VIOLATED

It’s been a tough couple of days. Yesterday, I noticed a handmade barrette and a hairbrush missing from where I’d put them. I followed my instincts and went into my “roommate”s room. I found the barrette in her top dresser drawer. I guess roommate is the wrong term. Roommate would indicate one who shares in the expenses, wouldn’t it? Yeah, she’s not done that. Since she arrived in August, she’s bought perhaps $200 worth of groceries, mostly either bread, Dr Pepper, green tea, cereal, and the soy milk she likes. Not one penny toward the rent, the (almost doubled) utilities, or anything else to maintain the household. She still owes me a little over a hundred bucks on stuff I paid for that she specifically said she would pay back. She still owes a friend of mine $50 from TRF in October. This afternoon, when I got home, I got to wondering about some other things I hadn’t seen in awhile, and went in there again. This time I found 2 pairs of distinctive earrings, a distinctive pendant, a whole bunch of change, and a few other random pieces of costume jewelry, in the place where I had found the barrette yesterday. In another drawer I found another distinctive hair accessory. Now, I’m not the most organized person in the world, and frankly, I have so much stuff that never got unpacked completely, that I couldn’t begin to tell you where these things were prior to her appropriating them, however just because I wasn’t using them, and hadn’t for sometime, does not mean that she has a right to steal them. This is not the first time I’ve been stolen from. Back in ’91, my apartment in Dallas was broken into. Nothing was ever recovered. I thought I felt violated then. Yeah, that was NOTHING compared to the violation I feel this time. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that not just my space was violated this time, but also my trust in someone I considered a friend. Someone I did everything in my power to help. Someone I was naïve enough to believe when they told me their hard luck story. This week I will work on recovering my stuff that she’s hidden away amongst her things, and documenting photographically what I find, before I secure it safely away from her sticky fingers. I will also be talking with the local PD about the best way to get her out, with only her things, without a scene or retaliation. Her job requires her to have a firearm, and my friend who lives in Oregon has told me he wants me to have someone here with me when I tell her to get out. I honestly don’t think she’ll try anything, because 1. She knows she’s wrong, and 2. If I have to call the police on her, it may cost her job, as it requires her to be bondable, and with an arrest on her record, she’s no longer bondable. I don’t want to get her fired, I just want her out of my house. Once she’s gone, perhaps I can really get on track with the changes that I’ve been working on in my life.