My boyfriend and I just went to see my parents and do some work for their businesses at their shop. I'd been telling my boyfriend how bad the house is getting, and he's seen some of it for himself, but neither of us expected the shop to be so bad. I hadn't been there in a year, and I was absolutely overwhelmed.
Some of the things in the room with the french doors supposedly belong to my great aunt who's moved to the assisted care facility in town, but obviously the storage situation is not working, and frankly, because my mother is an emotional hoarder, I couldn't imagine her getting rid of a single thing even if her aunt gave her permission, or passed away. Every little thing I see in the building that belongs to my mother, I can already hear her arguments in my mind about why she should be allowed to keep it all. By the way, the front desk with my laptop, is only that clean because I cleared the whole thing off so I would have space to work, and that's what it looked like after she was working with me for an hour.
My father is a functional hoarder, mostly collecting things that he does and/or would use if he could access it. The whole place is a mess, and for the one business they should be able to park a trailer in the back garage area, and for the other, there are annual code inspections because it involves animals.
I am at a loss. I thought I had a successful intervention with my mother a year ago when I first realized that we are hoarders, she cried, I cried, and she admitted that she hoards things just like her parents taught her to. We went back to the house and I helped her tackle one box of stuff that was on the couch, preventing me from having a space to sit and visit with her. We argued, I tried to reason with her, I tried to help her rationalize the object as an object, and not a memory or sacred thing, but it didn't end well.
How do I respond when my parents are upset because I don't visit much, and they barely know my boyfriend of nearly 4.5 years because I don't bring him into town? We plan on leaving the state this fall, to start our own lives, and it breaks my heart to think that I may not go back for several years, and that when I do, there is an immense fear that their house and shop will be so much worse.
Their marriage is suffering, their home life is suffering, their businesses are suffering, and their kids are suffering. My sister exhibits extreme tendencies towards animal hoarding, and I have to work every day to not bring home needless things, and allow things to clutter up the house. This is all bringing up unhappy memories of my childhood, of being forced to spend my summers as a kid, cleaning up 20 years worth of my parents' things in the basement, and never being allowed to have friends over because the house was a mess, including my own room. I want my parents to get better, and live better, but realistically I know that my sister and I will have to deal with everything when they die, or divorce, or simply walk away.
I hear you. This is my biggest concern right now, the question of how do I keep it from getting worse, because if I don't keep it from getting worse where will it end? But I'm starting to realize that I shouldn't (and don't) have any responsibility for my mother's hoard. That's so hard for me to swallow.
ReplyDeleteIt's incredibly brave of you to post this and your story. I really appreciate hearing and seeing it. I don't feel so alone now.
Thank you for your comment, it means a lot to me that you've experienced the same things I am going through. When I think about everything I could and want to do for them, if they'd let me, I realize that I could spend my whole life fixing their lives. But that isn't fair to me. Hopefully, by the time we move, there will be progress and forgiveness.
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