Because of the genetic nature that typifies neurotic behaviors like hoarding and obsessive-compulsive rituals, I was raised among a group of rather short, fat, twitchy women on my mother's side who sometimes wrongly believe (in their worst disassociate and delusional states) that objects are more important than people, which is about the most abusive thing a mother can be towards the human children she birthed, and whom are now dependent upon her for life and care. Of course, the root of our faith defies the need for talismans and other superstitions as mere witchcraft, but in our family groupings, the pagan is sometimes closer than the monotheist, especially if you can't break through to the people around you using logic and reason.
Most Italian-Americans like to blow their tops to release the pent-up stress that comes along with sitting in a room full of people, eating plateful after paper plateful of someone else's home-cooked meals, while being as unobtrusive as possible as long as their needs are being met. Failing that, it's showtime. Then, it's a horrible gnashing of the teeth, angry spitting, and pulsing veins popping out of their foreheads, in almost direct contrast to their rather pathetic physical state. Uh, excuse me, bitch? You said what to me? It doesn't happen as much now that me and my brothers "rule the roost", but when we were smaller and more vulnerable, our family got away with as much hurt as they could without drawing the attention of social services or law enforcement, because that's actually what crazy bitches off their meds really need, in lieu of decent behavior.
If their violently abusive presence wasn't ugly enough to serve their weird agendas, then an out-pouring of incredibly escalating and extremely juvenile head games ensued, vicious in their focus on bizarre trivial household matters, like the "right" way to put a plastic bag in a garbage pail that sucks design-wise. If you "outed" them on that particular fetish (my mom and her sisters like the sound of plastic rustling, like dogs do), they simply argued until you went away or complied with their insane demands about shit no one really gives a fuck about, because it doesn't really fucking matter. Petty and spiteful is the domain of the common cave troll, not mine. Lines were then drawn in the household, like a sitcom family gone awry, with designated areas strictly off-limits to the non-complying human that could be enforced with a long boring story about their psychotic mindset, which was the point: that was the power they could use against you as their evidence to back their compulsively disordered actions and outbursts.
No, no, no. That's not it! You don't understand me! You're not listening to me! You didn't close the bag "properly"; that's why the chips went stale. You need this special gadget, like the one I have! It's magic. Well, I had to call the plumber because you have all that hair that's clogging up the drain! You knocked the car's transmission out-of-whack and that cost me money. No car for you! Every wacky thing that caused them the slightest pressure would cause them to spew out a bunch of falsehoods and lies, because their abuses supposedly swirled around our "incompetence" without their necessary hyper-vigilant monitoring, but really, what the fuck can a kid do to a nervous mother tearing paper into strips because the relatives are stopping by, er, I mean, it's recycling. Yeah! That's it! This is recycling. You can see the little wheels of their dysfunctional brains whirling now too fast, whereas before it was a depressed stupor. And it certainly wasn't limited to our often violent home lives.
After college graduation, the same trolls inhabited our office spaces, too, with the same bitchily passive-aggressive and lowly mentality as the ones they displayed within our family units behind closed doors, now aired out in public, and always with the same type of pissant jobs like secretaries (now "admins") and junior assistants, rife with ready-made excuses to explain away their phobias and unexplainable oddness around rather average and dull office workers. With me around, it was like they were wind up so tight that their heads might explode in confused hostility.
First, it would be deliberate neglect towards obvious job duties like changing the toner, making coffee, or keeping the fax area clear of excessive paper by tidying up when near it. You know, stuff a two year-old knows how to do. Then, after a period of tight observation (now called "stalking") while I went about my day, they would form the same bullshit plans to subterfuge my day, like noticing I forgot a small amount of food in the fridge, or an unwashed coffee cup in the sink that could be pounced upon with an alarming alacrity that did not mark their usual day-to-day work behavior. Next, the typically nasty "Wash your own dishes! I'm not your Mom!" notes show up next to the company sink, with other stupid notes posted on the fridge or, even better, a group email sent to me and cc'ed to my managerial higher-ups, but not until after catalog season was over, and they'd already used my designs to push their products onto the consumer.
Anything to humiliate, embarrass, or harass me would be an ideal day in their offices of the world. You know, to balance things out because they get "shit on" all day long! Uh...but not by me. "Sorry, you know how I 'get' around conference time". Their abuses were fine and excusable, even noble, given how "hard" they worked at the bottom of the corporate ladder! Except, I'm a working class Acadian; ain't nobody done nuthin' I haven't had to do for the diva's around me at least four or five times. It just didn't work with me around. If the cunt working reception couldn't frighten me away from the reception desk area during my work-related conversations (she's, like, really sensitive about boundaries and stuff because she was raped and she doesn't have a "real" desk like we do!), the next day a big heavy box full of books or paper would magically appear right in front of the area we stood in to talk to her, even though she often complained about her "bad back" when it came to moving boxes or mailing out packages.
Ditto with any apartment dwelling or townhome I resided in. If I recycled, then the bitch on the block would find good reason not to do so, like hiding all those empty vodka bottles in the common trash so the building's owners would get fined with the next garbage collection, by blaming it on "that new girl" who just moved in, which is always me. She must not know the rules! If I happened to use a common staircase, then clutter would appear the next day to block my path (because the bitch of the building tensely hid behind her door, looking at me through the peephole because she heard me laughing with a friend as we walked upstairs, and that's not right!), like their shoes on a too big mat by their door, or (as in the case with the house here in Pearl River), a kitchen chair obviously blocking the top of a small staircase everyone used. But, not me! I can't. There's, like, history! Such as...Oh! She's better looking and I started fights with her. Huh.
After awhile, the psychotic begin a brutal obstacle course of manipulation and deceit. "Well, no one helps me move boxes!" Or: no one looks at me! I have to do something to get attention! See? It's always put back onto you to solve them as the problem, so that their pressure is put back on your shoulders as a weight, even though by now, it's such a false construct to use with me, that's its purpose is easily discernible to any healthy outside observer, which is exactly what I want. I want help for your hoarding mood swings, and violently aggressive, wildly transgressive behavioral problems, because if you're so desperate for interaction (any kind, good or bad) that you put large objects in doorways to express your illness over other humans using it, then you are so fucking nuts, you should be in society-supported housing for the critically mentally ill and infirm.
Objects for the insane take on more meaning than they should because of their inability to communicate properly with the lifeforms around them, which is about as seriously ill in "human" as you can get, given the range of communicative abilities that we possess as a species. If you can't talk, write, read, speak, listen, or even hand signal your intentions clearly to others in a way that's appropriate and easily understood, go seek a doctor's help immediately, because there's something very wrong with you. And no, it isn't me, or anything about me, my life, my appearance, my lifestyle, my education or religion, nor is it my presence, or my great abilities to be heard and understood at an expert level. I'm not your problem. It's you. Got it? Good!
