The Limit

I have finally discovered the limit of my tolerance and patience.  No, not with politics, child-rearing or academia.  I have discovered the limit of my ability to understand and empathize with mental illness.  Not all mental illness, mind you, just one permutation.

What is the occasion of this journey of self-discovery and shame, you ask?

Hoarders, on A&E.

Just–Oh My God.  Usually when I watch these shows about addiction or depression or schizophrenia, I may be baffled by the people on the screen, but I can muster empathy for them because they are obviously suffering from a debilitating illness.  But there is something about the hoarding–even though you can obviously argue that it is a debilitating condition–that completely shuts down my empathy valve and has me yelling at the screen, “For God’s sake, stick her in a padded cell and CLEAN THE FREAKING HOUSE!!!!”

Maybe it’s due to the fact that I grew up in a house where my dad’s idea of a fun way to kick off Saturday morning was by vacuuming at 8 a.m.,  followed by raking the shag carpeting.  (Yes, I am a child of the 70’s.  Deal with it.  We had lovely, fluffy shag carpeting, too.  It never got matted or ratty looking.)  My parents, due to their Depression-era raising, were super-scrupulous about taking care of stuff and keeping it clean.  They were too poor to hoard, so they went the other way–you want poster people for “reduce, reuse, recycle,” look no further than my parents.

Or maybe it’s due to the show itself, which does an admirable job of illustrating the kind of denial hoarders live in, without being an hour-long “fix-it” show.  No one suddenly sees the light at the end of the show, no sassy british ladies show up with baking soda and feather dusters to make inappropriate sexual jokes and scour away soap scum–it’s just the same person, insisting that they aren’t hoarding, they’re going to get around to selling the stuff/repairing the stuff/giving the stuff as presents/reorganizing the stuff for an ENTIRE HOUR, while simultaneously refusing to actually get rid of/organize/fix or sell ANYTHING, even when an entire army of mental health professionals and a Haz-Mat team have shown up to help out.

News flash:  Here’s how these stories are probably going to end.  The hoarders are going to lose all their friends and family, die covered in cockroach crap when a pile of ancient newspapers falls over and crushes them, and then the four dozen cats they “rescued” are going to EAT THEM.  But they don’t get it, or they don’t care. 

And instead of empathy, it produces blind, frustrated rage in me when I watch.  Gah.

Is it compelling television?  Definitely.  I just don’t think I’ll be able to watch it anymore, because of its effect on my mental health.