I walked through a doorway every day where there was evil and adorned through the house were skulls, the air was thick with evil and it was heavy with pain. That is the feeling I felt for almost a year of living with my former friend Nicole. She carried a heavy burden that I've never told and won't tell for it's not my business to tell her pain. We stopped being friends during the time that I lived with her. She made it very clear that when I lost my job paying rent was the most important thing to her and not how I felt. She constantly told me it's just business and I felt like a tenant that was torn between a shitty friend and a shitty landlord. She was so condescending towards me from day one where she was worried about all of her stuff that might get damaged from me moving in. I had to pay for the cover for the guest bed that was to be put in the garage because I wanted to sleep on my own bed. She was so concerned that I would ruin the garbage disposal that she flew downstairs to make sure that I was running water and could tell me while I'm on the phone with my older sister. There was no end to the condescending things she would say to me.
Having bipolar one thing in the entire world that has been taken from me by friends/roommates is sleep. It is the only thing I want and have a need for my brain and body. Every day I would wake up before 7 am regardless if I had to work or not and regardless of what time I went to bed the night before. She had an alarm on an old phone that she no longer used but for games and it would go off every morning at 7 am till 8:30 am then her real alarm would go off and I don't know how she slept through it. I asked her a few times to have it fixed but it was fine for her so it didn't matter. My hygiene suffered greatly, where I didn't take showers much or brushed my teeth because I would pop out of bed and leave just to getaway. Ever since I have lived on my own people have stolen my sleep from me and she would party after the club and keep me up at night. I would tell her and ask to turn it down some but her response would be, "I'm good". One morning about 6 am a guest of hers walked into my room and woke me up. I believe that was the straw that broke me, where I began to have nightmares of the house being broken into where I would have to fight the intruders off. That being the only time she apologized to me, that one time.
My thoughts are scrambled very much and I have one set of things to own from living there. Whenever I struggled and she wouldn't understand I would give her less and pay the rest of the rent during the month when I could. I felt bad because there were times where I was really struggling and she didn't care. She didn't care that I could lose my car. It wasn't her problem. She raised my rent the weekend I lost my job and said I hope you can still pay rent and I tried with everything I had to make it and my other bills. So I would just deposit money into her account, well that's another thing, she didn't want me to Paypal her rent for some reason and I had to have a cashier check because she didn't trust that my money was good. The very first check I gave her she mocked what it looked like but she worked at a bank so it took me back as to why. I need to voice these feelings because I lost a friend on the first day of moving in and it's painful. I don't feel the sting like I did a couple of months ago. In the advent of my friend Sarah coming to town for the UnMasquerade Ball, she charged me a $50 fee for letting a stranger stay with us. She got drunk and tried to tell Sarah to test drive me multiple times. A friend now ex-friend tried to get me kicked out. He sent Nicole many texts and blew up her phone that weekend. He had broken or had someone break into her house earlier a month or so before and had someone only take pictures. I had gone into a business venture with him, i.e. cosigning a lease for him and his mom. I had gotten myself off of the lease and he came unglued. He tried to get me kicked out of where I was living by harassing Nicole. He used what information he had acquired and made stories. He had people call and text her and tell her all kinds of made-up things to assassinate my character. it made her a mess. It ruined my time with Sarah. I felt for Nicole and months went on where it became stranger and stranger until I couldn't take it anymore.
My Mom passed away in Dec 2018 and she gave me the most robotic hug that was so cold and unfeeling because she was worried about her mom and how she would need people to come to her side when that day came. There was no Christmas in the house, it was outlawed, no music, and no decorations. It was the saddest Christmas ever. I spent NYE with her and her friends and it was so sad, correction I was so sad, I had no business being there.
I wanted to leave because she didn't care about me, she only cared about the extra money she was getting because she could afford the townhouse without my help. Constantly throwing that I had one day to get rent to her and in her account(seriously abused me) and I felt so defeated that I would go to South Carolina to give a cashier check to her, that she didn't need because she felt she needed to make sure I knew my place. I went to eat with her and she was drunk and told her best friend that she has put me in my place a few times, which hurt and it was like a knife twisted in my heart. We used to be friends, really close, but she became only worried about her aunt whom she called mom, just like Jose who only cared about his mom and doing anything at all cost to take care of his life and her, that he would steal and swindle anyone. They were very similar. He was sly in his dealings where she was ruthless towards people who didn't bow to her. She was told she was a narcissist and she was so hurt that her friend apologized for calling her one. I didn't disagree when she asked me nor agreed.
As I planned to leave, I gave her my 30 days notice and she became unglued. The first sign was when she was drunk and counting silverware that was missing, I didn't do an audit but I should have. She wanted me to pay her $50 because I took them out of the house and lost them. I said I didn't steal them so why should I pay you for silverware that I don't use outside the house. I told her that I would never steal from her and that got to her so she had to play to my sense of right. I never meal prepped and I ate out for all of my meals after that incident. My friends wanted to give her a few sets of plasticware but I didn't want them to. I should have let them. She cussed me out several times that month. it was very painful for me to live there that month. I let her cuss me out while I was on the phone with my Dad, so he could hear how horrible she was. She became the most evil I had ever seen her the last two days, where she took my key the night before and cussed me out and the day I moved heckled me on the phone with her friend. She talked shit to my friend Erin while we were moving. I didn't go back to clean because she lied and said I didn't pay last month's rent which would never happen in a million years. She claimed I used her, Brinkley, and Jose. Jose stole it from me I told her and she took it back. This is as much as I can bear to share because I felt destroyed being cursed that I wouldn't amount to anything ever because I was a user. I would hope that no one ever again feels this way about me. I work hard for what little I have and to regain what was stolen from me or even to never regain.
I told people that I don't want to be called their brother, if you are not my best friend or someone I trust we aren't real bros. I've told people time and time again the story and maybe it ends here, with this final nail. I pray for healing and understanding but I don't know why I lived there. It was a horrible experience and one I never want to relive. I pray for peace and use the cognitive thought triangle to battle the horrible pain that arises. I want to tell you, who are reading, that I don't fear the pain anymore. I've given it to God. I've fought the pain and losing friends who become unraveled. those people who want to control you but can't; they aren't your friend. They need something and that's control. Woe to those who claim to be a good person and feel the need to be a vindictive vigilante. I am strong but I just want to be successful on my own as a man with bipolar and not used for my heart. I am not weak, I am strong, I am bold, I don't use people and my life is evidence of the people that I come in contact with. I feel bad for the situations I was put in and I wish I could have communicated better but it's over and the pain has subsided and given to God, my higher power who can heal hearts and mend minds.