True Confessions Of A Hoarder

Pʀᴏʟᴏɢᴜᴇ

Pickens, South Carolina is a small city, barely on the face of a map. It's not well-known to many outsiders.

Although many of us seem like country bumpkins and illiterate morons, there are some rare gems in our stockpile.

We're on more of the rural spectrum, but we're slowly becoming more urban due to the gentrification and urbanisation of our neighbour, Greenville.

Our roads are riddled with potholes and mud puddles that turn to dust spots when dry. Our dirt is mostly red clay— it's not fertile enough for gardening unless you own a few cows.

It's here that I've lived all my life.

First, I lived in a white, single-wide trailer, on a big hill, surrounded by lots of trees. The neighbours to our left had the same last name as us: Heyward.

The other Heywards—as we liked to call them—consisted of Ann, Mike, Luke, Jake, and Cora. Ann and Mike were the parents, and Luke, Jake, and Cora were their kids. Luke was the oldest at 16. Jake was 12. Cora was the youngest and most pretentious at 10. I was 7.

Cora and I used to be the best of friends. Until she turned 12 and became a back-stabbing hussy. Ever since, I hated those other Heywards. Even if Ann and Mike were okay people.

For the longest time, we didn't have neighbours across the street. When we finally got some, they played their George Strait on Thursday nights so loud, our house would start shaking. We had to call the cops on them a couple of times.

They moved to Missouri a couple months later. I never cared enough to see what happened to them after.

A month or two later, we got new neighbours across the street. They were okay folk. They never made a racket, and they mostly kept to themselves.

If you turned left out of the driveway and went a little further down the road, you would see Honey and Papa's house. Around other people, I called them my adopted grandparents—we weren't actually related.

Honey and Papa were the best not-actually-my grandparents a girl could have. Their real names were Rosa and Justin. They were always there if I needed them, they were kind folk, and I loved them as if they were my biological grandparents. I used to sit with them at church, too.

They had a pond, a pasture filled with cows, and a Verizon tower on the mountain behind their house. They also had a creek back there. Their yard was huge and filled with green grass and pretty flowers from Honey's gardening expertise.

Honey and Papa were retired and in their 70s. They were like wisefolk to me. Everything they said, I believed.

To their right lived their daughter, Penny and son-in-law, Terry. Penny and Terry were my parents' best friends, and they were like my adopted aunt and uncle. They were also my godparents.

Now, enough about my neighbours.

My family was a little family of four. There was Amelia, Steve, Ally, and me, Tammy. Amelia and Steve were my parents. Ally is my sister.

We were poor, but we were also kind of not poor. We had a camper, a big front porch, a big TV, and four vehicles. We could only fit three of our vehicles on the hill. The fourth was a red Chevy truck that daddy kept at my Papa Mart's—short for Martin.

We also had a big, fat, fluffy, 15 pound cat named Gail. Gail was a boy, but we thought he was a girl when we got him, so he was dubbed Gail, and it stuck. By the time we realised Gail was a boy, it was too late to change his name. He was already responding to it, and he was about 2 months old.

My daddy worked at a furniture store run by his Uncle. My mama worked at the Law Enforcement Center in the records division.

Our life was far from luxurious, but we were content. Mama and daddy wanted to move houses, but they never did. We enjoyed what we had, and we saved up for what we wanted.

I don't remember my childhood house as being messy. It was only messy when me or my sister—sometimes both of us—would leave our stuff lying around. Most of the time, we picked up after ourselves—the real mess was in our rooms.

I was never good about keeping my room cleaned for very long. My mama would clean it up real nice and neat, and I would have it back to a pig sty within days. As I got older, it got a little better. I kept the floor mostly picked up, but I never vacuumed it, and I never made my bed.

My sister's room was about the same. Maybe a little worse.

My hoarding tendencies weren't that noticeable until after I was about 30–we'll talk more about that later.

As a child, I wanted to be all kinds of things. I wanted to be a teacher, then a pop star, then a marine biologist, then a model, then an actress, then an FBI agent, then finally, I wanted to be a forensic pathologist.

I've always liked morbid and macabre stuff. I was like my mama in that aspect. We liked looking at serial killer documentaries, researching murder cases, creepy facts, and a bunch of other stuff. That was our favourite things to do together.

My daddy wasn't into the morbid stuff. Neither was my little sister. He would gag if we said the word poop at the dinner table. Daddy was more into crass stuff like farts and burps—Ally was too. They were nasty like that.

Now, the person I believe my hoarding came from was my Nana. Her name was Ella Walden—she held the same last name as her second husband, Matt, who was a drunk.

My Nana would stock up on food in her pantry, fridge, freezer, cabinets, and bread basket. Even if she didn't need it. She went to the store about every week.

She also had clothes in all 3 of her closets, and she used both bathrooms to perform her beauty routine—she lived alone in a small house in Easley, a small town in Pickens.

Now, my Aunt Avril, Nana's oldest kid, was a kleptomaniac and a hoarder. She popped pills in her 40s, and she quit that when her oldest kid, my cousin Aliya, started popping out kids with some guy named Cory—they broke up before their second kid popped out.

Aliya was a druggie—she danced with Mary Jane and Mr. Brownstone quite a bit, even while pregnant. She was also a kleptomaniac to keep up her habits.

Aliya's little sister, my cousin Ada, was the better of them all—although, she wasn't quite there in the head.

Anyway, Avril has a knack for picking up stuff that didn't belong to her and storing it in her garage, in her bedroom, in her kitchen, or in a spare room in her kitchen. Her house was always a mess, and it smelled like something died in there at all times.

Nana's second kid, my Uncle Kory, was an interior designer. He had his own company—KMH Interiors. It no longer exists. He was on Bravo TV at one time in some show, where he was dubbed "Big Daddy."

Yes, he was a homosexual. About everybody in the family knew it but Nana. We didn't care about his sexuality. He was the best Uncle ever. He went with me to Germany once, and I had the best time with him.

Anyway, he was a bit of a hoarder, but it was contained and never out of hand. He mostly kept keepsakes from places he'd traveled to. His hoard was on four huge shelves in his dining room, three glass shelves in his living room, a table in his hallway upstairs, and his glass coffee table in the living room.

My Nana's youngest, my dad, was a hoarder in our building. All his tools and equipment were stored in the building adjacent to the right side of our home. Mama wasn't too appreciative of his mess, but she never went in the building to clean it up.

Now, my Nana's first ex husband, Papa Mart, was a hoarder on a larger scale than Aunt Avril. He had all kinds of equipment and tools and parts stored away all over his yard and his shop. I hated stepping anywhere near his house.

Papa Mart chewed tobacco. When he spit it out, it always looked like a big green blob of mush with some brown-green juice. Papa Mart's breath always smelled like it, and it often ran down his chin. It was disgusting.

As an adult, I now realise that these people were the ones who helped me become who I am today. A hoarder.