Would you believe me if I told you…

…that I found a can of broccoli soup in my kitchen cupboard from 1998?

Because that happened today.

Im hard on myself about the progress I don’t make, especially in comparison to others. Now this is it, my claim to fame at 32 years old… I cleaned out the kitchen cabinets that haven’t been touched in 20 years. I’m not even related to these people. I was fortunate enough to be given a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom home to live in for next to no cost. A home in a neighborhood where people never lock their doors, never complain about their neighbors, ring the doorbell with a plate of cookies during the holidays. A neighborhood where I, and the rest of the parents in the loop, feel safe letting our kids play outside. To let loose until the sun goes down. All I’ve ever heard is that these places don’t exist in America anymore. Somehow I got lucky. Extremely lucky.
The catch?

There was only one family who lived here since it was built in the 60s and it’s never been cleaned out. I’m starting to grow comfortable now though. It’s been over a year and I’ve realized it’s our home. That I’m not just some squatter tip toeing around decades worth of memories I never existed in.

i was so burnt out from previously living with my mom, who was a hoarder. Her mental illness and the delusions surrounding it exacerbated after the cancer came back. Terminal this time.

We all tried to help her but her hoard wasn’t something she wanted help with. I burnt myself out working endless hours in her home all whilst trying to do it respectfully unlike everyone else until I eventually snapped. It was futile. It was a circle of hell in Dante’s inferno where I just kept worked endlessly rearranging a never ending puzzle. She said something to me, for some reason I think I said this in a previous post, what she said was that all these things are her life’s story. That she’s already losing her life and now has to listen to everyone try to take it from her (as in her stuff)

”When I die please just don’t throw away all my things”

That haunted me as we cleaned out her house to sell it. The board I resented I suddenly became protective of. These things, they are all markers of her life, right? And holy hell did it eat at me. The way I couldn’t take it anymore. The way I resented her. It broke me watching dumpster after dumpster fill with her belongings. I was the delusional one for thinking I could sell and donate every single item. Im the codependent, a single mom with little income, paying over $360 a month for over a year to hold onto the shit I’ve saved. That’s thousand of dollars. A sum of my inheritance. Just to fill two extra large storage lockers with her shit that I never see or utilize. It’s just shit. It’s just fucking shit. All the shit I slaved away at shifting through trying to make our home livable. All she wanted was a nice, clean, organized home. Except she didn’t. She was in love with the idea. She could never stomach that everything she knew about alcohol addiction, all the ALANON meetings she attended to cope with the devil that plagued her father, her brother and her sons, all those same things applied to her. She was the addict too. She didn’t drink or use drugs, but that didn’t stop her from placing those same patterns that destroyed her life, her thinking, onto something that seemed benign. Her hoarding wasnt a quirk. It was a monster in the room that destroyed her life. Her relationships. I would think back to what I heard her say on multiple occasions over a number a years about my brother, that he just wants to be alone with the bottle. His problem is that that’s what matters to him. That’s his objective. That’s how strong alcoholism is. He caught a wiff in the wind and flew away. What she said about him? She was talking about herself. And she wanted to live in denial, justifying, undermining her use, the same way she described them. Her use just didn’t look like there’s.

There’s so much more coming to my brain to keeping going on about but I’m so exhausted and a little drunk, ironically.

moral of the story is that I struggle to clear out the home I live in because “clearing out” was my 12 hour job 7 days a week for a couple years. I’m burnt out and struggle with some trauma surrounding it.im a few years older and have a couple more kids. My body hurts as does my heart.

A therapist once told me, addressing the guilt I have for my mom passing with fear- fear that I wouldn’t be ok. My mom, she said that to me frequently, that she needed to hear that my siblings, her grand children, would all be ok. That therapist, that doctor in psychology whose title I envied, she said that was selfish of my mom. That stuck with me. It still does. It wasn’t just her dying wish that I could not fulfill, it was the pressure she placed on me to be the one responsible for her well being. Her perception of herself. Responsible for her feelings. I was always responsible for the way she felt. When it wasn’t me, it was my siblings. She was addicted to their addictions to the point where she manifested and fostered it. To call it Munchausen would be a reach but she certainly watered her childhood trauma to open the door for her to have the opportunity to save them the way she wanted the be saved. It’s a control thing. She was addicted to the chaos. She saw that chaos and bought it without hesitation. She was addicted to finding and controlling the addict.

i should stop circling that right.
I am mad at her sometimes. Grief is strange.

Anyways today i had my breaks fixed and had a nice walk home with C from the shop. S came with me when I walked to pick it up, a constant 10 feet in front of me on his scooter. He threw it on his shoulder and twisted and turned it around in the lobby as if to show off or practicing to be the cool guy.
im so tired… my brain…my back. Everything hurts except for my heart today.

I had a friend stop by which was nice. She commented without hesitation how much cleaner the house kooks. Acknowledging the obvious work I’ve done, without hesitating . Without my prompt.