This book gave me hives

Kimberly Rae Miller and I could NOT have had more different childhoods.  I have a neat freak mother who instilled in me a fear of clutter and mess at a young age. OCD runs through my family, and while I have a lot of minor tendencies towards it, I have an aunt who’s house is spotless as a result of her brain not allowing her to stop cleaning. When I get anxious or angry, I clean or throw things away. It’s the best way for me to settle myself down. I married a man who grew up with slobs and hated it, so luckily he doesn’t mind when I randomly go through closets and drawers and reorganize everything in sight.

“One day you won’t be able to pretend everything was okay, and you’re going to hate us.”

Kimberly grew up with two hoarders — back before the general public even really knew that word. Her father collected paper, primarily, but also broken electronics, knick knacks and other bits of crap he didn’t need but couldn’t let go of. Her mother seemed to be the voice of reason at first (not that she did anything to stop him, but she didn’t really contribute to the mess), but when Kimberly was still fairly young her mother fell into a depression that led to endless online shopping — hundreds of products that ended up in her home. Kimberly learned at a young age not to mention the mess to people for fear that CPS would take her away. For several years, she showered at the gym or friends’ houses because they had no heat or running water. A burst pipe flooded their house so they lived in not only a mess, but a soggy mess. Even after Kimberly moved away, she couldn’t escape — she’d end up back home once every couple of months to clean up after her parents. She’d have nightmares about bugs crawling on her, which lead to her destroying her own (very few) things in order to feel clean. This wasn’t just the way she grew up — it’s something that will always be with her.

One of the main themes in this book — and what I related to the most — is how her parents suffered from a mental disorder, brought on by a combination of genetics and their upbringings. Both her mother and father were very unhappy children, raised by hoarders and alcoholics (some believe that the two are related). Kimberly, in her own research on hoarding, discovers that people who exhibit this behavior do it because they don’t feel like people love them — so they surround themselves with things to love instead.

It’s a heartbreaking book — both to see a young child forced to grow up like this, and to see how an intelligent young woman continues to struggle with what her parents did to her. But it’s a good read, and I really feel like I learned a lot from it.