If I Could Burn This All to the Ground

I wish I could burn my mother's house to the ground.

She Who Must Be Kept has a problem with hoarding. It isn't like that show on TLC or whatever. She just cannot for the life of her throw away a single piece of paper. In our bathroom, in the cupboard under the towels, there are boxes and boxes of papers. Old light bills from 1989 when we were living in the trailer. Papers of my father's from when he was on unemployment in 1988.

These are things that do not matter. And yet she cannot throw them away. I do not have this problem, and I will throw away old papers by the handful. I like to do what I call purges, where I go through the house and just--throw stuff away, arrange for things that are good (like books or clothes) to be given to the used bookstore or Goodwill or Saint Vinny's.

She Who Must Be Kept can't do this. I don't know why.

On television there's some crime drama starring a hoarder. We're nowhere near that bad. You can see our floor. You can walk through the house. We're healthy. The house itself is falling apart, but that's unrelated.

SWMBK whines and cries and talks about how she wants to change. She wants to be better. She wants to be different. Sometimes I wish I could slap her and tell her to put up or shut up. That she's the only one who can help herself.

But she never does.

I wish I could burn all this to the ground so we could all start from square one. So I could be aware this time around and not let her get that bad.

I guess though, she isn't my responsibility.