to do that anymore and I don’t know how to live now. It makes me feel like I’m going insane. I know I’ll figure it out. I know I have a right to exist in this space. I know I deserve this pace more than trash does. Maybe one day my brain will catch up.
Submitted September 06, 2018 at 12:26PM by RunawayGal https://ift.tt/2Cl2BB0
No comments:
Post a Comment