Tonight I learned from my parents (my Dear Old Dad and beloved stepMom) that DHS is looking for permanent homes for my two sons.
I cannot reconcile this with the fact that DHS does NOT consider me to be an abusive parent, proof being that I am allowed to visit my sons four times a week, for at least two hours at a time (vs. the one hour per week that most families get when DHS removes their children), and that I am allowed to take my sons anywhere I choose, as long as I have them home by the end of our visits.
I am trying to tell myself that it is only a "just in case" measure, the seeking of permanent homes....
... but honestly, I feel like DHS has already thrown in the towel where I am concerned...
... and I am devastated.
I have already been feeling like people are keeping secrets from me.
This only confirms that feeling.
sMom tells me that I probably need my medication increased. She's probably right.
Perhaps then this won't hurt so much....
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
FOR THE HOARD!! o.O
My beautiful children, my one reason for living, were taken from me by the Department of Human Services on March 25, 2011, because I am a hoarder.
I. Am. A. Hoarder.
That is getting easier for me to say now, but it took me over a full twenty-four hours before I came to that realization. I'd had both of my sisters, my niece, and my former stepmother graciously come over to help me start cleaning house, but it was the second night without my sons (my daughter was out of town on a camping trip) when it finally hit me.
You see, all my life I've been called a PACKRAT. And to me, there was a world of difference between being a packrat and being a hoarder.
Packrats collect things, lots of things, but they're not necessarily hoarders... at least in my mind! My mother was a packrat. So was her mother. So is my father's mother, as I came to realize a year ago when I went to help organize her house.
All of the hoarders I've ever heard of have boxes to the ceilings in every room, with little mouse trails winding their way through from room to room. I told myself, yeah, I have a lot of stuff, and probably too much, but at least I'm not a hoarder! I told myself, I just need time to sort through everything and get rid of some of it. But I'm not a hoarder.
But what I didn't see was that things were not getting cleaned up underneath all of the stuff. Things were breaking under the weight of everything on top of them. Mice were starting to come in--- my Schnoodle Lucy was going crazy because she could hear them, but she couldn't get to those dastardly mice!
When I got to the bottom of my kitchen sinks and found two inches of black goo--- that was when it hit me. That was when I understood why the DHS workers insisted that my house was not a safe place in which my children could live and thrive.
I was a real-life hoarder. I don't know why I couldn't see it before.
And I was horrified by that realization.
I have done some research since then, because I wanted to know why I didn't see the forest for the trees, so to speak. If my house was that bad, why couldn't I see it? I was a recovering germ-o-phobe, thanks to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder I've had, albeit undiagnosed, since I was ten, after my father and former stepmother were awarded custody of my biological sister and me.
OCD.
Aha!
That's the kicker, right there. I needed to do more research on my OCD, not just on hoarding.
It seems that while not all hoarders have OCD, and not all OCD-afflicted persons are hoarders, the two often do go hand in hand.
The funny part is that DHS had me take a psychiatric evaluation a little more than a year ago... and the evaluation completely missed detecting my OCD, even though I have never made any real effort to hide it besides the Herculean efforts I put forth in seventh grade, when it was brought to my attention (by a fellow student) that I was behaving strangely. I have no problem admitting I have OCD.
Recently, I have had several people ask me how I know I have it, if it was never diagnosed by a psychiatrist.
Back in, oh, I think it was 1989, I had a friend (who shall remain nameless here for his own privacy's sake) who was a psych major at the U of O. I decided to ask him one day about the symptoms I used to have from the age of ten to about thirteen, when a classmate asked me why I always blew on the tips of my fingers whenever I touched something.
Here are the things I used to do, the "rules" I had to follow when I wasn't with my mother, just to make it clear:
* I couldn't breathe through my mouth. Anywhere. My nose hairs would filter out the germs that were present anywhere else. If I had a cold which prevented my breathing through my nose, then a tissue would suffice as a filter.
* I couldn't touch silverware or cups with my lips. I would scrape food off my fork or spoon with my teeth--- it drove my dad NUTS. My biological sister remembers me putting my finger to a glass and putting my lips to my finger to drink, pouring the liquid over my finger into my mouth. I can remember pouring the liquid from the glass directly into my mouth, with obvious space between the glass and my lips.
* I couldn't touch any doorknobs with my bare hands. I had to use a tissue or my sleeve to open doors. Same with faucets. And I couldn't sit on any toilet seat--- I would stand and hang my bottom over the toilet to go. This was complicated by the fact that I also couldn't bear to have my clothes touch the toilet in any way.
* ANYTHING I touched which did not belong to me had germs on it... and to avoid being "contaminated" by them, I had to blow the germs off my fingertips as soon as possible. This was the behavior observed by my classmate, which brought to my attention that I wasn't behaving normally. I feigned ignorance of my doing such odd things, and started fighting to overcome the rules to look more "normal."
Today:
I still can't sit on a naked toilet seat, turn off faucets or open restroom doors with my bare hands if it's a public restroom or at some people's houses--- I'm okay with my own bathroom, or with bathrooms at houses where I feel "safe." I'm a wreck when I go to a rest area on a highway and there is neither soap nor paper towels, although I can manage if I have a bottle of sanitizer with me... and I try to remember to carry my own seat covers, just in case there aren't any, because I don't want to leave someone else short of toilet paper just because of my own... problems.
I have a mug which is my "favorite," from which I drink my coffee every morning, stirred with the slotted silver spoon which was my maternal grandmother's, and the spoon stays in my mug while I drink. I'm a little anxious tonight because I've misplaced that spoon, so I'm having to make do with my "second-favorite" spoon, which has a daffodil on the tip. I can still drink from other glasses or mugs... I just feel better when it's that mug and that spoon.
I don't like wearing my hair down, loose. I love the way it looks, and even the way it feels... until I have to function. Then it needs to be bound--- either in a bun (my usual hairstyle) or in a braid of some sort. I can tolerate a ponytail for a while--- I just can't stand the feel of my hair in my face for very long, except for my bangs, which are a must!
I can't eat food off bones with my teeth. I've been this way ALL my life. I have to pick the meat off the bones with my fingers or with silverware, my dad's preferred method of my eating it. I used to pick all of the toppings off my pizza, and then eat the bare crust, but I've managed to overcome that as well.
When I get really anxious, I find myself blinking or making a little noise in my throat excessively... sometimes both. I also shred my fingernails by picking at them. My soon-to-be-ex-husband always knew when I was greatly upset because of the state of my nails.
I tend to examine dishes if something catches my eye. If I think it's dirty, I'll rewash it right there. Usually this doesn't happen, though, because I will wash and rewash a dish until I can't find anything else on it before I put it on the dish rack to dry. (During the past two months, before DHS became aware of my situation, I was washing the same dishes we ate off before I cooked, so they were clean... but I was washing them in the bathroom sink because I couldn't use the kitchen sinks, they were so full of dirty dishes.)
I don't like to go barefoot except on wooden floors or out-of-doors. I love walking barefoot on the beach. But inside my house, it's all either carpet or linoleum... and I hate it. In a pinch I'll go barefoot, but it really bugs me.
And it really, really bugs me to throw things out. I'm really big on recycling, and I've managed to cut down our garbage immensely by recycling things instead of throwing them out. But I'm hanging on to too much stuff because I'm afraid that I'll need it later, or because it's connected to a good memory... thus, the hoarding.
Okay, I think you get the point. But will the new psychiatrist? I'm still wondering how the first one missed this oh-so-important mental illness.
There. I've actually said it. I have a mental illness.
Oddly, I never thought of OCD as a mental illness... but it is.
I'm tapping my finger on my keyboard while I ponder this... yet another sign of the OCD. *lol*
My family and friends are getting very good at congratulating me for throwing out something I don't need. I have a large pile of plastic bags at the back of my house, waiting for the dumpster which DHS mentioned... but which they still haven't produced, saying that the psych eval is more important. I say, bring on the psych eval! I want to get this done, and get my house cleaned up so that I can have my kids come home again! The boys are staying with my in-laws, and my daughter with my friends next door, but even though I get to visit with them often, it's not nearly enough.
At this point, if it were legal, I would burn down my house with everything I own in it, if it meant that DHS would then let my children come home.
My youngest son, age 4, called me tonight, but I missed his call because my phone is misbehaving. He left a message on my voicemail:
"Hey! *long pause here* I want to come back. Okay? Bye!"
I think that says it all, right there.
I. Am. A. Hoarder.
That is getting easier for me to say now, but it took me over a full twenty-four hours before I came to that realization. I'd had both of my sisters, my niece, and my former stepmother graciously come over to help me start cleaning house, but it was the second night without my sons (my daughter was out of town on a camping trip) when it finally hit me.
You see, all my life I've been called a PACKRAT. And to me, there was a world of difference between being a packrat and being a hoarder.
Packrats collect things, lots of things, but they're not necessarily hoarders... at least in my mind! My mother was a packrat. So was her mother. So is my father's mother, as I came to realize a year ago when I went to help organize her house.
All of the hoarders I've ever heard of have boxes to the ceilings in every room, with little mouse trails winding their way through from room to room. I told myself, yeah, I have a lot of stuff, and probably too much, but at least I'm not a hoarder! I told myself, I just need time to sort through everything and get rid of some of it. But I'm not a hoarder.
But what I didn't see was that things were not getting cleaned up underneath all of the stuff. Things were breaking under the weight of everything on top of them. Mice were starting to come in--- my Schnoodle Lucy was going crazy because she could hear them, but she couldn't get to those dastardly mice!
When I got to the bottom of my kitchen sinks and found two inches of black goo--- that was when it hit me. That was when I understood why the DHS workers insisted that my house was not a safe place in which my children could live and thrive.
I was a real-life hoarder. I don't know why I couldn't see it before.
And I was horrified by that realization.
I have done some research since then, because I wanted to know why I didn't see the forest for the trees, so to speak. If my house was that bad, why couldn't I see it? I was a recovering germ-o-phobe, thanks to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder I've had, albeit undiagnosed, since I was ten, after my father and former stepmother were awarded custody of my biological sister and me.
OCD.
Aha!
That's the kicker, right there. I needed to do more research on my OCD, not just on hoarding.
It seems that while not all hoarders have OCD, and not all OCD-afflicted persons are hoarders, the two often do go hand in hand.
The funny part is that DHS had me take a psychiatric evaluation a little more than a year ago... and the evaluation completely missed detecting my OCD, even though I have never made any real effort to hide it besides the Herculean efforts I put forth in seventh grade, when it was brought to my attention (by a fellow student) that I was behaving strangely. I have no problem admitting I have OCD.
Recently, I have had several people ask me how I know I have it, if it was never diagnosed by a psychiatrist.
Back in, oh, I think it was 1989, I had a friend (who shall remain nameless here for his own privacy's sake) who was a psych major at the U of O. I decided to ask him one day about the symptoms I used to have from the age of ten to about thirteen, when a classmate asked me why I always blew on the tips of my fingers whenever I touched something.
Here are the things I used to do, the "rules" I had to follow when I wasn't with my mother, just to make it clear:
* I couldn't breathe through my mouth. Anywhere. My nose hairs would filter out the germs that were present anywhere else. If I had a cold which prevented my breathing through my nose, then a tissue would suffice as a filter.
* I couldn't touch silverware or cups with my lips. I would scrape food off my fork or spoon with my teeth--- it drove my dad NUTS. My biological sister remembers me putting my finger to a glass and putting my lips to my finger to drink, pouring the liquid over my finger into my mouth. I can remember pouring the liquid from the glass directly into my mouth, with obvious space between the glass and my lips.
* I couldn't touch any doorknobs with my bare hands. I had to use a tissue or my sleeve to open doors. Same with faucets. And I couldn't sit on any toilet seat--- I would stand and hang my bottom over the toilet to go. This was complicated by the fact that I also couldn't bear to have my clothes touch the toilet in any way.
* ANYTHING I touched which did not belong to me had germs on it... and to avoid being "contaminated" by them, I had to blow the germs off my fingertips as soon as possible. This was the behavior observed by my classmate, which brought to my attention that I wasn't behaving normally. I feigned ignorance of my doing such odd things, and started fighting to overcome the rules to look more "normal."
Today:
I still can't sit on a naked toilet seat, turn off faucets or open restroom doors with my bare hands if it's a public restroom or at some people's houses--- I'm okay with my own bathroom, or with bathrooms at houses where I feel "safe." I'm a wreck when I go to a rest area on a highway and there is neither soap nor paper towels, although I can manage if I have a bottle of sanitizer with me... and I try to remember to carry my own seat covers, just in case there aren't any, because I don't want to leave someone else short of toilet paper just because of my own... problems.
I have a mug which is my "favorite," from which I drink my coffee every morning, stirred with the slotted silver spoon which was my maternal grandmother's, and the spoon stays in my mug while I drink. I'm a little anxious tonight because I've misplaced that spoon, so I'm having to make do with my "second-favorite" spoon, which has a daffodil on the tip. I can still drink from other glasses or mugs... I just feel better when it's that mug and that spoon.
I don't like wearing my hair down, loose. I love the way it looks, and even the way it feels... until I have to function. Then it needs to be bound--- either in a bun (my usual hairstyle) or in a braid of some sort. I can tolerate a ponytail for a while--- I just can't stand the feel of my hair in my face for very long, except for my bangs, which are a must!
I can't eat food off bones with my teeth. I've been this way ALL my life. I have to pick the meat off the bones with my fingers or with silverware, my dad's preferred method of my eating it. I used to pick all of the toppings off my pizza, and then eat the bare crust, but I've managed to overcome that as well.
When I get really anxious, I find myself blinking or making a little noise in my throat excessively... sometimes both. I also shred my fingernails by picking at them. My soon-to-be-ex-husband always knew when I was greatly upset because of the state of my nails.
I tend to examine dishes if something catches my eye. If I think it's dirty, I'll rewash it right there. Usually this doesn't happen, though, because I will wash and rewash a dish until I can't find anything else on it before I put it on the dish rack to dry. (During the past two months, before DHS became aware of my situation, I was washing the same dishes we ate off before I cooked, so they were clean... but I was washing them in the bathroom sink because I couldn't use the kitchen sinks, they were so full of dirty dishes.)
I don't like to go barefoot except on wooden floors or out-of-doors. I love walking barefoot on the beach. But inside my house, it's all either carpet or linoleum... and I hate it. In a pinch I'll go barefoot, but it really bugs me.
And it really, really bugs me to throw things out. I'm really big on recycling, and I've managed to cut down our garbage immensely by recycling things instead of throwing them out. But I'm hanging on to too much stuff because I'm afraid that I'll need it later, or because it's connected to a good memory... thus, the hoarding.
Okay, I think you get the point. But will the new psychiatrist? I'm still wondering how the first one missed this oh-so-important mental illness.
There. I've actually said it. I have a mental illness.
Oddly, I never thought of OCD as a mental illness... but it is.
I'm tapping my finger on my keyboard while I ponder this... yet another sign of the OCD. *lol*
My family and friends are getting very good at congratulating me for throwing out something I don't need. I have a large pile of plastic bags at the back of my house, waiting for the dumpster which DHS mentioned... but which they still haven't produced, saying that the psych eval is more important. I say, bring on the psych eval! I want to get this done, and get my house cleaned up so that I can have my kids come home again! The boys are staying with my in-laws, and my daughter with my friends next door, but even though I get to visit with them often, it's not nearly enough.
At this point, if it were legal, I would burn down my house with everything I own in it, if it meant that DHS would then let my children come home.
My youngest son, age 4, called me tonight, but I missed his call because my phone is misbehaving. He left a message on my voicemail:
"Hey! *long pause here* I want to come back. Okay? Bye!"
I think that says it all, right there.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Dear Mom....
Today would have been your 61st birthday.
Wow.
In just 18 days, you'll have been gone for two whole years. I still can't believe it's been that long.
Over the past few days, I've wondered if you weren't here, looking over my shoulder or something, because of odd scents I don't remember being in my house. Is it because of your birthday, or because of the upcoming anniversary of your leaving us?
I still talk to you, but now it's directed to the little urn which holds some of your ashes. In fact, I dusted it off, and now it sits--- YOU sit--- on the upper corner of my keyboard while I type. I'm wearing your Australia sweatshirt--- the one Peter brought you from Werribee--- and will be frying up oysters for my supper tonight.
I wonder what would have been different had you not developed ALS? Would you still have been working? Would you have been able to help me through the terrible things that Scott was doing to your grandchildren? Or would it have been just That. Much. Worse?
I wish that I had listened to you, instead of defending him. He didn't deserve it, and I know that now. It should have been a big clue to me when he told me he didn't want to go to your memorial service--- I mean, what kind of husband says that to his grieving wife?!?
I really don't know how anything would be different if you were alive today, except that I would have more of your hugs when I needed them most. But I don't know if I'd have appreciated them any better than I'd appreciate them now.
I miss you so much, Mommy.
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