The hoarding lable.
While it has its negative appearances the lable itself is a sort of diagnoses. So that focus can be applied on the serious blind spots. I know that's in my own words. I'm a hoarder, but I live with another hoarder. Together we make trouble for ourselves , and reading your posts Steve do in someways help with seeing understanding, hoping to learn from other perspectives. Thank you for posting. I know that I post my frustration here . And it helps me to let it out .not just keeping it inside.
I can control my hoarding to a degree, but I get very frustrated with my spouses hoarding, probably as much as she does with mine.
So when I post here amongst people who definitely relate. I sort of side step the confrontations with my wife and her supporters.

I'm in a middle of a move. And it doesn't all fit. That forces me to purge a little more. What would happen if you had them move , any number of reasons ,repairs , fumigation , ect... forcing a move is like forcing a purge. Sometime I keep things until I move. Then I even though I feel like hanging on even till I only have cold dead hands, I abandon it . I look over my shoulder and see my hoard in a dumpster after I moved away. I get over it.
I get over it because I have a new cleared home to do a set up in. And the pain of leaving stuff behind turns to the fun living in a new place.

A little clutter is one thing , but a lot of clutter is unacceptable

Hi Steve :)
I remember you from before.
It is so very frustrating, I truly do understand.
Wonderful that you have the opportunity to live abroad for a few years!
I think that this life change would be the best thing for you.
Thanks for posting here again. :)
Take care (((hug)))

Steve,

I can tell that you are hurt and angry. I am sorry and I wish that your brother had somewhere else to live.

Some of what you are saying is hurtful too. I'm not sure if you don't realize it, or if you mean it because in your pain you want to strike out, at those you see as similar to the person who hurt you even if they are not him.

"Sick" is a relative term. Sickle cell protects against malaria. My student with sensory issues prevented a house fire by alerting her family - by way of a tantrum that wouldn't be stopped until her dad found the source of the " fire smell" no one else smelled - to smoldering in the heating system before it caught and possibly burned the house down while they slept.

Some of us find ways to turn the symptoms of our illness to strengths. If an issue is negatively impacting your life, you need to find a solution. Most of us who are struggling with our hoarding have reached that point.

But sometimes, if an issue is negatively impacting someone else's life, you can be ok and THEY need to find a solution. It may involve cutting off contact with you - at which point you may both be happy, or you may realize that you have negatively impacted your life by losing them.

Anyway, I am glad you are getting away from your problem. Hopefully the distance will give you a chance to let go or see a new solution that ends the problem. Your relationship with your brother sounds painful and crushing. I wish for better for you.

Of course, a lot of this is due to the breakup of his marriage years ago. But I had a marriage bereakup too. I've had major, life devastating losses in the past, and I didn't answer them by literally walling myself in.

He claims that I simply want to "fix" him. He would be shocked if her really undrerstood that all I want is my house to be free of hoarding. If he had another place he could hoard it up the wazoo for all I care. I would completely drop all interest in his condition. I'd visit him at whatever place he was at and he'd be like "Aren't you going to be concerned about all this hoard?" And I'd be like "Are you kidding? Why? This isn't my place." His jaw would drop to the ground.

But what I would like to know is, why wouldn't anyone want to be fixed? Be it alcoholism, drug addiction, hoarding, or whatever, I've never understood that. That's like a person saying, "No, I want cancer! I don't want you to cure me of cancer! I like having cancer!" Really? Why would once WANT to have cancer?

To me it's obvious. You are sick, you should want to be healed. You should want to be better. There is no discussion about it. You should just want to be better. That's the way I've always looked at problems in life, illnesses and otherwise. Any kind of problem, if it can be solved, tackle it and move on. If it can't be solved, mitigate it until it is managed. You don't bury your head in the sand, or worse dance with the problem, exprecting it to follow your lead. I got rid of chemical burns on my face as a teenager that way. I mitigated my own anxiety disorder that way. I learned from both those experiences that you move ahead in life by tackling and conquering problems, not fooling around with them or being a slave to them. Any desire to continue having a problem, wanting it in your life, wanting it to rule over you is irrational and stupid.

Pardon my seeming lack of compassion, but it comes from brutal experience of handling my own demons and I know this way works and the other way doesn't.

So if a person is sick, they should just want to get better. Period. End of story. Any other response is simply not logical.

BTW, recently he told me he bought three used trucks in a single day. WHO THE HECK DOES THAT??? THREE USED TRUCKS??? IN ONE DAY???

And he thinks that's normal! Yes, normal for Jay Leno!

Now no one should be unduly concerned. This is not a suicide note. I don't believe in suicide. But the other day I just wished that God would take me naturally. I wanted to fall asleep and not wake up. I wanted an end to this pain, this misery.

I haven't written in a little while, but some of you know me as the brother of a hoarder. You've heard of hoarders committing suicide when their stuff was taken away? The other day I was preferring a natural (again, not suicide) death to a continuation of this.

Why? Well, if you know my situation from previous posts you know there is a lot more to it than that. If you don't, here it is. First, he is destroying my childhood home. All my memories in what was once a beautiful home, everything gone. Taken over by the hoard. Our childhood home is now the ugliest in the nreighborhood. It can even be seen by the whole world on Google street view.

Second, this involves a history of crack cocaine use, attempted murder in a drug deal gone bad, threats to kill a girlfriend (he said he would kill her to me, then a few weeks later she vanished and the police appeared at the door asking questions), having to stop a suicide attempt, the loss of our mother, and much more. In response to my reminding him years later during an argument that I saved his life by stopping him from shooting himself, he replied "Maybe the bullets were meant for you." His ex-girlfriend, the one he said he might kill, is herself a hoarder who is bipolar. She did further damage to the house by bringing in hundreds of hoarded items last year. The crazy thing is he brought her to live with him after he signed a (worthless) legal agreement with me to clean up the house! Yep, that's being logical for you. Sign an agreement to clean it up in 30 days, then immediately invite another hoarder you are in love with to come live with you, screwing your brother in the process. In any case, it turns out she became suicidal after living so many months with him and that drove her for a few weeks to the psychiatric ward. I was so thankful she was alive. For two weeks I wondered if he'd followed through with his threat (which he didn't say to her but said to me, in response to hearing how long an eviction process would be). All of you who have siblings probably have a fair certainty they will never be murderers. I don't have that any longer.

This crazy ex, who herself said to me once that if people got her mad she would go "all Satan" on them and that "people would be dead", had three pit bulls she brought with her, two of which nearly killed our dog. Of course, I found out about her moving in and the near dog killing weeks after the fact. On top of that there have been THREE OTHER PEOPLE that have moved in! And who are they? One is a drug addict, another a heroin addict with HIV, and another a homeless man I don't even know! The ex and the heroin addict are out, but the other drug addict and the homeless who knows what are still in my house! I know the drug addict, but the other I don't know at all. It is literally a situation where, if I decided to fry what's left of my mental health after 11 years of this garbage and go to the house, I might open the door and see a perfect stranger in his boxer shorts with a beer in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth staring back at me. In MY HOUSE!!!!! I learned this whoever it is has been living there for 2 1/2 months just the other day. I was shocked!

Now the hoarders on this board are probably of a different class since they are seeking help, but if you are a hoarder I want you to see the pain I have been through. Not everyone of course has THREATS OF MURDER to go along with their stories, and not every family member wishes they would die in their sleep from this, but many hoarders out threre dramatically underestimate the level of pain and suffering they put their loved ones through. I mean some REALLY don't know or REALLY don't care about the level of pain they inflict on us. I saw it in his crazy hoarding ex as well. Bring in OVER 200 HOARDED ITEMS into a house you don't own and not get permission from the co-owner??? Yeah, no problem!!!

Perhaps mercifully, God has provided for me life changes that in just a few weeks are going to take me out of this situation completely for the next two years. I may be briefly visiting Europe at the end of next month, and quite possibly going to live for two years in India or Kenya. In any case, come July I am out of this whole situation for two years. I just wish my childhood home would at least have some improvement before then.

I am looking at harm reduction if he agrees to it. He has promised to take a look at info I am sending him. He is legally obligated to keep the house under control, and I'm going to try to get people to oversee the situation while I am gone.

So finally, FINALLY after 11 long years of all this I get to take a break. Finally, I get to return to a daily life, a new life, doing things I want to do with no drugs and no hoarding. Because that's all it's been the last 11 years--drugs and hoarding, drugs and hoarding, drugs and hoarding. And I get to do it with people who don't have drugs and hoarding in their lives. Crack cocaine got forced on me against my will. Hoarding got forced on me against my will. I'm done with it all!!!

I can't promise him this so I can send this promise out to all of you in the Universe. Mark my words, if anything ever happens to him so that I gain control of the property, NONE of his hoard is going to survive! I won't sell any of it or donate any of it to anyone. It will ALL be chopped up or BURNED. I don't care how valuable any item is. None of it will survive. I want no trace of anything that train wrrecked my home existing on this planet! I spit on his hoard! It is nothing but a pile of used, worthless garbage.

Yes, as you can see it has affected my mental health as well. It has caused PTSD, including over 70 dreams since 2015 about the situation. I am in a kind of counseling for it but there is not much more on that I can do until I get out of this in a few weeks. Then I can kiss all this goodbye!