But here's the deal:  I've lived with my mother for my entire life being utterly judgmental about the way I am.  She has presented herself as "clean" and "tidy", while condemning me for being horribly messy.  But the thing is, she's the only person who thinks she's clean and tidy (granted, now she's clean and tidy, but she never used to be).  I grew up in filth.  I mean it.  Our walls were caked in dirt.  Our carpets were caked in dirt and animal excrement.  Our living room smelled like animal urine.  I don't even know if our carpet was supposed to be light brown or if it was stained that way.  Yet, on the surface, our house looked (other than the dirt caked on the walls) mostly organized.  My room, on the other hand, was a total mess.  And my mother never missed a beat whenever anyone would come over to go into my room and told them "You better have all your shots before going in there!!"  She hated me for being messy so much, that she would go into my room and throw everything away, at least a few times a year.  And I mean she threw my possessions in the garbage.  When I'd realize this and run out and go get it back, she started taking all my possessions to her mother's house and threw it in that garbage instead.  

My mother had ZERO respect for my personal property and ZERO respect for me.  And she still doesn't have respect for either to this day.  

I am not allowed to have my own items here, especially outside.  If I do, she will move them constantly, over and over and over again, because she's obsessed with rearranging.  And she doesn't see that moving things that are mine and not hers is a huge violation, again, of my personal property.  See, I am her personal property, so by extension, all my stuff is hers.  That's how she sees it.  So when I buy things at the store and she takes it and moves it out of the box I was keeping it in (usually I do this to bring it down the basement to our pantry), I tend to get a little angry.  Also, recently, she kept taking the seeds I was saving to plant and kept putting them in a bag, even though I was laying them out to dry.  

Growing up, on the surface, my mother looked organized.  But open a drawer in our house.  I dare you.  And out everything will explode onto the floor.  Granted, I don't think anyone cared, due to the fact it smelled like cat piss and looked disgusting.  What kind of person who keeps a house like that has the right to judge anyone else for being messy?  

See, my mother puts away my stuff (and when I say "puts away", I don't mean where it goes, I mean her version of it, which is just transferring it to another surface) because I don't always put things away right away.  I have executive functioning issues, which means, for me, my brain moves slower when it comes to organization than it does for other people.  So if I don't have the right place to put something, I may leave it somewhere for too long, while it's waiting for its new home.  Now, I am way better at this than I used to be, but it's a S-L-O-W process.  I've been actively working on organizational change since 2016 (though, I could argue it started a few years earlier than that, but it was only a few things).  I work hard all the time to make our living space more inviting and to work on my own personal obstacles for why my brain works the way it does (I have ADHD and I am an artist, so that's a double whammy).  But I cannot work on my shit, if she's always running behind me and undoing what I do.  Whether what I am doing is my brain being suck in that in-between mode (when my stuff hasn't found a permanent home yet) or whether I put up some decor or placed something outside where I want it.  

How can I feel that this is where I live if I am not allowed to put my own stuff in places where I want it?  It makes me so angry that she has all her own shit to put places, but then she has to go and move my stuff around, too.  Or that when she moves my stuff that's stacked somewhere (I have VERY FEW stacks anymore--and when I stay stacks, I mean in boxes or bags, not actual stacks), it's as if I can't make decisions for my own items...as those items are not hers to be telling me what to do with.  

Yes, you may be reading this and say "Oh god, I would hate to live with you!"  I get it.  My youngest son is a literal minimalist and he doesn't like it either.  But he's nice to me about it.  He's a wonderful human being.  So I work on changing, for him and for his brother, and for my husband, so they all don't have to live with someone's ADHD brain who doesn't quite organize right yet.  And I work on it for me.  Because I love the way my house looks when it's not stuffed and messy and disorganized.  Right now?  All my mess is contained to my room.  AND the only reason it's messy is because I am working on creative stuff right now for my Etsy shop, and the mess is driving me crazy, too.  But I have no room for anything, so it all gets shoved together and overwhelms the shit out of me.  So I have enough to work on in my own life than to worry about what my mother is doing to my stuff, too.  

And sometimes? I leave stuff in the living room in bags, on purpose, so she doesn't see them.  But she goes in there and tears open my bags and takes my shit out and sometimes steals it.

Oh, and another reason my room was messy for a bit was because when we first moved in here, I put all our bathroom stuff away and she would go in and go through it and fuck up the order I had it in and move it all around--over and over and over again.  So I removed everything out of the bathroom and put it in my bedroom.  Right now, I still have one of those plastic drink bins (the kind with handles you get from Wal-Mart that you put ice in) filled with cleaners in my room because otherwise my mother steals them (some are to be thrown away, as they are ones that she bought when she wasn't supposed to--I have chemical sensitivities and can't tolerate bleach and mother is obsessed with bleach).  So my room is the catch-all place where everything goes to be hidden away from the house-thief.  Recently, I found one of my cleaners I thought I lost in her closet, that she must have stolen from my bedroom when we weren't home--we started locking our door again when we leave).  

So how can I work on my organization if some hearty little gnome golem keeps running behind me and fucking it all up as I go?  

Another thing that bugs me is I will wash the windows and it takes me about five minutes to do them.  And she will come in the next day or within the next few days, and make a HUGE deal out of removing all the windows and washing them all elaborately, as though SHE is the one keeping them clean.  Never mind that I do it each week and she does it twice a year.  I mean, I get it's petty as shit, but I am not ashamed to admit to taking soapy water and splashing them all over the windows the next day.  More than once.  

I know this is all tedious BS.  I get it.  I wish I could detach more from her behavior and just ignore it.  And while the thing today didn't actually bother me that much (as I just put it all right back), it triggered more in me than it should.  Do you remember the episode of Roseanne when she had to rewash the dishes that someone in the house washed after she came home from work?  That's my mother.  Nothing anyone else does is good enough.  She thinks SHE is the only person who can do anything right.  Too bad when my mother washes our dishes, she leaves them caked in food, and I am the one stuck rewashing them. 

Sigh.  Triggers.  Ugh.  Well, I am not shamed by her anymore.  Not for being messier, at least.  She was always messy and gross, but more organized than me.  I wasn't filthy, just cluttered.  And now I know why my brain works the way it does and how to combat it as much as I can.  And yes, her running behind me and moving my stuff does trigger my shame of being so unorganized, but it's just one of those "leftover" feelings.  You know, when you're actively working on healing and sometimes you still get triggered, even though there's not as much weight to it anymore?  So the feeling passes faster than before, because instead of a gaping wound, it's scabbed up.  It still hurts sometimes, but as long as nobody rips it open, the pain passes pretty quickly.  

I just need to keep work on healing, so that scab can turn back into flesh.  Scarred flesh, but still flesh.  Okay, this getting gross.  I am going to end it here.  And now head off to go learn some more organizational techniques.  I really love Clutterbug.me, if you're interested in also learning about organization.  I am a messy butterfly, and my mother is a freaking noisy little cricket.  You have to check out the website to know what those are.  Anyways, so that's what's been going on lately.  Other than "The Great Battle for the Granny Panties", which is when my mother runs out of underwear and I buy her underwear, and she tells me I bought the wrong ones...over and over and over again.  Which was literally happening as I wrote this.  So FUCKING ANNOYING.  But hey.  She will wear those panties and she will like them.  And her dementia will make her forget if she doesn't.  Ha!  

Okay back to something else.  

PS: Oh yes, I am picking up this book today, because I think Roseanne Barr is a total narcissist.  

This Will Be Funny Later by Jenny Pentland (her daughter).