Re: BPDs and Hoarding?

[Guest guest]

Nada was , before her death, a hoarder in the extreme. Frugality

means not wasting that which you need, and not buying that which you don

t. My grandmother, who lived thru the depression, would never throw

away bread wrappers or plastic food containers.

Mom/nada on the other hand, was at an entirely different level.

As I was growing up there was always a mess and way too much " stuff "

around. Boxes never got unpacked, and we had enough dishes and pans for

3 or 4 families.

After she was living alone and a pastor, she moved frequently to

different churches. There was always entire rooms filled with stuff,

furniture, clothes, books, papers, magazines, yard sale treasure,

collectibles, just whatever she put her hands on.

She would collect free stuff, buy stuff and yard sales and flea markets,

buy whatever she took a notion she needed. If owls were her obsession,

she would have not a couple owls, but hundreds. When I cleaned out her

house after her death, I would find dozens of identical baskets, or

holders for things, none of which had ever been used. She kept things

for the sake of having the things. But as my wife noted as I was

dealing with this after mom s death, for all this stuff she had

nothing.

When she retired, it had reached epic proportions. She had 3 storage

buildings, full, and her home was not livable. At one point during a

hospitalization, we managed to get permission for my cousin and me to go

and clean. It was horrible.

There was no room in the house which did not have garbage bags of stuff

stacked 2 or 3 deep from wall to wall. The smell was nauseating. We

rented a U haul trailer and carried a ton, ( literally, 2000 lbs, ) of

stuff, not furniture, just bags of shit, to the dump. We found pans

filled with rotting food that had been packed and shipped dirty. We

found mildewed clothing, packed wet, and not even her clothes, just

clothing she would pick up from anywhere. Once , a landlord had a

family skip out in the middle of the night. He put their stuff in the

yard. Nada came by and got all the clothing and took it home.

We found dried dog feces all over. I was just beyond description. She

had reached the point where she was sleeping in her car outside her door

because her apartment was so nasty. She tried to FOG me into letting

her stay with me. Awful guilt! I let her stay a month, after agreeing

to 2 weeks. She began to bring her hoarding stuff into my house and

stack it up here. So I got to be the bad guy , having to say you have

to leave.

Ahhhh! Shit. No one should ever have to say to their mother, you can t

stay with me, you have to get out! But that is the God awful position

she put me in. That, my dear friends, is what it means to us to have ,

or to have had, a nada. We ARE placed in situations we never should

have to face with our own mothers.

And that is why we are so F....ed up!

( Sorry I havent posted for a bit , friends. Keeping an eye on some

great threads and posts, but work and remodeling and depression have

been taking thier toll. )

May we all heal,

Doug