Oh dear... Mold in her ear...

So the drama with my hoarding mother's health continues.  At least according to her self report, which can be difficult to sift through to determine what is accurate, what is fact based, and what is not.

She has been complaining of ear pain and discharge.  In gross and terrifying detail.  She has seen one doctor over 10 times since February, and has seen 3 other doctors in that time as well.  She went to a new doctor, a specialist, out of town.  (This is after her rigidity caused her to miss a referral to a prestigious teaching hospital two hours away.)

Long story short (saving you the drama, trauma, and craziness inflicted by her manufactured hardships and inflexible world view) she has mold in her ear.  A lot of it.  She does take a medication for lupus that suppresses her immune system so she is more vulnerable to any infection, and living in a stage 5 hoard makes this a guaranteed issue.  

She has been going on and on, speculating where and how she could have come in contact with a mold spore.  Of course, it could not been her home!  She has been coughing and hacking a lot, and keeps complaining that it happens now even when she has not been outside.

Um... No mystery here.  It is the hoard.  Her accommodation to the filth, dust, and other things that go parcel and packet with a hoard, even a 'dry hoard' is starting to leave her very medically vulnerable.  And her mental illness and her refusal to treat it will make a bad situation, untenable.  I can only imagine what she is telling the doctors to explain it, and I hope that they (the medical personnel) are not that naive...

This will not end well.  Whether it is today, this week, or two years from now.  Hoarding... No one wins.  No one.

Not your normal post- Skydiving!

This is not necessarily hoarding related, but thought I would share!

I did it.  Today I jumped out of an airplane.  And it was all I hoped it would be and more.  I had so much fun, it was such a rush, and I want to do it again soon.

I did not share that I was doing this with my hoarding mother, however I am certain that she will know at some point since her neighbor and the 'Flying Monkey/Wonderful Stranger' Chiropractor are on my social networking site and most likely saw the many photos and other things posted today.

She will be PISSED.  And I simply do not care.  At 46 years old I do not need, nor do I require, her permission or approval.  She will be angry that I did this and 'kept it from her'.  She will be angry that should could not verbally vomit her negativity, fear, and threatening worldview prior to it.  She will be upset that it was such a lovely day with friends, and that nothing she can do can change it.  And that is all her stuff, none of it is mine.

I stepped way outside my comfort zone today.  I am really not a fan of heights, and small planes.  I do not surrender dominion of myself easily.  And today I did all of it.  And it was fun!  (And no 'oopses'...)

I will continue to live life at full volume, very unlike my hoarding mother who considers life as 'opportunity lost'.  She is making a choice, as am I.  I choose happiness, experiences, relationships... I think I know what is important.

Hope you had a great weekend.  Thank you for reading!

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.

The final day in the month that contains Mother's Day...

I truly have no issue with May, although from my last few posts and the title of this one it seems that I do.  This was just a hard May for me, and full of events that put me in a place of introspection.  Although I often state that some wounds do not need to be reopened in order for a body (and figuratively… mind) to heal, opened they were. 

The weekend of Mother’s Day I attended a retirement party for a woman I have known professionally for nearly 16 years, and the last year as a member of her Board of Directors.  I was part of the CEO search, and another person I know from the organization was selected, someone I have also known for the same amount of time.  It was an unusual event to say the least, irreverent and quirky, and honestly I would expect little else. 

Since it was the evening prior to MD, many folks brought their mothers.  The incoming CEO was one.  I had the pleasure of sitting with her, and another senior member of management that brought her mother as well.  The woman who was the incoming CEO emceed a good portion of the event, and the outgoing CEO recognized her for her work, her loyalty, and her new position.  The new CEO spoke about her early days, the mentoring she received from many in the room, and spoke to the large role her mother played in inspiring her, putting her on the path to where she was, and her mother’s selfless service to others as a public health professional.  I watched her mother’s eyes well up with pride, and the happy tears.  I watched the other mothers in the room, and saw their appreciation of, and pride in, their daughter’s achievements.  I was so happy for them all.  And I also wondered what it must feel like to have that kind of unconditional love…  Especially as an adult.  I enjoyed chatting with the folks and the mothers, and I drove away in the warm evening air. 

I dropped the windows and opened the sun roof to let in the warm air… I drove my little sports sedan, I thought of achievements I had worked so hard for.  I thought of school achievements such as recognition for grades, science achievements, scholarships, and the like.  And how most of those I attended alone.  I never experienced the selfless pride, the love I saw that night.  I thought about working my way up from direct service to professional staff, to management, to executive management, and to the position I am in now as a CEO.  I thought of earning my Master’s Degree, and the other recognition that folks had kindly bestowed upon me in the past several years. Very seldom had I had someone there with me.  My earning of my Master’s was unacknowledged by anyone.  Even running a half marathon, which I had to overcome huge and overwhelming obstacles, was not something she found worthy of saying ‘well done’ or expressing any sort of pride.

Now, in previous years, and posts… This was fodder to be as sad as I allow myself to get.  Not tonight.  It was not happy, but I just recognized it for what it was.  It is my reality.  As I often quip, I am like the Green Day song… Boulevard of Broken Dreams where the refrain is “I walk alone…”

There are worse things in the is life.  I have experienced MANY.  And I survived and overcame.  This is one of those curious things that arises from those circumstances, and I take this as the learning experience that it is.

We have had a couple of lovely and exciting things happen at my job.  My agency was recognized and nominated for an award, and we managed to secure a large grant for a huge unmet need, and we did not expect to succeed.  When I mentioned it to my hoarding mother, her response was “Why?  Why did they pick you?”  She immediately launched into her tired collection of petty annoyances and overblown misunderstandings, and has not mentioned either the award nomination nor the grant award since.  Her depth of narcissism is so sad.  And the saddest thing is her decision to do NOTHING to address her issues will have lifelong reverberations for everyone around her.  Unlike her, I choose to use these experiences as a springboard to learn, to evolve, and to move forward.   As I have said many times, to her life is a small, frightening and limited place.  She operates from a place of ‘opportunity lost’.  I refuse to do that. 

So the point of this blog?  I am continuing to make the life I want, and I continue to choose to be happy.  Just in the next few weeks I am doing several things that I have wanted to do for a while, and for circumstances beyond my control, was unable to do.  Well, they are happening in the next few weeks.  In two weeks from today I am skydiving.  It is scheduled and paid for.  Three weeks from today I am taking a Segway Tour of a nearby historic community with friends.  In a week I am going horseback riding.  I am in the process of scheduling a zip-line excursion, and am hosting or co-hosting two parties. 

Life is meant to be lived at full volume, and live it I shall.  I am also training for a full marathon in the fall.  I have taken some steps back, but sometimes it is like the analogy often promulgated on Facebook, before an arrow can fly, it must first be drawn back.

I am ready to fly.  And folks can either support me, or clear the way, because either way, I will not accept defeat.  If there is a positive to what I have experienced, it is that. 

Thanks for reading!

Okay folks, it is time for From the Mouth of a Hoarder!

Today's FTMOAH is a doozy... 

In the US many high schools and universities put out cards that have a local contact that is part of the Alumni contact, but is basically a multi-class directory that is then sold to folks.  I had thought those had gone by the wayside like many publications of that sort, displaced by social networking media and the internet.

Nope.  I received three, one for my high school, one for the university I attended for undergraduate and one for my graduate school.  The cards immediately went into shred folder, not because I am secretive, but because folks who know me are already connected via social networking sites, and I am wise to how this particular scenario plays out.  Nothing bad, and for some, quite enjoyable.  

My hoarding mother got one.  And she went simply ballistic... Calling the 1-800 number and demanding to 'be removed from the list NOW!' and telling the hapless call center person her dramatic and sad story...  A story that I have heard nearly 5 million times that includes:

• She was not allowed to go to parties or to socialize so why would she now?
• All she did was go to class and then go to work.  
• She did not have any friends in school, so she does not know or care about 'those people'.
• A long, drawn out story about someone who came into her cake and candy supply shop in the basement of her home in the early 80s who told her they told the reunion committee for her class her address and she went absolutely batsh^t crazy on that person, screaming 'Why?  WHY? I do not want anything from them!' and similar sentiments.
• How she has never attended a reunion and does not intend to start now.

She planned to go into the local Alumni contact's office, who happens to be our former insurance agent, and she loathes him.  She planned to go in and demanding that her information not be included, and telling him what she thinks...

You get the idea.  Another person I should send flowers to when she is gone.  It is just so sad.  Granted, I took the 'geographical solution' and 'poofed' on many folks from high school, and I own that behavior, and I know I have hurt many folks I did not mean to, I just needed to be able to live and do so from outside the shadow of the hoard, or her toxicity.

I feel I had little choice... but the friendships, both consistently maintained and rediscovered are precious.  It saddens me that my mother makes the choices she does.  And as we all know, choices wreak consequences, both positive and negative, as well as natural and contrived.

Have a good one, and thank you for reading.  And please keep our former insurance agent in your positive thoughts.  He may need them!  

Hoarding... No one wins.  NO ONE.

Flying monkeys, wonderful strangers, and a whole helping of guilt for Lisabeth....

I received this last night about 9pm. Yesterday was a supremely craptastic day at work, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and I got this via social media.  I was so angry that I was trembling like I was freezing to death in subzero temperatures.  I was very triggered, and felt waves of anger, frustration, guilt, shame, you-name-it.  I cried and scared my cats.

The person sending this graduated from high school with me in my hometown 7 hours away. She is my mother's chiropractor, and her longest running 'wonderful stranger' and now, applicant to be a 'flying monkey' in Narcissistic Mother speak...

I was nearby to my NM in early April, and my mother could not be anything but a problem to any solution and, long-story-short... Declined to see me.

She has not seen me since April of 2013, three months before I nearly died and required 2 major surgeries in 10 months, (the first I was not expected to survive). In the 16 years I have lived in the state that is now my home she has never visited, and besides her toxicity, gaslighting, emotional abuse with  all the pleasant features of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, she is a level 4/5 hoarder, ergo this blog. It is not physically nor emotionally safe to be near her. As those who have read this blog over the past couple of years know, I have been extremely low contact for years.

Today is my birthday, and so far no acknowledgement of it from NM. (Not that I want a princess cake and a bouncy castle, but a timely card and a Happy Birthday call would be, well, motherly.)

Did I mention I loathe all the Mother's Day pathos?

Thanks for reading my vent. I treated myself to a new runner watch/GPS/fitness tracker that I have been looking at for a few months.  I had a lovely morning run in the May sunshine.  I am having a great work day, and plan on a lovely evening. I am over this...  

I did respond to 'Dr. Wednesday'.  My response was as follows:  

I appreciate your honesty and your kind care of her. She thinks the world of you. I tried to see her last month, and she declined. Our relationship is very complicated, and as much as I love her, she will not allow me to be a part of her life in the way that I would like to be or to do anything helpful for her. It breaks my heart, but she is the only one that can change it, and she just can't. If you would like to talk to me my number is ....

I know that Dr. Wednesday is close to her family and may not have a frame of reference.  I also do not believe the timing of this (the evening before my birthday and midweek prior to Mother's Day in the US) is coincidental.  My hoarding mother had a chiro visit with her yesterday.  

Such a little thing, and the maelstrom it awakened in me made me realize that although I have progressed by leaps and bounds, I have to accept that I have been impacted by the abuse I survived, and the craziness I still navigate now as a middle aged adult.  

It (the hoarding, the abuse, the gaslighting) is not who I am, but it has shaped me.  I have to continue to honor and resolve that, like any other human being.

Thank you for reading.  Have a great week.

Is it appropriate to title this with a curse word?

Apparently I have more work to do.  I thought this woman could annoy me, but that I had en-armored myself enough that she could not penetrate what has been lovingly (and not so lovingly) referred to as my armadillo skin.

Yeah.  FAIL.

Busy cycle at work continues.  As I write this, I am taking a quick break from a creating a PPt presentation for a presentation to a law school and our largest renewal grant.  I write this from a hotel room in my home state, approximately 80 miles away from my hometown, and 6 hours away from my home in another state.  Against better judgement, I let my hoarding, narcissistic mother know I would be nearby, and tentatively made plans 'to make plans' to meet for dinner on either Wednesday or Friday of this week.  I have not seen her since April of 2013- the last time I was able to attend this particular conference- 3 months before the health issue that nearly took my life with two major surgeries in 10 months, just for a frame of reference.  So I called her to firm up these plans.  

Yeah.  No.  Ever heard the saying "Some folks have a problem for every solution"?  This was my mother.  I offered a couple of options.  We could meet somewhere half way.  I could pick her up at her door and drop her off.  We could do one of two nights, as my conference schedule and my presenting schedule have me in harness until May 1st.  Her demurrals included the following reasons:

• Her taillight on her 22 year Honda is burnt out- she did not want to drive.
• She does not want to be out, driving or riding, after dark because of all the deer.
• She does not feel well due to an ear infection (that she spent 20 minutes telling me how much better she was feeling since her doctor's visit).
• She does not want to leave when the despised neighbor 'in the turn' is home to see her leave.
• She does not want to be away from her property at night as if she is, hordes will descend to steal, vandalize and pillage.

You get the picture.  I finally said to her that it appears a visit is not going to work this time.  She very effectively manipulated it so I 'did the deed' to kibosh the whole thing.  I was annoyed and hung up.  I had no more than walked away from my phone when my text indicator went off.  It was her neighbor who had called to check in as our call ended.  Mom was complaining to her that I was so close but could not find the time or effort to be bothered to come see her, she further speculated that it was because she thought I thought I would be asked to help her with something.

My first thought was ... F_ck you.  (Not the neighbor, but my hoarding mother).  I am so done with all of this.  She has driven me nearly mad with her manufactured drama regarding being bitten by the neighbor's puppy and her ear infection, and her recent increase in really screwed up statements (charming things like the police should not have the ability to treat a narcotic OD and all druggies should die and she has not seen a movie since 'Home Alone' because all movies have nothing but screwing and killing and drugs).

I am still processing this, and I realize it is yet another gaslighting/ambient abuse tactic, but I am so sick of it.  I creep closer to making the decision of going from low contact to no contact.  And I know this latest bit of asshattery was a punishment for setting and maintaining boundaries... but who is being punished here, really?  I think she will be disappointed to know it is not me.  I have been able to make lovely plans with friends for dinner each night that I had previously held open, and my trip has been more pleasant.  I also never doubted that her view of our relationship is sharply transactional, and I do not measure up, and that I only exist as an extension of her... I am merely a supporting cast member in her drama with her as the protagonist.  

I am done.  I am not making any more efforts, no matter how minor, to accommodate her.  My friend pointed out that at 78 or 79, this quite possibly could have been the last time I saw her.  Honestly, I suspect she will outlive me, but I doubt she will be provided another opportunity to see me.  In the 16 years I have lived in an adjoining state (7 hours away) she has never attempted to visit, not even during any surgery that I have had.  Granted, that made my life much easier... but it also sent me a clear message.  

Just restating the obvious.  I have no biological family.  I have never had a mother, except my lovely grandmother who did the best she could to fill that gap.  However, I have the most amazing family of choice, my friends.  And my FOC is who I will focus my love, my friendship, and my efforts on.

Have a great evening everyone.  Thank you for reading.