Alternate Reality

COH & ACOA Joined: Jul 22, 2006 Posts: 2044 Location: Cabo

Alternate Reality:
Was there an *Alternate Reality* for your family where what ocurred inside the home was not the same thing that was portrayed OUTside the home? Was it the same inside the home as outside? Experiences/Thoughts/Feelings

Valued Member Joined: Mar 17, 2008 Posts: 4 Location: CA

Oh yes, there was always a great disparity between at-home life and in-public life. Everything was kept this huge secret. To divulge the secret was to betray your family. To outsiders, we pretended to be perfect. At home, it was a completely different life.

COH Under 18 yrs. Joined: Feb 15, 2008 Posts: 98

We have the facade. It's almost somehting we never talk about like the hoard. It's really lame. It's like we're supposed to be like pleasentville or leave it to beaver. Of course I was/am always the weird different kid so that never seemed to work too well. It's the main thing messed up really. It's sick. Buuut whatever. Then if you break the facade you get the whole passive agressive "i may not love you" treatment at home (of course out of the way of the public eye.) My mom and dad have actually contradicted reality before. Like saying that gravity doesn't exist but more related to newspapers and other stuff. That gets crazy, especially for a little kid who's getting gaslighted or whatever it's called.

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:23 am Post subject:

Gaslighted. Good term. They act like YOU are the crazy one, and stick to their ridiculous story, no matter what. It's amazing how NOT crazy you are!

COH Under 18 yrs. Joined: Feb 15, 2008 Posts: 98

Heh, I'm not crazy...heh heh.

Valued Member Joined: Apr 28, 2008 Posts: 13

Sadly for me no. Not only was the house this way, my mom kept things in the car too. Filled so high everyone could see it. She opened the door to the car and it smelled like garbage inside. No way to pretend ever. I was very resentful because I felt she had no pride. Today I know she does but choses to keep living in this jail she created for herself.

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:34 am Post subject: alternate reality

Absolutely! I can remember hearing my mother say things that were outrageuosly not accurate. LIES! is what they were. She even had like, different voices and intonations depending on who she was speaking with. In my life I have great difficulty when this is happening with folks. I can in fact invariably spot a liar and can also tell when someone is twisting and manipulating facts to their advantage. I should have been a judge or in law enforcement as a way to use this developed ability. AH another fine skill from the home I grew up in....makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. NOT! elbo

Active Member Joined: Apr 29, 2008 Posts: 493

This reminded me of sitting in the car with my Dad, crying over something my Mom said which I cannot even remember. "Your Mom thinks in black and white. Life is not like that. It is more shades of gray." I felt so relieved that he validated that feeling I had of reeling from Mom's view of the world. She spoke in glowing or critical terms of people that had very little foundation. She had "company manners" where she treated people like they were amazingly interesting, and then sighed with huge relief when they left. Our relatives loved her because they never witnessed the scowling face or heard the scathing comments about how inconvenient they were. "Don't ever have a guest room, or "people" will move in on you!" was one lesson. I have made it a point to always have one available and no one has moved in yet.

Our home was not exactly my idea of a vacation spot, but for those rare occasions when people did visit we all enjoyed those company manners. My sis does the exact same behavior with glowing stories about the interesting people she knows and huge criticisms of people I know, like "She has no personality, blank expression, is after something from you...it goes on with absolutely no grounds, except it makes her the superior one I guess. She can quote my mother verbatim which I find intriguing after the chill passes.

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:28 am Post subject:

VJ,
OMG! my Mom told me after my last child went to college,
" sell the house now, before one of them come back" Unreal how similar all of our experiences are. For me it is proof that this is a mental condition, illness. Or else how could the hoarders all think the same way and behave the same way.... although my head knows this is an illness it does little to lessen the pain of growing up in this way and being exposed to this warped thinking and behaving. VJ, you articulated the way your Mom acted so well and it is the way my Mom acted, company manners, classic...
I pay exhorbitant rent to have a 2 bedroom that I do not 'really" need except that I do need this space for visitors which I love to have at my home. My family naturally think I am crazy especially because it is ready for visitors and not full of stuff..... they say things like, OMG it looks so empty, like something in a catalog selling furniture or bedding" AH! the putdowns which should not but always do suprise me. I never say, " your room looks llike a pigpen, how can you stand it? " why do they say what they say and I just be quiet?
I am glad VJ that your father validated you and showed you that there were 'shades of gray" in the world. To hear that gives me hope. thanks, elbo

Valued Member Joined: Feb 18, 2008 Posts: 14

Omigod, my mother was in such denial! For years, she said that people felt "comfortable" in her house, like they could let their hair down. There were phases it went through: as small children for a short time it was reasonably tidy and there were Normal Rockwell holidays (and hiding my step-father's alcoholism, but that's another story!), then chaos and mess of a single mom with four teenagers when Mom came home from work and literally locked herself in her room. A short period after my g'father died when the house was cluttered but somewhat presentable. And now...at least 20 years of serious hoarding, despite multiple purges.

So she's convinced people LIKE visiting the hoard, yet doesn't question why only two people come into that house any more?

When Mom got so angry at me this summer for not staying at the house with my daughter (14) for the first time ever (daughter is having anxiety attacks, OCD, and was extremely distressed at the prospect of a week at Mom's), a childhood incident stood out.

Mom spent a bundle that she could ill-afford remodeling my brother's bedroom way back in the 70s. 3 brothers shared the room - she had built-in loft beds, bookcases, drafting boards that pulled up from the windowseat (two of the three were artists, who later went on to careers in commercial art), custom cabinets for artwork, barnwood paneling, it was absolutely stunning. My older brothers (the artists) had...issues...and trashed that room in about a year. They would fight, argue, etc. and I see now that much of it was not having a firm guiding parent, some semblence of order or routine, unpredictable responses from Mom to infractions, her turning a blind eye to what should've been HUGE red flags that might've gotten them help, her being convinced that the problems would just magically work themselves out. They've been estranged from the family for years now.

Anyway, for eons Mom would bring up how perfect that room had been, how much it cost, how much effort she put into designing it only to have it destroyed. She's still angry. Mind you, this was 35 years ago.

I've thought recently that my kid bro and I probably felt the same way as she did when the twins destroyed that room. I've wondered how she would react if I brought that up - that I understand exactly how she felt, and if she realizes that it's the same way kid bro and I feel when cleanouts get turned back into hoarded messes. My guess is she wouldn't get it at all...

~Lisa