The Crazy Cheerleading Camp's Come as You Are Party: Hoarding Hurts

Image by Frank Winkler from Pixabay

This is one of those "it doesn't get any realer than this" posts, and I will tell you right now that this wound is one of those that may be healing around the edges but it isn't closed. It's still raw, and any unsympathetic or hateful bullshit will either be outright deleted or the sanctimonious sack of crap saying it will be ripped a new asshole. Choose your words carefully, and if you feel the need to be judgy, ask yourself what exactly you're getting from being that way.

I have had a problem my entire life: a problem which I was pretty well forced to keep secret, which meant that rather than being dealt with, it festered and grew out of control. Shit shows like "Hoarders" sure as hell didn't help, they just created a forum for people who don't understand the problem to say crap like: "I'm going to watch "Hoarders" now. At least my house isn't that messy--LOL!"

My thought regarding "Hoarders" has always been:

"And next up, just look at what those whacky Schizophrenics are doing this week! Woo-hoo! It's so great to look down our noses at people with mental health problems, isn't it, Folks?"

Hoarding is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (which I have in other forms as well). It is not a sign of "laziness." Having hoarding disorder is exhausting. People with hoarding disorder try to clean and get rid of things but crippling, obsessive thoughts take over. Medication helps some people, but others (myself included) can't tolerate the side effects of medication.

Finally, with sympathetic help from my son, we got rid of a storage unit which was costing us close to $400 per month. We did move some of the items to a smaller, cheaper storage unit. We still have a dilapidated mobile home full of items to go through. In packing for our move, we have gotten rid of a lot of trash, but there are some cases where we boxed things to deal with when we are in our new, more stable environment.

The "normal" people in my life never helped me with this problem. Instead, they shamed me for being "lazy," came into my home and threw things out willy-nilly, which traumatized me, and then commanded me to "never let this happen again." It took a young autistic man (my son) to help me start getting an actual grip on a very serious problem. My son is a planner, and he has helped me develop a realistic plan. Together, we are getting through this.

 I was having a panic attack this morning looking at the haphazard shelf and pile of junk in front of me. My son and I worked on it together. We ended up with many bags full of garbage and recycling. There are some boxes which contain stuff which people who don't struggle with this crap condition would have been able to dispense with without a qualm, but they are coming with us to be dealt with in the new place.

One constant in my adult life is always feeling that my house was built on quicksand. Everything was always temporary. I would hope for new situations to work out, and they inevitably fell apart. I did not know until I was almost 40 years old the magnitude or nuances of the neuro-psychological anomalies I was dealing with. I often wonder what could have been if I had been treated with compassion instead of disdain and if I had learned coping skills at a younger age.

Before you judge, educate yourself.

Now you know a little more than you did before about a person who doesn't quite fit into a world with very rigid rules for "rightness."

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Cheesy Cinema Review: The Christmas Chronicles Would Have Been Better Without the Side Order of Size Shaming

I may be a curmudgeon, but I'm not unrealistic. I expect holiday movies to be trope-laden and sappy. Unless you're watching Santa Slasher 666 or, as Beavis would say, a "Christmas Classic" starring such fine quality thespians as Tiny Johnson and Bob Scratchit, you can expect either barf-inducing heartwarming romantic drama or family-friendly drama probably involving cute but weird elves somewhere in the mix. Knowing these things, I steeled myself for whatever extra helping of syrupy sweetness might be lurking in the Christmas Chronicles to raise my blood sugar levels.
First, the positives. The kids are adorable and the young actors performing the parts of Katie and Teddy did a marvelous job. Kurt Russell really hits the mark as a slightly grouchy, no-nonsense Santa. However, I was dismayed by the amount of size shaming and diet culture promotion.
Had it happened only once, I would have rolled my eyes and moved on. However, it happened multiple times, including a scene where the sleigh hits a billboard advertising Coke products with the image of a portly Santa enjoying a Coke. Santa shouts: "take that, Fat Man!"
Shaking my damn head. Not only was the size shaming not necessary, but the levels of at the very least subconscious vehemence and hatred towards larger people was absolutely uncalled for. Also, do the writers really thinks that Santa is so vain that all he cares about is being perceived as slim and sexy? I honestly find such people quite a bore and I would hope that if Santa were real, he wouldn't be a self-centered dullard.
As a curmudgeonly adult, I found the size bashing dismal and enraging. I can only imagine how it would seem to a big kid watching that movie. The inherent message they will take away is not "family needs to stick together," but "fat is the very worst thing you can possibly be. Even Santa hates fat people."
Hollywood really needs to stop with the lame-ass fat jokes whenever they find themselves at a loss for comic relief. If you can't include larger people in your story in a positive way, at the very least don't include them just to make them the butt of mean-spirited "humor".
Every kid deserves to feel like he or she is okay just as he or she is all year 'round, but I feel that a positive, family-friendly holiday movie needs to take a bit of extra care to make sure they aren't alienating and shaming certain already stigmatized populations.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Holiday Season Broke and Mentally Ill Style

Today is the eighth anniversary of my father's passing. I thought about that day early this morning. I didn't appear to be grieving because I wasn't wailing and gnashing my teeth. I had already grieved watching him deteriorate as he did. There wasn't anything left in me. I've felt for a long time that there isn't anything left in me. I'm not cold, which I've been accused of a lot. I just don't have anything to offer.

The memory that comes to the forefront of my mind is my mother leaving two messages on my phone. The ringer wasn't working on my phone; I would be soon to get a new one. I was sleeping with the phone under my hand, but I didn't feel the vibration. The first message was her telling me that my father had died. The second was her telling me that again, demanding that I call her back, and finishing off the message with "you're never there when I need you." She didn't apologize for saying that, which doesn't surprise me. I informed her that my phone's ringer wasn't working correctly, that I had tried to be aware if a call came, but hadn't felt the vibration. Well, she never apologizes when she says hurtful things, so I guess she and I are even.

I fucking hate this new YouTube push to force people to pay for the service by pausing the playlist every so often to ask "are you still there?" No, Bitch, I died, but my zombified body keeps responding by saying I'm still here. The joke's on you.

In other frustrating news, I guess I paid the price for thinking I could buy yarn and get away with it. I ordered three skeins of yarn to keep working on my blanket, and some payment clashed with another, so I ended up getting an overdraft charge and am now $36 in the hole. Those fucking overdraft charges should be criminal. They only ever harm people who are struggling financially anyway.

Tonight's supper will be turkey chili and baked potatoes. At least those are two things I can ensure that my son will actually eat. My mother's right that he's kind of fussy, but there again, she refuses to believe that he's actually autistic. People with autism tend to have issues with food textures far more than people who don't have the condition. But, of course, my mother is always right.

I was just talking to my son about how we are both, in spite of what has been drilled into us by members of the extended family, very productive. However, we are not productive in the ways they deem worthy. We are terrible with housework--absolutely rubbish, let's be real. We are unable to work the kinds of jobs that they deem worthy. 

If I had ever been able to make my writing pay, they might be proud of me. A little. But it still wouldn't have been the kind of work that they would truly have deemed worthy.

All I'm doing as far as holiday decorations this year is putting a string of lights up on the fence at my son's townhome. We can't have a tree because the four-legged dumbasses will knock it over. When I was a kid, my father became a kid again every December 24, because that was when we decorated the tree. He loved decorating the tree so much and went way overboard. We had so many decorations. Now they never see the light of day.

Maybe one day I will decorate for the holidays again. I don't know. The first year we had a really nice tree was when I was ten years old. That was the year my father got a good position as a professor at a small college and we moved from Albuquerque to a suburb of Denver. Everything was so wonderful on that Christmas when I was ten years old. 

I realize now that my bipolar disorder onset when I hit puberty, which is why I was an emotional wreck during the holidays when I was eleven and trying to hide it so I wouldn't fuck things up for the rest of my family. 

We always took the tree down on the day after New Year's. The year when I was twelve years old, I was once again in a tailspin but trying to hide it. We got the call that my paternal grandfather had died from a massive heart attack while he was out feeding his horses. I burst into tears. I thought it was my fault that he was dead because I hadn't been grateful enough, so God took my grandfather.

I learned a lot about my father's side of the family that year. I wrote a cheeky poem about it recently, which is titled "My Family Skeletons." You can read it here. 

At the time, it was actually very traumatic. My twelfth year of life was not a lot of fun. It seemed like everything was falling apart. There was a lot of contention surrounding my grandfather's will, and I was being bullied mercilessly. I started self-harming, and on one occasion, I swallowed a bottle of aspirin. I ended up with a sick stomach and throwing up. I didn't tell anybody what I'd done.

So, I guess what I'm getting to in my long-winded fashion is that the holidays are not happy-happy-joy-joy for some people. I tend to have kind of a neutral approach to them at this point, but that's because I'm emotionally numb. For some people, the holidays are extremely difficult. It's supposed to be a happy time, and people who are already struggling get added guilt heaped on them for not presenting a happy face to the world.

Please do not shame or berate people who aren't "in the spirit" during the holidays. The joy is not universal.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It Festively~

Deep Thoughts With Cheesy and Barack

I wish there wasn't so much onus placed on being perfectly healthy. Nobody's perfect. Everyone has shit that goes awry, even those people who have supposedly "perfect" bodies. For instance, my cholesterol readings are actually stellar. You could frame that shit and put a blue ribbon next to it. But my endocrine system is a fucked-up mess, and my triglycerides are elevated. 

None of this shit says anything about my mind, my soul, my work ethic, my devotion, or anything else that I think is truly important. But a lot of people act like shit like blood sugar levels, abnormal labs, or a number on a scale defines a person on a moral level. It doesn't and can't.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Ending the Stigma: Hoarding Disorder

This is a response to a post on The Mighty about what gifts to give and what gifts to avoid giving to a person who is struggling this holiday season.

Do not give a person who struggles with hoarding disorder (a subtype of OCD, NOT laziness, and if you think it is laziness please unfollow me now) things, unless it is something like socks which everyone can use and which are going to wear out. I appreciate money (helps to pay down debt or maybe buy some yarn for my craft projects), gift cards, and socks. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't mind some organizational bins either.

I don't know why I wear out socks so quickly, although, admissibly, some of them do fall victim to the Sock Gnomes. I have a whole bagful of socks which have lost their mates, and I've never figured out where they've gone.

My son and I are working on getting rid of the huge amount of stuff that I accumulated through my years of hoarding disorder which was only treated with blame and shame by those around me, and thus became even worse because it made it a bigger source of anxiety and so my reaction was to stuff things away and not deal with them. We have the storage unit about halfway cleared out and are aimed at having it entirely gone by early next year. 

This has been an enormous struggle for me, and it has pretty much destroyed my life. I'm trying to get my life back so whatever I have left can be spent doing things that are worthwhile rather than struggling with a surplus of stuff.

I still have a shed full of stuff and three spare rooms full of stuff.

I've known people whose hoarding disorder, probably combined with depression, was so severe that even doing basic cleaning was impossible for them. I've been down that low a few times. What didn't help one bit is hearing things like "lazy," and "disgusting." These television programs that exploit people with severe problems for the entertainment of assholes wanking to schadenfreude make me sick. To me, it's like watching someone being tortured or raped to watch those programs. It's disgusting the lows to which people will stoop, where instead of trying to help someone who has a serious problem we point fingers and ridicule them.

Many years ago, I rented out a townhome to a woman who had severe hoarding disorder. I was getting Section 8 payments from the government for allowing her to stay there. She wouldn't allow the inspectors in, and the HOA eventually wrote me a letter threatening to have me thrown in jail if I didn't evict her because there were huge numbers of flies in the windows.

When I got in, the place was beyond a nightmare. There were a few bags of things which were salvageable and which I took to give to the local thrift store to sell. Other than that, everything was trash and there was also dog feces everywhere. For reasons unknown, she had disconnected the pipes under the sink and had slime-covered dishes soaking in two basins in the sink.

This woman had two sons. One had a predilection for violence and eventually ended up in the Fort Logan state mental health center. The other one wasn't violent but he seemed totally "at sea." 

I never hated this woman for what she did. I felt sorry for her. I knew she had a serious mental illness. There was a housekeeper who was sent by the county to help out. (I did have to pay her, but it was at a reduced rate.) She was very disdainful, said she'd been here to help the tenant before, and that all said tenant did was "lie on the couch on her fat lazy ass and apologize for the condition of the place.) The tenant had a heart condition, which is why she was on section 8.

Being disdainful and hateful and exploiting rather than assisting people with a serious disease helps no-one. It is a barbaric society which turns people who are suffering into sideshow entertainment.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates A Tale: When the Driver Met the Douche-Lord: A Tale of Entitled Customers

Last night I had to run an order over to Entitlement Palace, a nightmare high-rise known for its bad-tempered valets and stuck-up, entitled, rich-bitch customers.

The service I work for delivers food curbside, not to the door. This is made clear a couple of times in the app: once at the beginning of the process, and when the order is placed. After the order is placed, a message appears which says “delivery is on us, but it is your responsibility to meet your driver at the curb.”

Offering curbside service means that the driver does not have to find a place to park in a city which is notorious for having little in the way of available parking. The driver pulls up as close to the customer’s address as possible and puts on the hazard lights. If all goes smoothly, the customer is either waiting there or comes out quickly after the driver hits the “arrived at customer” command on their app, which alerts the customer to the driver’s presence in their app.

I’ve had customers who somehow failed to realize that they were supposed to come out before (or were hoping that we’d make an exception for them because they’re soooo special), but none of them ever acted like the absolute tosser that I encountered last night. At worst the huffed a little, took their food, and were on their way.

There are occasions where the driver will make an exception. On one such occasion, the customer was a clerk in a liquor store who had a broken leg and was confined to a wheelchair. There was a convenient parking lot, and he was nice, even tipped cash.

On another occasion, a security guard couldn’t leave her post. But there was a nice, convenient loading area in front of the building, and she was right inside at the front desk. Again, she was pleasant and apologized for any inconvenience.

Not so Lord Cantankerous Wankerous.

His Douchiness put “lobby” in the special instructions area on the app. My thought as I drove off? “Not happening, Bitch.” Customer service contacted him sometime during the process. I pulled up to the curb as I always do, dreading the inevitable unpleasant interaction with the miserable valet. The valet told me I’d have to move across the drive, which I did, and sat waiting for His Douchiness to grace me with his presence.

When the seven minutes were almost up, I attempted to call the illustrious Lord of Douchebag Manor. The line was still ringing when I got a text from customer service, asking if the customer was picking up. I replied “no,” and in that moment, Lord Wankerous deigned to appear.

“I said lobby!” he snapped, shaking his finger at me.

“Service is curbside, Sir,” I said calmly.

He huffed away. I sent a text to customer service which read ‘he was a dick. He left without taking his food, and I’m not going to chase after him.’ I then marked the order “undeliverable” and went back to the kitchen.

In the meantime, the kitchen remade the order and was going to send one of the bicycle couriers with it. However, Lord Wankerous complained to customer service that I should be fired for my insolence towards him. They said that wasn’t going to happen. At that point, the assistant manager in the kitchen decided he’d had enough and told customer service that he wanted them to 86 Lord Wankerous.

Thus, the bicycle courier and I both got free meals, and Lord Wankerous can no longer order from us.

The moral of this story: 

Don’t act like an entitled bitch. Just because you live in an overpriced high rise with miserable valets doing your bidding (they’re probably miserable because they’re treated like trash) doesn’t make you superior to the peasants who make your life easier, your Royal Douchiness.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Proselytizing Sucks

A couple of days ago, my doorbell rang. I was hoping it might be this alligator, but it was the Jehovah's Witnesses.

One of the women had been here a couple of months ago. She'd given me a pamphlet and said it answered questions such as "what does God think of tattoos?"

As a person with tattoos, I found this a bit offensive and said as much. 

The woman was embarrassed by her gaffe. She seemed well-intentioned although misguided, so I kindly but firmly informed her that I am a tattooed agnostic and do not apologize for being one. 

On this occasion, I said that I had no interest in attending church, as I figured that was what they were going to postulate.

Instead, they wanted to tell me how the Bible has answers to my most burning questions. The lady who had been here before then recalled my saying I was an agnostic. I said that I still am, that I think there is a higher power but I do not believe that humanity has the capacity to understand it. I said that my opinion was unlikely to change, and, because I was raised to be polite, thanked them for their time.

Next time the doorbell rings, I certainly hope it's either Amazon delivering a package or an alligator. Or maybe this raven. I could certainly get behind its cause.

Proselytizing is outmoded in the Information Age. It was always annoying. 

If there is truth in a belief system, it doesn't need to be shoved down people's throats. They'll either come around to it or they won't. Scare tactics and browbeating are no way to create adherents.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Not So Great Unfriending and Empathy Deficits

PERSONAL:

TRIGGER WARNING FOR MENTION OF WEIGHT LOSS, SUICIDE 

I recently unfriended someone that I had been online friends with for 12 years. I encountered him through blogging and a mutual love of the horror genre. He was the coolest guy until his life became all about weight loss. Then the cracks started to show.

I tried to give him a break, even though I found him becoming more and more confrontational. He wasn't friendly anymore, but I hoped maybe the characteristics that made me like him in the first place would resurface.

 I never could be his weight loss cheerleader, and he seemed to resent that. He was always posting pictures of himself next to a pair of his old trousers, announcing how much weight he'd lost, and want people to stroke his ego. 

The only comment I ever made on one of his weight loss pictures was that I thought he was a cool guy regardless of what size he was. He went off on a tangent about how much better he felt and looked and so on. I tried to be sympathetic because I knew he'd gone this route because he'd been bullied, and I didn't blame him.

The straw that broke the camel's back was actually not about weight loss. I was doing my thing, trying to raise awareness and end stigma where suicide is concerned. He wrote this long comment about how he didn't feel sympathy for people who committed suicide, he felt sympathy for the people they left behind. He felt that people who commit suicide are weak and cowardly, and then he went on a tangent about how he had been bullied and molested but he forgave his abuser and he never committed suicide, so why could these people not do the same and realize that whatever higher power they believe in has put them here for a purpose.

And then he went on about how he has lost 368 pounds and his health is sooo much better (except it really isn't, he still has the same underlying issues, he's just thinner so he doesn't get the same ration of shit from the doctor anymore.) I had to hold back from saying "ah yes, your weight loss. Great. What do you want, a cookie? Oh, I'm sorry, that's probably not on your diet. So, I'll eat it for you."

I said that I was sorry that he had endured such a hard life and it was good that he was able to overcome his adversities, but everyone is not wired the same and I was distressed that he seemed so unable to muster any sort of sympathy for people who were unable to go on. I said that I did not feel that my cousin was a weak person for committing suicide after many years of fighting severe depression with no relief. I said that some people are better able to withstand adversity than others, for a variety of reasons. I then said that maybe he was somehow superior because he had come through adversity without attempting suicide, but that doesn't mean that people who aren't able to do so are lesser.

Initially, I didn't unfriend him, but then I realized that I always dreaded interacting with him since he began his "weight loss journey." After about an hour of deliberating (okay, wrestling with myself) I made the decision to cut ties with him. I told him that I felt no animosity towards him but I couldn't be friends with someone who could not muster the least bit of sympathy for people whose despair led them to a desperate act. 

I opened up about a gruesome suicide scene which was burned in my mind and gave me years of PTSD. I said I never hated the person who caused this memory. He was autistic, had brain damage from an incident where he was so severely beaten by his bullies that he nearly died, and had other serious mental health issues, including severe depression. This guy fought on as long and as hard as he could, but eventually, he couldn't anymore. I was angry at him for a time, yes. But I never for even a minute thought that he was weak or selfish or cowardly.

I've lost several people to suicide. I'm willing to realize that people are ignorant about this issue and to educate them, but when you express that much vehemence towards a person who was obviously in a great deal of psychological pain, there is too much of an empathy deficit, and I can't maintain a friendship with people who hold such beliefs.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

30 Days of De-Objectification: The Photographic Lie

It may surprise you to learn that this cat was not actually rolling this watermelon out of the lake

30 Days of De-Objectification:

The Photographic Lie

We’re going to get esoteric here. So, if that sort of thing really isn’t your bag, Baby, feel free to skip this post.

I will say from right out of the starting gate that I have no intent of arguing with anybody about the existence of spirits or any ability I may have to communicate with them. Believe it or don’t. I have no fucks to give one way or another. What I also don’t have is patience for debate, and I refuse to acknowledge any straight-up asshole commentary.

That being said, here we go.

When people die at a young age, there can be a tendency to see them as eternally having the sort of beauty which exists for only a very brief time. Hell, who knows, maybe in spirit they do possess such eternal “beauty”. I generally believe in the continuation of the personality after death. However, if I have indeed communicated with spirits, they have all been bemused over the preoccupation of the living with physical appearance.

“That’s not me,” they say. “This is me.”

“Me” is energy without physical form.

These “beautiful” people were not their bodies.

They were also not the images captured in photographs.

Those photographs depict an infinitesimally brief moment in time.

The person could have sneezed violently and farted at the same time a moment after the photo was taken. That isn’t sexy or glamorous.

The fact of the matter is, none of us are sexy or glamorous most of the time.

Many of the people we see as sexy or glamorous don’t think of themselves that way.

Many of the photographs that people find enticing are the result of carefully planned lighting, expertly applied makeup, and precise posing of the subjects.

With live concert photographs, there are more that don’t make the cut than that do.

The selected photographs are often retouched before being printed.

With people who died young, we have no way of knowing what they would look like had they survived.

With people who were able to age, the faction of “fans” who were only drawn to them for their physical appearance tend to ignore their increasing infirmity in favor of viewing photos from their youth and believing that this is the person who currently exists.

To say that photographs lie isn’t entirely accurate.

What photographs do is capture a select moment in time, which may have been staged.

People lie to themselves regarding the content of photographs.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

30 Days of De-Objectification: Vanity and Entitlement

Meet the Douchebag Family

30 Days of De-Objectification:

Vanity and Entitlement

Everybody, meet the Douchebag family. Please, spread their picture far and wide, and make them famous. The State of Oregon wants to find them for defacing public property.

As the daughter said to the man who confronted them about carving their names into a railing in Tumalo Falls Park: “Umm, we can do what we or I want.”

Vain and entitled.

Little Missy obviously thinks she’s a badass, flashing the gang sign and all.

Like other vain, spoiled brats, she surely wants to be famous. So, let’s make sure that she and her family get famous. It will be worth the $5000 apiece that the State of Oregon wants to fine them.

I realize that I seem to have gotten off topic, having started the month with my dismay at the objectification of older men by girls young enough to be their granddaughters. However, there is an attitude which is common to all exploitation, whether it be of people or of property.

That attitude is: “Umm, we can do what we or I want.”

Those who think this way don’t care who or what their attitudes hurt. They don’t care about anyone but themselves or anything but filling their immediate desires.

In the case of this family, this sociopathic attitude was planted by and is cultivated by the father of the pair of monstrous brats who believe that “Umm, we can do what we or I want.”

There have always been those who have thought this way, but the attitude and concurrent shitty behavior seem to be more widespread than ever.

My brother, who is four years younger than I am, had a friend who was looking for work as a nanny. She interviewed with a family who told her: “Our little princess must never hear the word ‘no’, because it will damage her self-esteem.”

The sci-fi geek part of me can’t help but wonder if Little Princess divided like an amoeba, and now there are a myriad of bratty little snowflakes who have never heard the word ‘no’ and live by the tenet of “Umm, we can do what we or I want.”

This attitude is certainly prevalent with a certain type of fan who goes to a con and then has a fit when the actors won’t pose in humiliating ways.

A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of meeting Chris Isaak, who has been one of my favorite musicians for many years. I had the idea that I might like to have Chris autograph my arm or calf with a permanent marker, so I could have his signature made into a tattoo. Before Chris came out, the VIP host requested that we only have him sign items such as CD covers or programs. I did not throw a fit. I respected the request.

People and property are not ours to do with as we see fit. If we all believed that “Umm, we can do what we or I want,” it would be a very shitty world.

I kind of want to punch the snot-nosed brat who said that. I get the feeling she wouldn’t like it very much if I, umm, did what I want.

I also want to make sure the world knows about her and the other members of her asshole family so that they can be fined as they deserve for defacing public property. That I will do.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~