the "H" word ...."hoarder" being the child of a hoarder

growing up i always knew that my family was a little different . my dad enjoyed a beer the same as everyone else and sometimes more, and my mom well my mom did her best to raise two kids on her own but she also is a adult who suffers from bipolar .it was not normal to be 9 years old know how to do your laundry i would later learn hoarding .it started like it does for most,her Avon stuff then boxes of the kids art work and whatnot then became boxes of things both my sister  and i knew she didn't need but she would refuse to get rid of as i got older i realized that the way i lived was not normal or ok but at 9 years old i didn't know how to fix it and as i grew up it became worse even faster alot of the things mom would hoard were things she wanted to use to help others but it just never seemed to leave the house and when i was 12 my mom at almost 40 had my little sister and then it wasn't just about me dealing with it  and i honestly thought that maybe my sister would make her change how we lived but it didn't and again it just kept getting worse i never had friends over because i didn't want them to see how crowded it was or the roaches  and dirty dishes every where eventually the hoarding along with feeling like a live in sitter lead me to move into my dads the summer before my freshman year and from that point on i told myself i would never let myself live that way and though it is hard and i know that hoarding is a mental disability and is also hereditary i remind myself that i will not let my kids go through ,but even though i have the disease under control everytime i see a show about hoarders i think that could be my mom or is that what her house looks like iv learned to never be surprised by what i see when i go to my moms but sometimes i see her house and how my sister is forced to live knowing no other way to live because that's how she grew up and i get angry,sad,and hurt all at the same time because this disease could easily take over my 10 year old sister or end up costing my mom my sister .  its not normal to have to worry if your autistic sister who has enough problems to live with will add hoarder to that list or grow up almost hating what our mom has become like i have .i will never stop loving my mom but a child no madder how old can only take so much and can only make excuses for so long before they say i have no defense to that  and have to walk away with their head hanging down with sorrow .i didn't write this to embarrass my mom or my family but i have only so much i can hold in before it spills out i write this because i know im not the only child of a hoarder and maybe this will help someone feel like their not alone .