Clutter

Something that I am starting to work on but have not come near to understanding, is my messiness. Sometimes I watch the TLC show "Hoarding." I can't watch the show while I'm eating because it makes me nauseous. I will watch it sometimes though when it's a quiet morning with just me at home. This morning is one such morning and watching the show has me thinking about my own struggles with keeping my areas clean as well as wanted to keep things. I'm not the only family member who struggles with messiness. My youngest sister struggles the worst with it.

I know that almost no one reads this blog. I know that this blog will probably never really be read. But I keep on writing because it helps me push myself to face the truth. This blog helps me work through understanding what happened to me. This blog forces me to dig deeper into my past and also the articles people have written to help me. This blog is a safe outlet for my feelings and memories.

My oldest sister went through a phase where her room was a complete mess. Her room was above knee-deep in clothes and papers and other girl clutter. We moved to a smaller house where she and I had to share a room once again. I cried to my Mother because I did not want her messiness in my room. She eventually did become more clean. I'm not really sure what factors went into her cleaning more. I don't know if she truly changed or my parents put enough "pressure" on her for her to start keeping it clean. By "pressure" from my parents, I mean probably a combination of humiliation, spankings, and blackmail. Because that's just the way my parents operate. For the rest of her time at home, my oldest sister keep her space spotless. I'm not sure how she is now. She has mentioned a few times that she would be embarrassed if any of the family stopped in so I don't think her house is spotless but I still don't think it's a huge problem. She has become fairly healthy emotionally so I think if she was still struggling with it she probably would have sought professional help.

For most of my younger years, my life was pretty structured. We had church at least three times a week. We would clean the entire house on Wednesday and Saturday. The house was always spotless for Sunday because often people would come over after the meetings at church. However, after my dad suddenly left the church, our lives lost much of the structure. My dad and Mother had many other things on their minds other than taking care of the children. Sometimes meals would be forgotten. The school work often went undone for days one end. We would end up doing school work on the weekends to catch up whenever Mother noticed that we were behind. People were stopping in at our house at all hours of the day and night and without any warning. Sometimes we would go weeks without seeing anyone.

With this lack of structure, my sisters and I started to let our room get a little messy. Once it got messy, Mother was just too busy and depressed to notice or ask us to clean it up. One very embarrassing day stands clear in my mind. We were having meetings some nights of the week in our home. For one such meeting, our room was an extreme mess. We closed the door and hoped that no one would go in. But we were not so lucky. The [Fitzgerald] family had many children and these children were crazy and energetic and disrespectful. Of course they had to see why that room door was closed. When they saw the mess, the laughed so hard at us. I think all the children in our group at the time laughed at us for weeks to come.

I've mentioned several times that at one point during my parent's time in the cult, we lost pretty much everything and started living in a very small space. At that time, all of my clothing had to be brought down to a total of three skirts/jumpers and five shirts. I had two pair of shoes (tennis shoes and church shoes). We each had a small Rubbermaid tote that was to hold all of our socks and underwear as well as any personal belongings. If we got too many personal belongings, we would have to "slim down" our tote so that everything could fit in there. We had to throw out anything extra. Several years later, we finally got to move into a three bedroom house. The space felt amazing, even if it was still packed with people.

For the first while in the new house, everything stayed tidy. However, over time, the floor got more and more cluttered. The closest started filling up and under the bunk beds started filling up. A few years later we were able to move to a bigger house, but my youngest sister and I continued to share the same room. That summer after moving into the bigger house is when our room started to explode. We had more space in the house so my Mother did not come up to our room that often. My Mother never cleaned at that point, so she never really pressured us to clean up.

I bought my first car the next summer. Our room was still so messy that I lost one set keys in there and never found them again. At that point, I started cleaning up my own mess. Although my sister's mess was still very bad, I would keep my half of everything clean. It looked pretty comical because we shared a dresser, where one side was mine and the other side was her's. The top of my side was clean and even dusted, while her half had at least a foot of things on it. Her side had drawers half pulled out and clothes hanging everywhere.

The next year I moved off to college. When I moved away, my younger sister's room totally exploded. I was the only person living in my first apartment. I spent the first week there reorganizing everything and making sure everything was in its spot. My apartment stayed mostly clean, but I do remember a few times that it did not. I had troubles doing my dishes regularly. I think many college students do struggle with that so that is probably not anything specific to my condition. However, there were a few times that I was embarrassed by the clutter. I remember one time I was in a hurry and looking for something specific that I couldn't find. I pulled out all the drawers in my dresser and spread them out on my floor. Of course that had to be the day that my group decided to come over for the evening. There were some giggles at me and I giggled in embarrassment but it wasn't too bad. I remember another time a friend stopped by unexpectedly and I had to quickly throw some clothes that were in the living room into my bedroom and close the door,.

Despite being fairly clean in my first apartment, I was still terrified about people coming over and my apartment being dirty. Whenever people would come over, I would try to get there a couple hours beforehand so that I could make sure that my apartment was spotless. I think the reason I was always worrying about my apartment being spotless was because my Mother always told us that if our cleaning was not spotless, it was not clean. She always expected perfection and if we did not give her perfection, we were a failure and we failed at our job.

The summer after my first apartment, I had to move out of my apartment and into another apartment that I shared with other roommates. I did not have time to sort through my things before moving into that apartment and for several months my room was packed full of clutter. However, over winter break I was able to organize my room once again. However, my car started to get out of hand. I always had clutter in it. I never wanted anyone to ride in it because I was embarrassed by the amount of stuff in my car. If someone were to ride in my car, I would stuff everything in the trunk. But I wouldn't clean out the trunk later. It got to the point where my trunk was full. One such day of stuffing everything in the trunk, there was food in there. I left that food in there for months. When I finally got around to cleaning out the trunk, I had maggots in my car that would fill my car up with flies.

The next year, I moved to yet another apartment and that's when my clutter got out of control once again. I was hiding everything in my room. I was embarrassed of my car. I pretty much tried to keep everything hidden. Things got very bad. I think what really saved me at that point was starting to date my now husband. I was forced to clean up so that I was not embarrassed by having him around. There were still times when the messiness got out of hand. The last time I was truly messy was when I had my mental breakdown. Once my boyfriend and I moved in together, I really started to keep everything in order. I still struggle sometimes with having a messy car but I am clean for the most part.

However, my precious sister is still very much struggling with clutter. In fact, she just lost custody of her kids because of the condition of her house. We have always made excuses for why our spaces were messy. After I moved out, our room got completely out of control. The cat  would mess in there. My sister would spill food and drink. The room became disgusting. When my sister moved with her husband, things did not get much better but she always blamed it on the living conditions. The finally were able to get a house of their own without living with other people. She always assured me that her house was in much better condition but this week proved that it actually may be the worse that it has ever been.

I think the biggest change for me was marrying a clean man. Maybe her issue was marrying a messy man. But I think there are deeper issues that caused all of the girls in our family to become messy.

Just an Embarrassing Story

My guess is that it is actually fairly easy to hack many Fundamentalist families accounts. Why? Because probably most of them have something to do with Jesus or the Kingdom of God or something along those lines. My Dad definitely did that. I think all of his passwords had something to do with his religion. If it was not Jesus, he would put it in Hebrew: Yeshua. So very creative and secure... (sarcasm dripping)

When I moved off to college, it was finally my chance to distance myself from all the craziness. I wanted to start to heal and I wanted to start to learning to be normal. I finally did not have someone watching my every move. I could actually have friends. I could actually do what I wanted (for the most part, except for the guilt that kept me from doing most things). My parents helped me move to college and helped me set up my first apartment. My wonderful Dad even set up my wifi router and password secured it. You guessed it. My password was "JesusisLord." I did not think much of it and anyway I was not near computer literate enough to figure out how to change it.

I quickly made non-Christian friends. One of those friends was a tall, handsome atheist. We hit it off wonderfully and started seeing each other every day. Our group of friends would hang out at all the apartments. One day we decided to hang out at my apartment. That boy needed to connect to the internet so he asked for my password. You can imagine the giggles as I tried to explain why such a normal girl with so many atheist friends had such a strange password. It was embarrassing and it still embarresses me this day. I don't know if that password was the start of the demise of my relationship with that guy or not, but not too long afterwards he started getting really distant. I will never know what happened with him since he pretty much just ran from me without explanation. I haven't talked to him in years. I will probably never get the answers to why he ran from me. He probably figured out pretty quickly that I was just too much crazy to handle.

Mental Health

Ever since I was sixteen, I've been the black sheep of the family. Seems like I've been the first to do many bad things. I was the first to be found out having sex outside of marriage. I was the first to publicly not be a Christian anymore. And I was the first to have a mental breakdown.

Homeschoolers Anonymous did a series about mental health awhile back. Honestly, I have not read many of the articles posted. I actually don't read many of the articles about mental health in homeschooling circles. Like my painful story that I shared last week about some of the sexual abuse as a child, mental health issues has not been a topic that I cannot fully face.

Like many fundamentalist families, mental health was never discussed in our family. Mental health was a word almost as bad as sex. Psychiatrist and the devil belonged in the same group. Mental health medications were something to be avoided at all cost. Mental health problems were often addressed as "demon possession." Going to a psychiatrist opened you up to demons and you were most definitely going to get taken over by demons if you even dared to think about taking medications. Despite the strong aversion to talking about mental health, my Mother had severe mental health problems. I will save those stories for another post, but for now I will just say that they were debilitating for her at times and often led to much of the abuse growing up.

Another thing that we had in common with many fundamentalist families is that the children were discouraged from forming any personality. Growing up my Mother always said that I was a tomboy or at least not a girly-girl. That was why my sister could have pink and baby blue dresses but I always had to have the brown, green, or dark blue. My Mother always said that I did not like pink. My Mother always said that I loved dark brown. I don't know if what she said is true. Growing up, I generally took what she said as being true. Although there were many time that I was very jealous of my sisters because they could wear the pretty colors because they were girly-girls. I don't know if I was a girly-girl on the inside growin up because I did not have any opinions of my own. I did not know what I liked or did not like. I had no personality. That was how we were raised. Despite not knowing what kind of style I liked as a child, I love pink now. My shoes are pink. My coffee mugs are pink. My phone case is pink. My towels are pink. My bed is pink. Almost half of all my shirts are pink. My purse is pink. Everything that isn't pink is some pastel girly color. I wear more make-up and jewelry than anyone in my family. I won't leave the house without make-up on. Given how I am now, I think that if I was allowed to express myself as a child, I would have been a very girly-girl.

By the time I reached adulthood, I had no opinions. I did not know who I was. I did not know how to tell if I was doing ok or not doing ok. Emotional and mental well-being was never taught. Church never taught it. It was never a book that Mother gave for us to read as part of our homeschooling curriculum. And it was definitely never mentioned around the dinner table at night. We were not supposed to have emotions. We could not cry. We could not laugh too much either. We could not feel anger. We could not even question why. With all of the suppression I knew nothing about listening to my own body and emotions.

It may seem harmless to never teach a child about mental health and taking care of your mental health. Surely, everyone knows when they have reached their limits. The problem is, I did not know. I did not know when I was doling ok and when I was not. I was always taught to just do as I was told and to not have any emotions about it.

That is how I found myself several years later in a new state, at a new job and in a new apartment without any friends or family around. I hated my job and was receiving the proper training or mentoring. I hated my living situation as I was renting a room from strangers that had lied about having live-in boyfriends. I was so uncomfortable in that house that I never went out of my room when they were there. I hated the state. It was cold and snowy and my car was having problems, including being without heat. Plus just everything was so different in that state. I was homesick for the mountains and the mountain people. I was hating my job. Plus, I was head-over-heals for my boyfriend whom I discovered was not so sure about me and did not want to move to that state with me. We broke up at least two times per week. To try to save my relationship, I would drive every weekend for at least six hours one way to spend the weekend with him. I would make the long cold drive back home either late Sunday night or early Monday morning. Sometimes I would start work on Monday without having slept the day before.

I was pushed beyond my limits. I was unhappy. I was hurting because of my relationship with my boyfriend. I was stressed at work and I was stressed at home. Then one day I hit a breaking point. I remember that day. It was a Thursday. My boyfriend had taken the week off and he was there with me, looking for jobs and apartments. Since my roommate said that my boyfriend could not stay there, we were staying in a hotel room. That Thursday, my boyfriend told me that he would not be moving up there with me because he was scared of the financial situation. I was devastated. Sure I did not love my job, but at least I was finally working in my career and was earning more money than I had ever had before. My mind told me that staying with the job was the right thing to do. I was never taught how to be happy so not being happy at my job did not seem like a big deal to me.

That dark Thursday, I completely shut down. My boyfriend did not love me enough to move to another state with me. We fought and were probably going to break up. The next day was a day from hell at working. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Because of all the problems that happened at my job on Friday, it was mandatory for everyone to work Saturday. However, my boyfriend had to get back home that Saturday and we had only driven one car. My boss said that I could not have the Saturday off because it was a mandatory work day.

That Friday, my roommate also frantically called me because she had just come out of her drug-induced haze long enough to realize that I had not been home all week. She completely forgot that she had told me that my boyfriend could not stay there that week so I had told her that I would not be there all week. I was super annoyed by her repeated calls and texts that I turned my phone off and headed to bed. The next morning, we got up and headed back to my boyfriend's home. I did not go to work and I did not turn my phone back on. I didn't turn my phone back on until that Tuesday. I was battling severe depression. I was a failure because I could not keep my job. I was depressed about the decision my boyfriend had made without any regard for my feelings.

When I turned my phone back on that Tuesday, I had  dozens of voicemails and texts. When unable to contact me, my crazy roommates had called my parents. When my parents could not contact me, they called the police for a missings persons. Because I had distanced myself from my family, my family did not even know for sure if I had a boyfriend, much less where he lived. By that time, there had been a missing persons case open for me for a couple days. The police were calling me. Friends I hadn't heard from in years were calling me. Everyone was saying that they would "love me no matter what." I was too scared to contact anyone. I did not want to explain to my parents. I did not want to talk to my crazy roommates. I just tried to hide. I did finally contact to police to cancel the missing person case. I then submitted myself in a psych ward. That turned out not being very good for me because of my severe anxiety. By the time I was released from the hospital, I was a nervous wreck with anxiety through the roof.

My mental breakdown was caused by many factors. One factor I know is that I was not listening to my own body. I was not taking care of my mental health. I did not even realize that my mental health was important. Mental health was for week, demon inhabited people. I was strong and smart. I did not need mental health.

This week has been extremely painful for me because I am watching my younger sister going through a similar mental breakdown. I don't know all of the details and I don't want to post them all here for her sake. However, I know the feeling all too well. She had a rough start to her young family but finally she and her husband had a good-paying job. However, once again, they did not enjoy the new state, they did not have any friends there, and they did not enjoy the job at all. It came to a breaking point. Unfortunately, she had a whole lot more to lose than just a career. Now my Mother has made an emergency visit to help her pick up the pieces of her life. I hurt so badly for her. She was following the formula our parents had given for her. She was working hard and ignoring her emotions, just like she was always taught. And she doesn't understand why this all has happened.

I am angry once again at our parents. Their teachings are still continuing to destroy our lives and cause us so much pain. Their teachings are still preventing us from living full, happy lives. I just wish I and all my siblings could break free of everything that is dragging us down. It's been a long, painful road, and I don't think it will be over any time soon. I just hope I can help guide my sister through it as she starts her own journey down the long, painful road.

I'm breaking inside for her.