I was in Toyko the first time I was molested. She was a friend of mine, and would come over to my home to play with my stuffed animals. Then the door would shut, and I knew playtime was over. I never told my parents why I no longer wanted to invite my friend over, or go to her house, but I remember clinging to my mom’s feet on our wood floor in our downtown Tokyo home while she was on the phone with my friend’s mom, just saying that I no longer wanted to see her. I’ve used euphemisms throughout my life. In part because I never wanted to get anyone in trouble, but also in part because I never wanted to get myself in trouble.
As I grew up and came to live back in California to where I had moved home after my first of abusive relationship in Chicago, I entered another one. I thought I had learned my lesson then, that standing up to sociopaths or fleeing from them would fix my problems. Unfortunately that is never the case. In fact, I still seem to run away from people I once trusted who then broke my trust and hurt me. This time it was Snickers.
The police came to our apartment after I found meth and a half burnt spoonful of it in her room. I almost disassociated I didn’t realize what I was seeing, I was in so much disbelief. Someone not only I trusted but my family trusted with their mortgage not only betrayed me by stealing thousands of dollars, but by projecting her problems onto me. Because of these projections, I was at fault for going into her room after losing beloved wooden bowls passed down from my grandmother to my mother, and then strange things, like my underwear and my sheets, that she had taken from me. At that moment, blissful ignorance failed me yet again.
Then I realized the gravity of the situation; I was living with someone very unsafe. I asked my father to come and put a lock on my door, but since our familial relationship was too intertwined with theirs, he put it on my closet door so she wouldn’t know. Unfortunately, blissful ignorance changed my life again. I slowly moved all of my most precious possessions into the closet so they could not be taken. I wanted to pretend none of this was happening. She claimed I had a lock on my door, but the lock could be opened with her long acrylic fingernails, a signal that I was crazy for thinking the lock on my bedroom door wasn’t impenetrable. 14 checkbooks were stolen from a pack of 15 that I had recently paid for upon the purchase of my new Jeep. I remember her saying, as she leased her $300/month Mercedes SLA in lipstick red, that she didn’t know “I would get a car like this”, implying my car was such an upgrade from the evergreen Honda civic I grew up driving. She asked me to drive her to the Square in it. At that earlier time, I still thought she was my friend.
A cop knocked on our door at 4am; she had returned to find me in her room in disbelief of everything that she had stolen from me, and in shock over the crystal meth I found in her closet. It was like she had stolen my identity, as I immensely placed so much meaning in the objects around me. She ran into her room, not after spitting on me and twisting the blame to me for entering her room after stealing day after day from me in my room.
My shampoo, my face wash, anything she liked she would take without remorse. To this day I know she is a narcissist, exhibiting other strange tendencies. Even growing up she would jest at others at the expense of me or them. When I answered the door, the Mesa police officer asked if everything was ok. Living in blissful ignorance and not wanting to disrupt the boat, I said “yes – but there was some spitting involved.” He left, and she repeatedly banged on my door and said “it will never happen again that you go into my room without me knowing.” She later installed video cameras though that were for her, I had only entered her room after months of things just going missing, my mail being taken by her which I had to apologetically say “I’m sorry – this is addressed to me.” For the entire 6 months of living together I sequestered myself to my room to eat and to live. I was in brutalizing fear daily, partially brought on by my circumstance, but also by being afraid to stand up to a bully.
After claiming the spoon was filled with incense, and being informed she no longer accepted checks from me to pay our bills in her name that she was never paying “because they took too long to cash.” I knew I had to leave the situation. In July of 2015, I paid her over $500 in cash and checks for bills. Eventually my father demanded that she show him our electric bills, that I would essentially be paying for in full since she would never pay the months bills prior.
I constructed a whole story around Snickers yet she was the reason why I entered into healing for the the first time. I saged my apartment for the first time. My grandfather appeared in the form of an eagle driving home from a medium session. I don’t credit her enough with helping me realize my true capacity, and my own shortcomings, especially in giving my power to her without even taking a second look.
to look is not to see 