I've spent the last couple of months struggling with how to be a good daughter to my bipolar, wildly inept, crazy-making hoarding mother while remaining sane and healthy. After much mental anguish, several self-help books, and lots of therapy, I have come to the following conclusions:
1. Our culture has no real archetype or paradigm for bad daughters. Seriously. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Lizzie Borden. Given that I'm planning to figure this whole thing out well before I have the urge to hack my mother up with a hatchet, that's not exactly the role model I was looking for. (On the plus side, Googling "bad daughter" led me to The Bad Daughter: Betrayal and Confession by Julie Hilden, which is quite an interesting read.)
2. Although I've known this one for awhile, recent interactions with my mother have driven this point home once again. She isn't going to change. As much as I deserved a tuned-in, consistently caring mother as a child, she wasn't that person then and she isn't now. Harsh as it sounds, she is and always will be damaged and narcissistic. She is unable to see or acknowledge how her behavior affects other people and will continue to blame others (read: me) for her failures in relationships and in life.
3. She seems incapable of sustaining long-term relationships, whether with family members, friends, or her own children. She drives people away with her neediness, anger, narcissism, and social ineptitude. She doesn't know how to make and keep friends. Does it make me sad that my mother is lonely? You bet. Does it occasionally twist my stomach into a knot or two when I think of her dying alone, as seems likely? Damn straight. But am I responsible for this state of affairs, or for making her any less lonely? Nope. That's on her, not me.
4. And for the grand finale of all conclusions, one that surprised even me -- how I can be a good daughter to my mother while still taking care of myself? I can't. I can't be a good, care-taking daughter to her and still be happy and healthy. And given that I'm not willing to spend any more of my life sacrificing myself for her well-being, at least for now it means that I have given myself permission to be a bad daughter. As a wise friend once pointed out, I can be a bad daughter without being a bad person. What that means in practice, I'm not so sure. But I do know that just having this realization is huge and life-changing and just the beginning.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
Aargh!
This will come as a shock to no one who grew up in a hoarded home, but I did not grow up in a household where people knew how to set or respect healthy boundaries. When issues arose, the options were to ignore them (doesn't that make it go away?), pretend you don't have any needs (What? No, really, that doesn't bother me at all. Really), or just bottle it up inside until you explode for no apparent reason. (That last one is even more awesome if you end up screaming at someone for an infraction completely unrelated to what you're actually mad about.)
As an adult, I'm still working on the whole setting healthy boundaries deal, at least with my mother. With other people, I'm fine, given that when you discuss an issue with most people they're willing to work things out to both people's satisfaction. (Or, in the case of compromise, to both people's mild dissatisfaction. But at least it gets worked out.)
But when you try to work things out with someone who's profoundly dysfunctional, setting boundaries doesn't go so well. If I bring something up with my mother, it gets turned around into being my problem and my fault. To preserve what relationship we have left, I've kind of thrown in the towel on calling my mom on her crap. Doing otherwise makes me too crazy.
Until recently, that is. At the moment, I've had just about up to here (picture my hand waving somewhere about six feet above my head) with dealing with my mother's passive aggression/hoarding/hypochondria/dysfunction. The thing is, she's getting older and I know that her care will, at some point, become my responsibility.
Which brings me back to the boundaries thing. At previous stages in life, I'd worked out how much distance I could keep from my mother to maintain my own sanity. As she gets older, I have to figure out anew how to set boundaries with a woman who neither understands nor respects them. How is it possible to take care of someone who's lost her mind without losing mine?
As an adult, I'm still working on the whole setting healthy boundaries deal, at least with my mother. With other people, I'm fine, given that when you discuss an issue with most people they're willing to work things out to both people's satisfaction. (Or, in the case of compromise, to both people's mild dissatisfaction. But at least it gets worked out.)
But when you try to work things out with someone who's profoundly dysfunctional, setting boundaries doesn't go so well. If I bring something up with my mother, it gets turned around into being my problem and my fault. To preserve what relationship we have left, I've kind of thrown in the towel on calling my mom on her crap. Doing otherwise makes me too crazy.
Until recently, that is. At the moment, I've had just about up to here (picture my hand waving somewhere about six feet above my head) with dealing with my mother's passive aggression/hoarding/hypochondria/dysfunction. The thing is, she's getting older and I know that her care will, at some point, become my responsibility.
Which brings me back to the boundaries thing. At previous stages in life, I'd worked out how much distance I could keep from my mother to maintain my own sanity. As she gets older, I have to figure out anew how to set boundaries with a woman who neither understands nor respects them. How is it possible to take care of someone who's lost her mind without losing mine?
Sunday, October 7, 2012
And then I stuck a pen in my eye. Again.
I might need to talk to my mother less. I've been trying to talk to her once a week or so, which sounds lovely except for it generally makes me feel (at best) really annoyed or (at worst) homicidal. Usually, this has something to do with my desperate struggle to filter what I'm actually thinking so that it doesn't come out of my mouth, as that typically would not be particularly constructive. Her profound lack of insight into herself and the way she relates to other people also make me have a sudden urge toward violence. So far, I have successfully avoided actually doing anything of the sort, but the following three conversations have made me come pretty close.
Conversation #1:
Mom: I've decided that I should start trying to work on some of my issues in therapy.
Me (internal monologue): Wait, you've been in therapy for FIVE YEARS! What the hell have you been talking about all that time?
Me (actually talking, and taking a deep breath while wishing desperately for a vodka and tonic): Well, that sounds like a fine idea.
Conversation #2:
Mom: My therapist wants me to tell her how I'm the same and different from other people in our family. I don't really know, so I was hoping you could help me with that.
Me (internal monologue): Well, for starters, the rest of us have enough insight to be able to complete that assignment all by ourselves. Secondly, none of us are crazy. Or hoarders.
Me (aloud): Ummm....
Conversation #3:
Mom (giant sigh): I'm trying to get rid of some things. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I've been collecting adorable baby things for a few years now and have a couple of boxes of them. But now that you're divorced, I don't know if I'll ever even have any grandkids.... (another big sigh)
Me (internal monologue, while trying to figure out if it's possible to actually reach through the phone and slap someone): What the fuck? Did you actually just say that out loud? And when did my leaving my damaging and incredibly unhappy marriage become all about you?
Me (out loud, through gritted teeth): Yeah, you should just get rid of those.
If I had any of these conversations with someone else, I could filter what I was thinking into something reasonably socially appropriate and actually have an honest dialogue with them. With my mom, though, it somehow always gets twisted on its head so what she says becomes my problem. ("I didn't mean that at all! Why are you so sensitive?") This negates any pesky possibility of a healthy dialogue (read: mature, adult relationship) while also providing a wealth of opportunities for me to exercise my willpower by not actually sticking a pen in my eye. See? There really is a bright side to everything.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Childhood memories? What childhood memories?
I was almost an adult before I realized that it was strange
that I can’t remember much of my childhood. The normal state of affairs is
not to have a large, fuzzy blank between the ages
of, say, 3 and 13. It's disconcerting not to be able to trust your own memory. It's even worse to have people recount stories that you don't remember AT ALL, even though you were there. On occasion, my father will mention something traumatic that happened when I was a teen or tween and I can't recall it in the slightest. Given that a big chunk of what I do remember is either upsetting or just plain weird, I always kind of figured I was repressing memories. It's a bit disturbing to think that all those memories might bob to the surface of my mind one day, as I have already spent enough on therapy to install an Olympic-sized swimming pool in my shrink's backyard. Or maybe just send him on a really nice vacation. But I digress.
Recently, though, my therapist explained something that made me feel much better about the whole deal. Apparently, most parents interact with their children in a way that helps them make sense of the world. (What? You mean other kids don't have to figure it all out for themselves as they go along? Damn, that must be nice. Not that I'm bitter.) These repeated interactions, where your parents help you process the events of your young life, also help you to encode memories. I never really had anyone to consistently help me with, well, anything. Forget having anyone who could help me make sense of my world. I lived in a world that didn't make sense for anyone else, either. And so where a child with more support would have processed events and encoded them into memories, I just lived through events and then forgot them.
For me, this explanation was kind of a relief. I was already well aware that I didn't have anyone who could really help shepherd me through my growing-up years, so that didn't exactly come as a shock. I'll definitely take that explanation over feeling like I have all of these unremembered traumas circling below the surface, just waiting to float up and bite me. Awesome it is not -- but I'll take what I can get.
Recently, though, my therapist explained something that made me feel much better about the whole deal. Apparently, most parents interact with their children in a way that helps them make sense of the world. (What? You mean other kids don't have to figure it all out for themselves as they go along? Damn, that must be nice. Not that I'm bitter.) These repeated interactions, where your parents help you process the events of your young life, also help you to encode memories. I never really had anyone to consistently help me with, well, anything. Forget having anyone who could help me make sense of my world. I lived in a world that didn't make sense for anyone else, either. And so where a child with more support would have processed events and encoded them into memories, I just lived through events and then forgot them.
For me, this explanation was kind of a relief. I was already well aware that I didn't have anyone who could really help shepherd me through my growing-up years, so that didn't exactly come as a shock. I'll definitely take that explanation over feeling like I have all of these unremembered traumas circling below the surface, just waiting to float up and bite me. Awesome it is not -- but I'll take what I can get.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
And then I stuck a pen in my eye
I just had one of those crazy-making conversations with my mother. You know, the kind where she pushes all of your buttons the way that only your mother can, making you so crazy that you would stick a pen in your eye if it would only help you get off the phone faster?
I did manage to narrowly avoid stabbing myself with any blunt instruments (or sharp ones, for that matter), solely by virtue of the fact that I managed to actually hang up the phone a mere 15 minutes into the discussion. This was shortly after working our way through her recurring conversational themes:
1. When I get my life together, I will... (choose any random ongoing desire and insert here).
2. Because God says that I am right about... (insert conservative political position/religious belief here)
3. Your father... (insert overly dramatic sigh and explanation of how he has so wretchedly and evilly wronged her in the past)
4. The last people I hired to help me... (insert story about how personal organizer/roofer/contractor/dog walker has wronged her as well)
5. I'm organizing the house and I don't know why I can't just get it finished this time.
These five topics, in one permutation or another, sprinkle every. single. conversation. Seriously. Every single conversation that I have with my mother. She is the only person I know who returns repeatedly and frequently to the same themes in her conversations, very often even using the exact same verbiage over and over (when I get my life together...).
This verbal stuckness very much reflects the stuckness that she has in life. She has such chronic good intentions about getting the house cleaned and organized, but is utterly unable to do so. She also has the classic hoarder lack of insight as to why this might be. She also has a markedly inflexible belief system, which ranges from life-dominating religious dogma to consistently viewing herself as a victim.
I understand that, as a hoarder, her brain works differently from the way that mine does. She is so mired in her belongings in part because of this lack of insight and inability to process information in a way that leads to making good decisions. The rest of the script, though, continues to baffle me. Every time we talk on the phone, no matter what we're talking about, most of her five themes play a prominent role in the conversation. I have no idea if this is an issue common to hoarders, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Does anyone else have a similar, I-can't-let-go-of-my-script experience when conversing with a hoarder? Because seriously, if I have to sit through one more of these conversations, I might actually stick a pen in my eye.
I did manage to narrowly avoid stabbing myself with any blunt instruments (or sharp ones, for that matter), solely by virtue of the fact that I managed to actually hang up the phone a mere 15 minutes into the discussion. This was shortly after working our way through her recurring conversational themes:
1. When I get my life together, I will... (choose any random ongoing desire and insert here).
2. Because God says that I am right about... (insert conservative political position/religious belief here)
3. Your father... (insert overly dramatic sigh and explanation of how he has so wretchedly and evilly wronged her in the past)
4. The last people I hired to help me... (insert story about how personal organizer/roofer/contractor/dog walker has wronged her as well)
5. I'm organizing the house and I don't know why I can't just get it finished this time.
These five topics, in one permutation or another, sprinkle every. single. conversation. Seriously. Every single conversation that I have with my mother. She is the only person I know who returns repeatedly and frequently to the same themes in her conversations, very often even using the exact same verbiage over and over (when I get my life together...).
This verbal stuckness very much reflects the stuckness that she has in life. She has such chronic good intentions about getting the house cleaned and organized, but is utterly unable to do so. She also has the classic hoarder lack of insight as to why this might be. She also has a markedly inflexible belief system, which ranges from life-dominating religious dogma to consistently viewing herself as a victim.
I understand that, as a hoarder, her brain works differently from the way that mine does. She is so mired in her belongings in part because of this lack of insight and inability to process information in a way that leads to making good decisions. The rest of the script, though, continues to baffle me. Every time we talk on the phone, no matter what we're talking about, most of her five themes play a prominent role in the conversation. I have no idea if this is an issue common to hoarders, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Does anyone else have a similar, I-can't-let-go-of-my-script experience when conversing with a hoarder? Because seriously, if I have to sit through one more of these conversations, I might actually stick a pen in my eye.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Hoarding and guns don't mix
The thing about growing up in a completely crazy family is that, no matter how nuts everything is, it's still your reality. As a child, you don't really have the perspective to know how much your family is different from others, even if you know that it is. And even as an adult, although I am completely aware that my family was waaaaaay far along the dysfunctional spectrum, I forget how weird my stories are until I see the facial expression of the person I'm telling them to.
That is, I forget how weird some of the stories are. The rest of them are completely, gobsmackingly insane. I was reminded of one of the strangest recently, when I ran across this article about a hoarder who got into a standoff with the police. The city inspectors and police escort came out to inspect the home for blight. As they were trying to figure out how to navigate through the front yard to get to the door, the hoarder opened fire.
That story was very nearly mine. My mother's father was a hoarder. He owned a house that was so filled with junk that you could only wind your way through the rooms by sliding sideways through the stacks of his belongings. Magazines, newspapers, broken musical instruments, dead rats, moldy food -- you name it, it was piled in the house. The front yard was mostly occupied by a collection of automobiles in various states of disrepair. I don't remember what all was in the backyard, although I'm fairly certain that it was the barrels of gasoline from the 70's oil shortage that caught the attention of the local authorities. Oh, and did I mention that he also had a propensity for collecting unregistered guns?
You can see where this is going. Eventually, the city seized his house as a health hazard. The night before it was scheduled to be demolished, my mother told me that Grandpa had called her, raving about government crooks and persecutors. He told her that he wasn't going to stand for it. His plan was to lie in wait for the bulldozer driver, who was coming in the morning, and shoot him on sight.
My reaction to this piece of information was to insist that my mother call the police. My mother's reaction was to insist that he'd never really do it. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I've been accused more than once of being a pessimist. I'm just saying that when a man beats his wife and kids, assaults police officers, and has been in and out of jail on weapons charges, you should take him seriously when he threatens to off someone. After some serious pressure from me, Mom finally agreed to call the police. They went out to talk to him that evening, and no one ended up getting shot. The house got bulldozed, my mom continued to live in a constant state of denial, and I got one more crazy story to add to my collection.
That is, I forget how weird some of the stories are. The rest of them are completely, gobsmackingly insane. I was reminded of one of the strangest recently, when I ran across this article about a hoarder who got into a standoff with the police. The city inspectors and police escort came out to inspect the home for blight. As they were trying to figure out how to navigate through the front yard to get to the door, the hoarder opened fire.
That story was very nearly mine. My mother's father was a hoarder. He owned a house that was so filled with junk that you could only wind your way through the rooms by sliding sideways through the stacks of his belongings. Magazines, newspapers, broken musical instruments, dead rats, moldy food -- you name it, it was piled in the house. The front yard was mostly occupied by a collection of automobiles in various states of disrepair. I don't remember what all was in the backyard, although I'm fairly certain that it was the barrels of gasoline from the 70's oil shortage that caught the attention of the local authorities. Oh, and did I mention that he also had a propensity for collecting unregistered guns?
You can see where this is going. Eventually, the city seized his house as a health hazard. The night before it was scheduled to be demolished, my mother told me that Grandpa had called her, raving about government crooks and persecutors. He told her that he wasn't going to stand for it. His plan was to lie in wait for the bulldozer driver, who was coming in the morning, and shoot him on sight.
My reaction to this piece of information was to insist that my mother call the police. My mother's reaction was to insist that he'd never really do it. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I've been accused more than once of being a pessimist. I'm just saying that when a man beats his wife and kids, assaults police officers, and has been in and out of jail on weapons charges, you should take him seriously when he threatens to off someone. After some serious pressure from me, Mom finally agreed to call the police. They went out to talk to him that evening, and no one ended up getting shot. The house got bulldozed, my mom continued to live in a constant state of denial, and I got one more crazy story to add to my collection.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
It's not me, it's you
I've worked long and hard to gain emotional distance from enmeshment with my mother and her hoarding. (Geographical distance helps too. I now live 700 miles away from her and my childhood home, which I can only imagine is filled to the rafters by now.) I don't visit much, as the visits are unpleasantly laced with dysfunction and weird interactions between my mother and me. There's a lot of verbal tap-dancing going on with my attempts to derail her before she gets going on topics that set her off and make me crazy. Religious discussions go something like this. Mom: "I wish you went to a Bible-believing church more often." Me: "I believe there are many paths to God." Mom: "I'm so sad that you're going straight to hell!" She's a very conservative Evangelical Christian. I'm about as liberal as you can get without being Noam Chomsky, so politics are also off-limits. Discussions about other members of the family aren't so great either. Me: "No, I think my younger brother is doing pretty well. He likes his new job a lot." Mom: "I just don't understand why he would want to work for a morally corrupt institution like a bank. Do you think he's morally corrupt too?" Oh, and the holidays. Mom: "I'm setting a boundary and have decided that I'm not going to allow you in my house. Why don't we meet on Christmas Eve at Carl's Junior?" Me: "WTF?" (Note: The first few were just examples. The last one actually happened, minus the swearing at my mother part. And let me tell you, there is nothing more depressing than eating greasy hamburgers in a fast food joint on Christmas Eve.)
Still, once in awhile, the guilt kind of gets me. When I was younger, I tried and tried to help her get the house clean. But her hoarding brain takes over and gets in the way. I might need this someday/it's still perfectly good/I'm keeping it to read later/my mother gave it to me/I don't know what to do with it, so I'll just move it into this pile over here -- her inability to make decisions about letting things go gets in the way of making any progress. Add to that her anger and recrimination over my attempts to help (how could you do this to me/you're just like your father/you love everyone else more than you love me/I never should have had kids) and I ended up in a situation that was very damaging to me. To both of us, really. So I got really pissed off and quit trying to parent her, which also pissed her off.
Over the years, I've gotten less angry and more sad about the way she's choosing to live. (In case you were wondering, she's still on the angry wagon, albeit in a passive aggressive kind of way.) I wish I could help her, and sometimes that wistful, wishful thinking starts to steer me down the wrong path. I understand that she has a mental illness (well, at least two of them, by last count) and that it's not her own doing. That's where the guilt gets to me, a bit. I know that she's sick and that I would never wish her illness on my worst enemy. Maybe I should be a better daughter, I think. And then I remember. It's not her fault that she's mentally ill, but it is her fault that she refuses to seek help for her illness. It is her fault that she uses it as an excuse to be nasty and verbally abusive. It has nothing to do with me. The guilt here isn't even a little bit mine. It's all hers.
Still, once in awhile, the guilt kind of gets me. When I was younger, I tried and tried to help her get the house clean. But her hoarding brain takes over and gets in the way. I might need this someday/it's still perfectly good/I'm keeping it to read later/my mother gave it to me/I don't know what to do with it, so I'll just move it into this pile over here -- her inability to make decisions about letting things go gets in the way of making any progress. Add to that her anger and recrimination over my attempts to help (how could you do this to me/you're just like your father/you love everyone else more than you love me/I never should have had kids) and I ended up in a situation that was very damaging to me. To both of us, really. So I got really pissed off and quit trying to parent her, which also pissed her off.
Over the years, I've gotten less angry and more sad about the way she's choosing to live. (In case you were wondering, she's still on the angry wagon, albeit in a passive aggressive kind of way.) I wish I could help her, and sometimes that wistful, wishful thinking starts to steer me down the wrong path. I understand that she has a mental illness (well, at least two of them, by last count) and that it's not her own doing. That's where the guilt gets to me, a bit. I know that she's sick and that I would never wish her illness on my worst enemy. Maybe I should be a better daughter, I think. And then I remember. It's not her fault that she's mentally ill, but it is her fault that she refuses to seek help for her illness. It is her fault that she uses it as an excuse to be nasty and verbally abusive. It has nothing to do with me. The guilt here isn't even a little bit mine. It's all hers.
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