The Hoarding and Narcissistic Family Tree

Egads.  I am still processing my relationship with my NPD, hoarding mother and am low to no contact with other relatives... Or so I thought.

One day post 46th birthday I was rushing home from a lovely Ethiopian late lunch with a friend and had to change into 'professional CEO lady' clothing to attend an evening dinner event.  I rushed home, and was getting out of the car when my mobile rang.  I had been talking to my staff about a shelter issue, so I answered without looking.

HUGE MISTAKE.  

It was 'narcis-sister'.  My 1/2 sister who was given up at birth and found us when I was 26.  The thing that terrifies me is she is proof that there is a strong genetic link to this thing, with the narcissism, hoarding, and she is also struggles with Oxycontin addiction.  I got the "Hey little sister, sorry I missed your birthday by not sending a card, so happy birthday, and by the way, [your mother's sister] went insane and is seeing bugs and lizards in her house, stayed over here with with me and called the police on me today for domestic abuse..."  I explained that I thought that was unfortunate, but I needed to get dressed for a work event and ended the call.  She asked me to call her back... Hope she is not holding her breath on that.  She kept repeating she wanted to give me a heads up that I "will be getting a call" from my aunt.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  I had just left a dinner date with a gentleman I have seen a couple of times now, and had just left my polling place and went to the grocery store.  I had just pulled in when my mobile rang.  It was my aunt, who also scares me on the genetic link piece.  She also is on the hoarding scale and is also demonstrates the clinical indicators of narcissistic personality disorder.  I selected ignore on my phone, removed it from the holder on my dash, dropped it in my leather handbag, and entered the grocery store.

Now, there are a couple of things that could have happened... Perhaps I did not lock my iPhone, and the leather from my handbag was enough of a contact with the touchscreen to 'buttdial' my aunt back.  I think the more likely scenario was she called, I hit ignore, she left the demanding voicemail that I retrieved later, and she immediately called back and my handbag 'answered'.  Either way, I hear her shrill and demanding voice screaming my name.  I knew if I disconnected her she would then continue to call my phone, and if I blocked her, would go to neighbors, etc.  So I answered.  

For over 40 minutes, other than my initial 'hello' and 'I have to go, I need to cash out my groceries' I said nothing.  I did not have to... It was a solid monologue of made up drama.  The short version is...  She was hospitalized with her back, and she claims that some meds they gave her made her see dead people and dead bodies in her yard.  She asserts the lizards, the rats, and the men talking under her windows at her home and at my sister's home was real.  She states that she was in the mental health unit for 5 days, but she has papers proving she has nothing wrong with her, that it was the medicine, and she has most of the blankets and towels off the windows now.  She states she is DONE with my sister, and told the story regarding the events that culminated in her calling 9-1-1.  She also is angry at the 'wonderful strangers' that she has included in her will chose to leave when she started having 'problems' and have not been accessible since.

Ugh.  Double ugh.

I think I have enough of this with my hoarding mother.  I simply cannot, or will not, deal with 2 others, and I will not allow myself to be triangulated into their pettiness.  

Hoarding.  No one wins.  No one.

Wood ticks and other errata...

So, if you have read anything of this blog before now, you know that my hoarding mother is *somewhat* delusional and her insight is nonexistent. 

So- several days in a row she was complaining of finding ticks on her, on her clothing.  Today she found a tick on one of her strictly indoor cats.  She again attributes it to 'being outside' and talks about bugs in a manner that approaches a belief of spontaneous generation.

Now, in March of this year she found... excuse my vernacular... a turd in her hoarded basement, and an area in which her cats can never reach or are permitted.  She first decided it was 'snake poo' then recategorized it as 'skunk poo'.  Under either classification she is convinced that her hated neighbor used a credit card to enter her house and place it there. Late May she found a cockroach in the kitchen, and she decided that some bananas she purchased where the source despite checking them for 'passengers' or roach eggs.  Now, this tick on a cat in her house.  I have speculated more and more often since March that her house is tipping from a dry/'clean' hoard into a wet/'dirty' hoard.  I suspect the ticks may be another step in this evolution.  

Several years back she was keeping birdseed in a plastic trash can on her front porch, and to her surprise, she had 30-40 mice living on her screened in porch.  Now, fancying herself a modern day Cinderella (at least in her 'special' connection to animals) she refused to listen to my concerns/my ex-husband's concerns that there were easily 3-4 times what she saw present, and that they had to be gaining access to the house.  She will assert that she does not have a single spider or gnat in her home, and other such claptrap.  When she saw one of the mice go up her block foundation and disappear under her vinyl siding, she finally got mouse poison and killed all her new little 'pets'.  She found they had chewed through the bottom of the can, but steadfastly refused that any made it into the house.

She also feeds feral cats, and the birds.  She throws bread, cereal, cookies, and all kinds of crap in the yard 'for the birds' and keeps wet and dry food out for the cats, and as a result of the rural area, and the untended yard and the goat/horse field behind her she is feeding skunks, possums, raccoons and other vermin.  And they are SO CUTE!  Blech.  She also has found fleas on herself, and she steadfastly refuses to hear how the vermin coming in on her porch and etc. could be 'promulgating' the fleas and the ticks.  She also refuses to entertain the thought that something, or several somethings, could have gotten in through a few different routes/methods.

I guess this is how it starts... the poo, the wet hoarding.  I am sadly convinced that if I outlive her, and we are not estranged, that I will have a hoard of the highest classification to clean out.  Dear GOD.  

One bit of comic relief... a bird pooped on her head today.  And she is, once again, perplexed as to why the bird was flying overhead in that area since there is no power lines, etc.  

WOW.  That is all I have to say.  

Now I am going to bed.  Goodnight all.

FTMOAH:-)

Wow.  I dropped off the map for a bit.  Nothing new, just really cool things happening at work.  Presented at a conference earlier this week, at another one getting trained to be an expert witness for my state that ends tomorrow.

So- I think it has been far too serious in here for a bit too long.  So... it is time for another installment of ...FROM THE MOUTH OF A HOARDER!

So- here we go.  And there have been a LOT of them.

"Do you drink the Adkins diet drink?"

No.  I do not do anything that is artificially sweetened.

"Oh, well I ... [prattles on in painful detail about this six pack of this drink that she bought after her thyroid surgery a year or two ago, and yadda, yadda]...  Do you think the women's shelter would want it?"

A six pack of almost expired, 2 year old drink?  NO.  Throw it away.

"But it was EXPENSIVE!  It was almost $6 at Walmart!"

Oh dear GODS!  It is not a puppy.  Toss it.  You have already spent over a half hour talking about this stuff.  I think your time and my time exceeded $6.

"...[Talking about the neighbor FINALLY getting turned in for neglecting a horse.  Let goats eat its tail hair and mane off for the past 10 years, have never had the hooves seen about, etc.] And she was complaining and I think she was fishing to see if I did it..."

Seriously?  Not everyone that mentions something has an ulterior motive.  

"Where can I get a nanny cam?"

What?

"A nanny cam!  I saw them on TV.  I want them to put outside on the porch, in the garage, etc. since no one will come out here and install security cameras other than those things you can see!  Did you know you can have a camera hidden in a clock and ..."

Seriously mother?  I am very aware.  These are not new inventions, and remember that I train in anti-violence and safety planning, and technology as a method of surveillance/stalking.

"Well.  Anyway this camera is so little...

A little background for this one.  I was in her car the first week of May.  Immediately got sick.  Thought I was almost over it, then had some 'issues'.  Long story not as long, I had a bladder/ureter infection that appears to be systemic.  And the doctor believes it stems from my contact with her.  I did mention that I was picking up an antibiotic and why.  She would not let me finish to even tell her the deal.  She immediately started talking about her HORRIBLE kidney pain, and blah, blah, blah.  She goes to the doctor allegedly, and gets a narrow range antibiotic.  

"What did you take?"

Huh?

"What did you take from the doctor?"

Oh.  Cipro I think...

"Why did they give you that?  You can take that?  I am not able to take that!  It put me in ER!  I..."

[Intentionally cutting her off] Because I am NOT YOU.

"Do you want some more?"

Some more what?

"CIPRO!  I have some from last year... "

No.

"Why not? You would have it on hand and would not have to pay for it!" 

Because I do not need it, and both medicines together with my insurance was under $5.  

"Well.  <sniffs>  Must be nice to have insurance."

It is.

"Well.  All I know is that I have to be good for everything because I have been on such a HIGH DOSE for so LONG and ..."

Um.  No.  

"Why not?"

Where do I start?  One- old drug at a dosage you were taking 35 years ago.  Your doctors give you antibiotics each visit it seems, so you are most likely resistant, or your germs are, and plus it is not a broad spectrum drug.

"Oh.  I guess.  Well anyway, I do not see how I could be sick since I am taking such a MASSIVE dose of ..."

SMH

Her new hoarding monologues consist of the following themes:

• The hated neighbor and obsessing over how she can find out if his driver's license is still suspended
• The neighbors across the street and the fact they have few visitors since their 20 year son moved out
• The other neighbors and the fact they have scrap metal in their yard for pick up... 'It's so TRASHY!'
• The empty lot next door is for sale, so obsessing about that and why it took so long
• Talking about a neighbor whose husband died 6 years ago and still lives in the large house and has 2 cars... and since the woman is thin and has had basal cell cancer she has decided she is terminal
• Obsessing on the number of folks who have died on the street in the past umpteen years
• Obsessing on the stray cats, the vermin like possums, the horse, the hated neighbor's dog, the hawks, and the like
• Woodticks, woodticks, woodticks... apparently falling out of the sky on her
• Bugs in general
• Everything is such a trial, a tribulation, or such a big damn deal... you would think that the normal ADLs that we all do are the sentence of Sisyphus
• The psychic thing again... apparently she thought of someone and they are now dead

See a theme here?  And each day, the crazy gets worse.  Much worse.  

In less than 6 days I depart to NOLA on vacation.  I hope to check in before then, but if not... 

Peace:-)  

And YES, I realize I am a
hopeless smart aleck.  Ahem.

So when does a hoard 'tip over' from a dry hoard to a wet hoard?

Dry hoards... 
Wet hoards... 
Clean hoards... 
Dirty hoards...  

No matter what stage the hoard is on the clutter scale, most COHs refer to the type of hoard.  Many of the hoards you see on the reality television shows are wet/dirty hoards.  There is significant vermin and garbage in the hoard, and often animal or human waste in very severe hoards.  My mother's hoard historically has been a dry/clean hoard.  Do not get me wrong.  Her house STINKS.  It is dangerous to anyone going in from a respiratory/health standpoint.

A quick rewind, if you will, to when I was at her house the last time, which was July 2011.  This was the first time in over 10 years,  and it was hugely hoarded to levels often towering over my head with goat paths, but for the most part it was a dry hoard.  I gagged going in, and the refrigerator was full of nastiness, etc... and I got deathly sick.  Fast forward to last month, and I was in the hoard-mobile and got sick again.  Now, if you have read this blog and saw the mid-March entry, she found a turd downstairs.  And it was not from her cats...  She first decided that it was snake poo and then decided here in the last couple of weeks that it is skunk poo.  And she believes her hated neighbor broke into her house and left it there.

Fast forward to this week.  Her paranoia continues to feed on her narcissism, her negativity and her abject and self inflicted misery.  As many folks who hoard do, she has long monologues about minutia of normal living.  Long side expiditions into the world of 'no-one-gives-a-royal-#$&%'.  This time she took over 10 minutes to describe her extreme caution in bringing produce into her house.  She will tell you will a straight face that there is not one insect in her house.  If you believe that, I have a lovely used car with 165K that I will sell you that is LIKE NEW for what I paid for it 5 years ago!  <Oh... I digress...>  Anyway, as I was about terminate the call, she finally gets to the issue.  She found a roach in her kitchen.  She just KNOWS that it came in on the two bananas she bought a few days prior and went through her 'process'.  

Now... I realize it is possible that happened, but very unlikely.  I would be more likely to believe that the roach come from one of the following:

• How any roach and his or her friends enter any home since it is in essence Roach Nirvana
• That some of the paper bags, cardboard boxes, or umpteen year old dry goods hatched roach eggs finally
• The same route or reason the poo was in her basement ... (wait... is that technically the same as the first point?)
• It caught a ride in on any of the other 5 million items she carries into the house weekly from warehouse retailers, big box retailers, the pet store, etc.

With that being said...  What concerns me the most is the first and third points (and they technically are the same I think) so... to me this means that the infiltration of garbage is getting to be more substantial than it was nearly two years ago.  There was some, and a whole lot of reusing things that should never be kept, but 2 major things have changed for her.

1. She now wears continence pants after a couple of incidents of soiling herself without knowing it (????) in public.  Apparently pissing herself repeatedly did not prompt Depends usage.  But a series of sharts or worse did.  Ugh.
2. She has walked very laboriously and with a cane since last July.  This has resulted in her being even more sedentary and immobile than she was. For example, she is now feeding the 6 cats their canned food in a communal bowl making them 'take turns'... whatever that means.

I strongly suspect that she is continuing the steep slide from dry to wet hoarding.  Her house is already toxic beyond description... Most of her animals who have passed in the last 20 years have succumbed to liver failure, which there has been some discussion on hoarding task forces that animals (especially cats) forced to live in the hoard have a disproportionally high incidence of this.  (I would like to see some evidence/citation of research in relation to this... Not that I doubt it, but I prefer scientific method and SCIENCE, not just anecdotal information.)  She always, always, ALWAYS has some sort of respiratory ailment that is antibiotic resistant and hell to treat, then there is the fact that I ended up with a systemic infection/endocarditis from being in her house less than 10 minutes.  She had the library staff print off documents on the weird and rare form of bacteria that nearly cost her her hand and her life from a cat bite.  And she was shocked to find that it is unlikely that it came from the cat... Denial immediately set in and the information was discarded as relevant.  

I have only talked to her once or twice since this disclosure, and she was going to buy roach traps, etc.  I am sure her delusion/denial has set back in, and if I have to guess, she will at some point start blaming hated neighbor for this too.  And how would she ever have someone come in and treat?  She would not.  The horror!  Having a pest control truck there!  Acknowledging the problem!  And letting someone in her house?  Not happening.

If I do outlive her, and she has not succeeded in estranging me completely, it is going to be quite the legacy/inheritance she leaves me.  That is enough to keep me up at night...  Simply horrible.  And there is nothing that I can do to get her help, willingly or not.

One humorous note, she was referred to a therapeutic  massage therapist by her chiropractor.  (Another person that I should add to the 'send flowers for dealing with her' list).  She has another Wonderful Stranger and something else to talk about, interspersed with the crazy... but hey, you take the positive where you ca find it.  Her 934,768 questions before the appointment were funny, such as:

"Do you wear clothes?  I am not getting naked for this!"

"Do they pound on you like they do on TV?"

"Will the place be clean?"

You get the idea.  And I have real empathy for the massage therapist.  

Have a lovely Memorial Day Holiday if you are from the US and commemorate this holiday.  I will be spending it with my cats, my friends, some awesome food (corn on the cob, grilled portabella mushrooms with a mix of shrimp and scallops and white wine stuffed in them) and more wine.  

Goodnight all.