An open letter to my mom

If my dog and his toy are annoying you, then go live somewhere else. He was here first.

If my asking you to clean your room is annoying you, then go live somewhere else. It's my property.

If my asking you to clean up after yourself and your lunch is annoying you, then go live somewhere else. Your crumbs are not acceptable.

If my making you call the unemployment office today (because you said last week you'd call them today) is annoying you, then go live somewhere else. I'm sick of your excuses.

The good news

I don't want this blog to be all doom and gloom, especially since I've been told that it made one person cry. My mother has now been living with me for five weeks, and has made some significant progress.

Before:

• Mom did not exercise more than walking to the mailbox and back.
• She ate irregularly and her diet consisted of frozen meals or fast food and Diet Coke.
• She was unemployed but did not have her resume or cover letter together because she was terrified of having to interview, and did not have the self-esteem to promote herself.
• She did no household cleaning/chores.
• She wanted me to do everything for her or with her because she was scared to handle even a basic appointment by herself.
• She was afraid of going to any sort of therapy, and during doctor visits would not tell anyone about her physical or mental symptoms.
  

Now:

• She walks a mile at least 5 times a week.
• She eats three square meals, including 4-5 servings of fruits/vegetables. We're still working on replacing at least some of the Diet Coke with water.
• She has worked on her resume and cover letter, and applied to a job listing last night. (Unfortunately it turned out to be a scam on Craigslist, so we're working on not letting that get to her self-esteem).
• She's easing into a schedule of cleaning and chores (we're still working on that one though, but it is making progress).
• She is doing many appointments and tasks on her own, including her first appointment with a psychiatrist.

I am VERY PROUD of her.

Saying goodbye

I had to get rid of many of my personal items in the past few days. These are items that were mine, but stayed at my mother's house. I'm not sure why they were all there. Perhaps I thought that my mother was a better steward of my adolescent belongings than I would have been. Of course, I now know that this assumption was incorrect.

In addition to my childhood artwork and birth certificate (the latter was stuck to the carpet under a thick layer of animal excrement), I have disposed of the following:

• Trophies and souvenirs from high school educational competitions
• Letter jacket, earned from two years of cross-country running
• High school diploma
• High School graduation gown and cap
• Prom dress
• Books read for mandatory summer reading in high school English classes (I wasn't necessarily sad to see all of these go)
• Letter my father wrote while my mother was in labor with me

The last item was the hardest. Reading an account of my birth, written in my father's handwriting, brought tears to my eyes. It was hard to throw out, but there was urine and mold growth on it. That's pretty much how it is going now with throwing items out. "Hate to see it go, but it's covered in shit and bacteria." When Mom complains about me throwing something out, I have to point out to her that it was covered in God knows what, and she should have taken better care of it.

We have filled the 3rd dumpster, which means that 9 tons / 180 cubic feet of garbage have been removed from the house. We have already ordered the 4th dumpster, but it will mostly be filled with construction debris. We are now at the point where the trash is nearly all out of the house, and we can have a contractor come in to assess the damage and determine what needs to be repaired and replaced. It is likely that my husband and I will be doing the work ourselves (mostly me, since he works a million hours a week and I am unemployed). I'm looking forward to tearing things up and out of her home - hopefully ripping up carpet and taking a sledgehammer to the bathroom cabinets will satisfy my destructive urges towards the house. If her home was not a town house adjoined to two other properties, I would have thrown a match to it a long time ago.

Current stats on the house

Since the diary entries stopped about three weeks ago, I wanted to give a rundown on the progress I have made since then.

Dumpsters filled: 2 1/3
Approximate weight of items trashed: 6.5 tons
Approximate size of total items trashed: 45 cubic yards

Items of note:
4 TVs
2 VCRs
2 DVD players
1 laptop
2 desktop computers
Thousands of books (not including the books she has sorted through)
Grandma & Grandpa's personal correspondence
All of my childhood artwork, from adolescence to college
At least 35 pounds of dog/cat feces
$2500 faux-leather sectional
At least 100 pounds of food
Thousands of dollars worth of clothing and shoes
At least 200 pounds of newspapers and magazines

Mom has healed enough since the surgery to remove her MRSA-infected abscess to come to the house and help clean and clear out items. This is good and bad. Good because more work can be done in less time. Bad because it's a new way to get frustrated at her lack of insight into this problem, and because I can not get mad at her house anymore unless I can keep it to myself. This is hard on certain days, such as yesterday when I had to throw out 20 years of my artwork and found my birth certificate encrusted on the carpet with dog feces and urine.

She is still living at my house. This is a bad situation that causes stress on everyone - myself, my husband, and my mother. My husband has been a saint throughout this for not throwing her out on any of the many incidents that she has insulted me or him (directly or indirectly). I worry that the tension is reaching a breaking point. I already know that my husband will never have a good relationship with my mother. I don't know if I ever will, either.

Diary entry from 3/30/09

Was only able to do a little work on the house on Saturday. Sunday was work at my house. Today I was sidelined with an eye injury.

Tomorrow I go back to the house.

This evening, we had a talk about everything. She is taking this pretty hard and I hope she understands how much therapy could help. I have to watch out about getting angry at her. it's so easy to get angry at the house and the situation and her but it is only making thngs worse. Mom needs positive reinforcement now to make the right choices.

Diary entry from 3/27/09

No work on the house today. I was needing a break, it was bad weather and today was mom's 61st birthday.

She's been here a week. So far, so good.

Diary entry from 3/26/09

3 hours, 6 bags. Dumpster is 1/4 full.

Threw out a lot today, and today was the first day I had an allergic reaction to anything in the house. Her bedroom has a dense amount of garbage that I started to sift through but ended up tossing virtually all of it. As I get closer to the carpet, it reeks of dog urine and feces.

Mom did well with chores at my house today. She is still concentrating on the end result of decorating her newly cleaned house, and not on the physical and emotional work ahead.

I am going to have her write down her goals - what she wants to be able to do when her house is clean. Her first thought was to be able to do needlepoint. I am also going to have her start a gratitude journal. Cheesy, but could help as a start to gaining control of her depression.