Hey y’all.
It’s the holidays and I’m visiting family. I moved out in 2013 and haven’t lived there since. Now, I’m in the midwest so I don’t get to visit often.
This year is the year I’ve acknowledged a problem risking both the health and livelihood of my parents and siblings. It’s something I used to think was a quirk and felt mildly uncomfortable with. It’s grown into something I am extremely sad to witness and I’m not sure what I can do to help them.
My parents’ house (and the home I spent most my childhood in) was always really messy. Shit everywhere. We are just above the poverty line so our socioeconomic background is what you can imagine to be very low/little resources. We never went on vacations. Our diet consisted of pasta and nearly no produce. The problem is that it’s still exactly the same. My siblings who are now all in their twenties eat the same thing or resort to fast food daily. Obesity isn’t an issue; in fact, they are all probably underweight.
I walked into my parents home this year and it was cluttered as it usually is but for some reason, I can now see it for what it is: a disorderly way of living and a health hazard. There is black mold littered on the ceilings (my bathroom ceiling is mostly dark gray where it was once white). It’s reached the curtains now, too. There’s cobwebs everywhere. Piles of books. Big plastic containers of junk in the middle of the living room. Rooms with garbage, food, etc. I can barely stay an hour without feeling extremely depressed.
The fridge is nothing but recycled fast food, microwaveable things, pasta, generic crap. No produce. At all. Save onions or garlic. My brother nukes french fries and that’s all he eats. It’s hard to not cry when I type this.
I feel horribly about this. I don’t even want to imagine bringing my partner or friends over ever in this state. It’s like my family is stuck in a cycle of low income living. They are also in a lot of debt thru unpaid medical bills and bills in general.
Do I have any platform in speaking g out? I don’t even know how. My childhood was deprived of healthy communication and conflict resolution, something I’m working so hard on now. Living on my own and doing well makes coming back to the household hard. And I feel like I need to help but how do I have this conversation with the humans who raised me and are my parental figures? It’s a strange dynamic I don’t know how to navigate. But, this living is NOT HEALTHY. I do t give as much of a shit about the clutter as I do about the black mold that has touched nearly every part of the bathroom and some of our downstairs rooms. It’s so fucking sad y’all. What do I do? I leave tomorrow.
tl;dr: parents have hoarding tendencies and neglected the house so much it’s infested with black mold and cobwebs. Come from low economic background that hasn’t improved much. Eating consists of pasta, sauce, soda. I don’t live here anymore but fear for everyone that does.
Submitted December 27, 2019 at 11:06AM by uptomyeyesinsadness https://ift.tt/2Q3D5Fh
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