0009-House of Hoarders - Growing up in filth
Growing up in the house of hoarders made making friends and maintaining relationships tough. Shame also took root and grew happily there. From clutter, to trash, to roaches, to other health hazards, and unfair expectations – it wasn't fun.
There's only so much I can say on the subject, so here's some additional reading when you're done having a listen.
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/hidden-lives-children-hoarders
Transcript from the show:
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My grandmother was a
spiteful, brash woman and in being so, she makes a great character to sort of
set the stage for this next episode.
We didn't have
visitors to our house a lot, especially by the time I was nearing my teens. My
grandmother had visited once for dinner early on in 1995 or 1996, I think,
around the time when things started getting bad in the house. We were having
steak and rice or something of the sort. Definitely rice though.
Anywho, as she sat
down in the living room with her plate (because there was no eating at a dinner
table that existed just to hold "stuff"), she sarcastically joked to
my mom, "you sure these aren't maggots?" I don't remember if my mom
mentioned it to me later in some conversation, or if it was in one of the
letters she'd written to a family member that I'd come across and read, but
that simple question hurt her a lot. I was none the wiser to it at the time,
but there was truth in the joke my grandmother made.
The house wasn't
always a shithole from the start. When my mom and the stepbastard moved in
together, the house was fairly kept up. We certainly didn't have a bug problem
either. By the time we moved out of that duplex and into a house, things
started falling to the wayside. Clothes would pile up on the couch, clean or
dirty, it didn't matter. The dining room table collected clutter. Dirty dishes
would linger but they would at least get done with some regularity. Stuff was
starting to pile up around the couches and chairs and any tables in between,
but it was still okay for the most part. The bugs were moving in too but they
put bait out for them. Or tried, at least a little. The garage though...the
garage was a disaster. I'm pretty sure they left it that way too, after they
got evicted.
My mom lost her job
near the end of 1994. They'd racked up some credit card debt and eventually,
the financial strain forced us to move. We moved into a smaller house two days
before Christmas that year.
I was happy about it
because it meant a new chance for me since I could start over with new friends
and try to be a different person. I think the stress from the job loss and the
amount of stuff they chose to keep exacerbated the problem for them though.
Stuff started collecting. Piles of papers from the mail and magazines and
catalogs lingered on the coffee table and around on the floor. The couch held
more papers, and blankets, and whatever else might be in the way. We never used
the front door because we couldn't really get to it. The carport became a catch
all for things that didn't belong in the house; trash that should have been
hauled off, stuff like that. The dining room table became a larger collection
plate of old boxes and bags, papers, and other junk that had no home.
We had cats too,
even though we weren't supposed to. The litter box lived under that dining room
table. It was rarely cleaned so the cats would regularly drag whatever was
laying on the floor into or beside the box and use that instead.
The kitchen. Jesus
fucking Christ the kitchen.
Dirty dishes got
washed as needed. Well, except for the bowls and silverware which I was
responsible for doing on a weekly basis. That required moving shit out of the
sink so I would have a space to work in. I also had to go hunt down the bowls
and silverware from the trash and clutter that littered the living room each
week, and if I missed a single item, I would get grounded. No phone, no
friends.
The roaches
regularly invaded the bread which really sucks when you're a teen and you just
want to make a damned sandwich and hide in your room for the rest of the night
from your abuser. You couldn't leave a drink on the counter for more than about
5 seconds before the critters were coming in for a snack. The trash regularly
overfilled and many times, wouldn't get taken out until there were maggots
crawling around on the floor, weaving their squirmy bodies through what they
could of the flattened carpet fibers nearby.
I hated those
assignments in school where you were supposed to cook something for the class.
I knew, instinctively, that it was a TERRIBLE idea to serve anything from my
house, so I did the best I could to clean everything I needed before I needed
it and if I had to set anything down.
Everyone, I'm sorry.
I'm so fucking sorry :(
The roaches got to a
point that they were encroaching on sleeping areas which led to me getting the
tiniest roach in my ear once. I remember sleepily rolling over on my pillow and
sliding my head to get to the other end when this fucking bug was introduced to
my ear.
I screamed. And I
screamed more every time it moved. I think it was early morning so my parents
were awake. It took a few minutes before I could even explain that there was a
bug in my ear. They went and grabbed the hydrogen peroxide to put in my ear and
holy fucking shit you guys – TERROR. I screamed in terror as I could feel the
goddamn bug squirming around in there while the peroxide fizzed away. I think
they poured a few more times to drown it, which they judged the effectiveness
by my reduction in shrieks. We went to the ER where they shone a little light
down the canal and took their tiny little tweezers to pull the offending roach
from my ear.
And after all that,
I was sternly told no more food/drink in my room. It was my fault, of course.
Nevermind the rest of the fucking house.
Believe it or not, I
actually had a few friends who understood the nightmare I was living and still
wanted to hang out with me. It didn't happen often, but sometimes my friends
wanted to get out of their own house and would come stay the night. We'd usually
stay in my bedroom and do whatever nonsense chatting girls do at that age.
After I moved out,
things progressively got worse. The window AC unit that they had in the living
room (to supplement the indoor temps) was leaking in such a way that the wall
below it was peeling and falling away, revealing mold and providing a sacred home
for the families of roaches.
Another time, I
stopped over after some holiday and stood in the doorway entry, not wanting to
go in further, and the stepbastard pointed in the direction of the TV and
remarked, "look at what I found on sale!" I looked, and I looked, and
I just wasn't getting what I was supposed to be looking at. He's all like,
"We upgraded the TV!"
That's when I
focused on it, a flatter screen TV buried amongst an entertainment center full
of knick knacks, misplaced clothes, and other miscellaneous junk.
One of the back
bedrooms was delegated as the library/fabric room. After my grandmother passed
away, I went over to collect the photo albums that were in that room, in a
closet. The closet was buried behind boxes and reams of fabric, so it required
climbing – something the parentals weren't going to do. That room was nestled
underneath an old tree whose branch finally grew onto the roof, causing damage.
When I went into the room, black mold was growing all over that side of the
room. My mom was in and out of the hospital with some regularity at that point
and she "didn't know why or what was wrong with her." I'd be willing
to bet that mold was a start…
Was it depression?
Was it sheer laziness? Was it some other form of mental illness? I don't think
I'll ever really know. I remember offering to help my mom with the massive job
of cleaning up and getting rid of things when it was put in front of them that
the property owner was thinking about selling. She sounded defeated, declined,
and remarked that it was just too overwhelming to think about and that she'd
let me know if she needed something. It never came up again.
Growing up in that
environment sucked. It was mortifying. It was a constant source of shame during
my school years. That house should have been condemned but no, there we were
living in it, like it was something normal and acceptable.
I wish I could say
that growing up that way made me a neat freak, but it hasn't. While I don't
have the same propensity to collect things or live in trash, I've been
desensitized to things. I've learned how to "overlook" clutter until
one day, something annoys the shit out of me and then everything nearby is at
risk of being thrown out.
I still remember the
first time this happened after my husband and I were living together. I was in
the process of dragging a coffee table out to the road and he's like, "but
that's a perfectly good table! You could sell that..." And me, in my state
of "I've had enough" told him frankly, "I don't care. I'm tired
of looking at it and it's in the way" and I continued dragging it out to
the street.
Reclaiming lost
space ALWAYS feels good to me.
The hoarding
experience, I feel, makes it a little harder for me to address the shit growing
in my garden. I've been conditioned to shit always being there and growing, and
just living with shit I don't like until one day I get to a point that I can't
take it and do some mass maintenance on the garden, to minimize how much it
looms over me. When I'm satiated with the tidy look, I go back to whatever it
was I was doing instead of looking at ways to minimize the overhaul that's sure
to be needed in the future. Again.
Man. What a way to
look at it...
It makes sense too,
when I think back to my episode on emotion stuffing and what it has meant for
my friendships and relationships in the past.
"I can't deal
with this right now so let me put it to the side."
Then later,
"Man...that pile of things I don't want to deal with is getting bigger but
I just can't deal with it right now either."
And finally,
"Holy shit, what the fuck is all
this shit doing here?! Why didn't you just deal with it then? Now you don't
want any of it anymore so just throw it out. Throw it all out!"
And that last part
would be me, abandoning my relationships – getting rid of the metaphorical
"stuff."
Well then. That was
eye-opening.
So, there you have
it folks – walking through the garden occasionally and having a good hard look
at the things in it can give you some insight into what's broken or taking
over. And yeah, there may be some hard work ahead changing old habits.
Anyway, thanks for
listening guys! Your support means a lot to me, even if it's just a simple
share on social media or to a friend or family member who you feel might enjoy
the podcast too. Also, I can't forget to give a shout out to both Kevin MacLeod
at Incompetech.com and Scott Buckley at scottbuckley.com.au for the music
transitions they provided for use in the
show. If you want to shoot me an email, it's questionyourgarden@gmail.com Be
sure to check out the show notes for any links or additional information from
the episode.
Until next time,
keep weeding!
Intro Audio: "Cold Sober" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Transition Audio:
"Wonderful" Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au)
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