Lies my mother told me, part 3

Sometimes I feel like my life is a continuous process of weeding through the pile of hoarder's child messages mounded in my brain, discarding the ones that no longer fit, are flat-out wrong, or simply make my life untenable. That would be, ahem, most of them.

One of my mother's recurring refrains is "As soon as I get my ducks in a row..." or its near cousin, "As soon as I get my life in order..." This is delivered in a wistful, wry tone of voice and always followed by something she would love to do, but refuses to allow herself the pleasure of actually doing it. Growing up with this constant refrain (especially in a family of sturdy, German-descended farming folk with a mighty Protestant work ethic), I learned that you must complete all of your "shoulds" before there's any room for enjoying yourself. I must clean the house/finish grading papers/call Grandma before I can take a bubble bath/read that book on my nightstand/go hiking/and on and on. You need to tick off all the items on your to-do list before you deserve to take care of yourself.

I recently had an epiphany about this. Life is pretty damn daily, you know? And there's a reason it seems like every time I cross an item off my list, I have to add another one. It's because every time I cross an item off my list, I actually do have to add another one. Life is ongoing. I'll always have more to do tomorrow. So screw it -- I've decided that now I'm going to take care of myself first. Do I want to go to Starbucks before I do the grocery shopping? Why not? Read another chapter before I finish the laundry? Certainly. Do something fun before I've checked off every last item on the list? You bet. Because, at the end of the day, there's always going to be a duck or two that isn't in a row. I say, smile and wave at them as you head out the door to do something that will make you happy.

I hate Mother's Day

Really. I hate Mother's Day with a fiery passion. Most of the time, I feel like I've made my peace with having a mother who just couldn't care for us kids the way that most mothers do. But then sometimes I run across something (like this truly lovely blog post) that makes me realize that I still mourn not having a functional relationship with my mother. I still have an internal sense of that lost little girl who grew up in a hoarded house with no room for her, physically or emotionally.

I know I can't possibly be the only one out there who hates Mother's Day. Granted, it really isn't the type of thing that tends to come up in conversation. I might as well announce a hatred of puppies and unicorns. But then again, maybe not. Truthfully, I don't see how children of a hoarding mother -- or a mother with any kind of mental illness -- could avoid having at least somewhat mixed feelings about the day. Hoarding tends to be comorbid with other mental illnesses, which means that many of us children of hoarders had additional parental issues to deal with. Female hoarders have a higher incidence of panic disorder, binge eating, OCD, substance abuse, and bipolar I disorder (the kind with the really high highs and the really low lows). Male hoarders have a higher incidence of social phobia than male non-hoarders. (See this NIH-published study for more information.)

My extremely anxious mother hoarded, binge ate, and suffered from what seems to be undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Growing up with her was less than delightful. Don't get me wrong -- she loved us and tried to do the best that she could (although her best was a total nightmare). So every year, as Mother's Day rolls around, I once again try to make my peace with celebrating a mother who couldn't cope with her own life, much less the lives of her three children; a mother who prioritized her relationship with things over her relationship with people; a mother with whom I, more often than not, had to assume the role of care-taking adult. That's all still true, come to think of it.

So here's to all of those people out there who have mixed feelings about the holiday (and the people who outright loathe it, like me. I know you're out there.) Happy freaking Mother's Day.

Yup, you sure showed me

The spring weather today made me have a flashback to a Spring Break in high school that I spent organizing my mother's garage. Ha, you say. What teenage hubris inspired you to attempt to de-hoard a suburban, two-car garage filled solidly with junk stacked higher than you are tall? By yourself? In a week?

Well, I wouldn't say it was hubris so much as desperation. Also, that my mother kept hounding me about never helping my own family. ("Never helping" from her perspective translated, from mine, into being a sixteen-year-old girl trying to raise my younger brother, do the grocery shopping and the cooking, and generally keep my mother from making our lives more disastrous than they already were.) So for some reason, and ostensibly with my mother's blessing, I decided that I would spend my Spring Break week really helping. (Looking back, I suspect there was a good bit of "I'll show you!" teenager-ness about the decision. Little did I know how badly I was outclassed.)

My mother is mostly a hoarder of books and paper. I spent the better part of the week going through boxes upon boxes upon boxes.  The garage was filled with stacks of worthless papers, junk mail, magazines, newspapers, and thousands and thousands of discarded books. I sorted. I organized. I sneezed through the dust as I clambered over giant piles of garbage. I got the garage ready so that we could finally get rid of everything, so that we could finally be free.

And at the end of the week, when I proudly showed my mother my accomplishment -- Look! It's ready for us to go get that Dumpster we talked about! -- she did let me throw some of her things away.

She let me throw away one box. One. The rest of it she went through, piece by piece. She might need it someday, or was sentimental for her, or she hadn't had the chance to read it, or she was saving it for someone who needed it -- for every single item in the garage. All but that one lone box that went into the trash.

Looking back, it's kind of amazing that she let me get rid of anything at all. That was the day, though, that I realized that I cannot help her. I'm pretty sure that her garage is fuller now that it was then. I'm pretty sure that the house is filled as well. I'm not totally certain, though. She won't let me inside, Dumpster or not. So in the end, really, she showed me.

Surprising sympathy. Sort of.

I'm the first to admit that I normally have precisely zero sympathy for my mother, the hoarder. This is a trait that I share with many children of hoarders. There's something about growing up in a household where your parent bonds with things more than you that doesn't inspire a ton of warm, sympathetic feelings. Recently, though, I had probably my first flash of sympathy ever. After moving last month into a much smaller place, I still have one bedroom stacked with boxes to go through. It's like death by a thousand tiny decisions. Open a box, take out an item. Does it go to Goodwill? The garbage? Do I keep it? If so, where do I put it? Then multiply that by all of the items in the box, and then by all of the boxes I have left to go through. Overwhelming. And this is coming from someone whose default mode is "If I don't love it, it needs to go away." And then I thought of my mother, who has filled a four-bedroom house, two-car garage, and two storage sheds to the brim with utter crap. It's an incredibly overwhelming amount of possessions.

Researchers are discovering that hoarders' brain function seems to differ from that of a healthy person. (This will come as no great shock to those of you who are related to a hoarder.) Part of the issue seems to be that they cannot accurately judge the value of an item, leading to keeping a huge excess of things that to them (and them only) seem valuable. They also have great difficulty making decisions (this likely isn't shocking to you either). But if I am this worn out by clearing out one bedroom's worth of stuff, I can't imagine what facing down an entire hoarded house would feel like for my mother. Therein lies possibly the first glimmer of sympathy I've ever had for her.

Granted, the sympathy is limited. Her refusal to seek help for hoarding or her concomitant manic depression kind of puts the brakes on the warm fuzzies. It's certainly not her fault that, like many hoarders, she grew up traumatized by living in an abusive family. It isn't her fault that her brain chemistry doesn't work like most people's. But forcing three children to grow up in the midst of her very substantial baggage? I don't have enough sympathy to let her off the hook for that.

Lies my mother told me, part 2

Growing up in a hoarded home, you internalize a lot of messages about how to exist and how to make your way in the world. As my therapist has pointed out, this means you learn patterns of behavior that help you survive your childhood. Unfortunately, the flip side of this means that if you're looking to create a healthy adulthood, there are a lot (a LOT!) of messages that you need to rethink and revise.

One of the biggest messages I received growing up was never actually verbalized. It had more to do with watching my mother's reactions to problems. For the most part, whenever an issue arose, her reaction fell into one of three camps. Option 1: Make no attempt to solve the problem. Stick head in sand. Repeat as necessary. Option 2: Attempt to solve problem via incredibly complex, complicated solution that is doomed to fail. Flagellate self ceaselessly when completely unrealistic solution doesn't work out. Option 3: Blame someone else for the problem. (This last one is very handy, as it totally preempts the necessity of examining your own contributions to the issue. Unfortunately, it also means you have a snowball's chance in Arizona of actually resolving anything.)

As an adult, these three choices seem to have melded into one giant, crippling shorthand. No matter what the problem is (and in my life lately, there have been some doozies), my unconscious reaction screams that "There is no possible solution to this problem!" I'm pretty sure this comes from the complex of issues that stem from growing up in a crazy, hoarded home, not least of which is the specter of learned helplessness that raises its ugly head all. the. damn. time. As I'm facing my own, new apartment that is still in chaos from a move, plus a variety of implosions in my personal life, it can be hard to remember everything I've learned over the past decade. Sometimes, no matter how far you've come, it's still hard to be a hoarder's child.

A funny God

I was talking with my therapist recently about how life seems to keep circling back around to my unresolved issues. He mentioned the phrase "a funny God," which at first confused me. And then I realized he was talking about what I was talking about -- that, until you have really, truly worked through something, life/God/the universe/whatever you want to call it will keep bringing you the same situation until you work your way through it.

I moved this weekend, downsizing from an 1800 square foot house to an 850 square foot apartment. Not surprisingly, this means I now have WAY too much stuff. Stuff stacked in boxes around the apartment, stuff stacked in piles that I have to work around. Stuff that has made my home chaos.

I was staring at all of this stuff today, feeling overwhelmed and triggered by memories of growing up in a house where you couldn't actually walk straight through most of the rooms. You had to pick a path over, through, and around the piles of stuff. I felt very much like I was back with my mother, surrounded by an unmanageable chaos. And then, all of a sudden, I realize that wasn't true at all. Too much stuff, yes. Chaos, yes. But, this time around, I have the ability to simplify, discard, and organize. I have the power to make my life what I want it to be. My mother's issue no longer needs to be my issue.

A funny God, indeed.

I heart routines

This post made me realize afresh how much I really, really like routines. Apparently, it's not just me. Granted, as an elementary school teacher, I probably have more routines than most people. Math at 8:30, read a story at 10:00, lunch at 11:00.... The more time I spend with tiny people, the more I realize that kids really do thrive on that routine.

And that makes me think about the complete and total lack of routine that I had growing up. Waking up in the morning, I never had any idea what that day might be like. Will I have any clean socks? Can I even find my socks? Which side of Mom will I see today -- the fun-loving, childlike mom, or the angry, moody one who's obsessed with her stuff? Looking back, a complete lack of schedule, routine, and predictability meant that I drifted through most days feeling completely unmoored.

As an adult, that may help explain why I have such a deep-seated need to be able to predict, with reasonable certainty, what today will hold. Life has definitely underscored the lesson that there are many, many things that are not under my control. The struggle for me now is to create a routine that takes into account what I actually can control, while letting go of the things that are simply uncontrollable. It's  still a work in progress, but the fact that I can articulate the struggle at all makes me realize that I've come a long way from that kid searching for clean socks amid the hoard.