barbie crack house

the pretty pink nightmare

the first house i ever moved into was painted hot pink on the outside. it was beautiful, like a barbie house but life sized. the inside was pretty too, but a lot happened to me while i was there. lots of horrible, nasty things that can never be scrubbed clean.

on mother’s day, age 19, i decided i was going to move out. i packed all my shit in a day, wrote my mom a note, left her a keychain as a gift, and then two of my friends picked me up to travel to my new destination. rent was cheap and i had roommates that i didn’t really know at all, and they didn’t really know eachother either. it was basically a house to give people second chances, but i just moved there because i wanted to feel like an adult. the owner of the house lived with us. he had some animals in the house which were two pitbulls and a rottweiler, and someone else had a cat that stayed in his room all the time. i eventually adopted a bunny from the local pet shop named punkin. she was my sunshine in the dark every single day i stayed there.

i slept on an air mattress with zebra print sheets. my room was very small, and my air bed took up most of the room, but i was okay with that. as long as i didn’t have to sleep on the floor, i was okay.

the first month, everything was great. i felt good on my own. i guess a false sense of freedom is better than nothing.

i remember one night my roommates were hosting a livestream for a fundraiser and we had a lot of people over to party. music was blasting and we were having fun. after we shut down the facebook live, we all went upstairs to smoke weed. it wasn’t long into it that my friend at the time told me he needed to pee, and that he’d be right back. within 10 seconds, he was back, and motioning with his fingers for me to come over to him, exiting the room. i got up, unsure of what i could possibly be needed for, and walked out the door. the first thing he said to me was

“your roommates cat is dead in the bathroom. i don’t know what to do.”

i remember being so shocked that all i could say was “what?”, my eyes were huge at this point, like, he had to be joking, right? i ran to the bathroom and swung open the door. on the floor was my roommates cat. bloody, covered in bite marks, and definitely deceased. one of the pitbulls walked in when she saw me enter the bathroom. i remember kicking her. hard. i had never kicked a dog before. i yelled “get the fuck away” and she left the room. she was the one who killed this poor cat. i walked out of the bathroom and my heart immediately dropped. the dog wasn’t there, and my bedroom door was open. i ran in, saw her sizing up my baby bunny, and grabbed her collar while screaming “GET THE FUCK OUT.” i dragged her out of my room, away from my precious sunshine, into the hallway and shut every fucking door that was open upstairs. i went back into the bedroom where everyone was smoking, and i told the roommate that had owned the cat that i needed to talk to him. he tried to brush me off, because he was having a good time, but i grabbed his arm and whispered “you need to come out here. now.” in the most stern voice that i could muster up. he realized something was wrong then, and followed me out into the hall. i told him his cat had died; that the pitbull had attacked her in the bathroom. he didn’t cry… in front of us, at least. he went for a drive. meanwhile, the roommate that owned the dog, locked her into a closet for about 2 or 3 days. i didn’t like that one bit, but considering my roommate broke the dog gate with his hands, threw a wooden chair down the stairs, and was nonstop screaming at her for hours after learning what she did; i didn’t want to interfere. if his dog were to attack him after the closet treatment, i wouldn’t have gotten involved with that either. he buried the cats body in the yard around 2am. even after all that, he still kept the dog.

every event after that night just got worse. it’s like the cat released some sort of curse on us, in which i don’t blame her. she didn’t deserve such a violent death.

a few days after this had happened, i woke up to a message from my abuser, telling me i was an awful person and that i was manipulative and evil etc. etc.

projection at its finest.

then, i took a bunch of sleeping pills. like, i didn’t know if i was going to wake up. i didn’t really care. i was crying and my roommates heard me, forced me to open the door, and asked me what happened. i told them i wanted to die. they asked what i took and how much and i truly didn’t know. they told me i had two options: vomit it all up, or they’re taking me to the hospital. so, i went to the toilet and made fake gagging sounds over it, apologized to my roommates, went to my room, and fell asleep for three days, waking up occasionally to switch sleeping positions. during that time, people texted my roommates asking if i was okay, because i wasn’t responding to anything that entire time, and they both told everyone that i was completely fine. mind you, they didn’t come to check on me at all. i could have been dead and neither of them would have known for over three days. i don’t even want to think about what stage of decay i would have been in when they eventually decided to open my door. i woke up several times to the sounds of what i’m guessing was the dogs. at least i could thank them for sniffing under the crack to make sure i was still in there.

it was just me and my bunny those three days. i was unconscious for a long while, and i really don’t remember a lot of what i did during the time i was awake. i do remember wishing i was dead, though.

nobody in that house gave a shit about me except punkin. they despised me, even. i was much younger than everyone there, so we didn’t have a lot in common. i was excluded a lot of the time, so i liked to stay in my room to avoid the “i’m a fucking weirdo” feeling that i would get by just being in the same area as them.

the narcissistic roommate did hair for a living, and the house was so big that he had his own salon room in there. whenever i didn’t have money to give him to bleach my hair, he let me pay with my prescription medications. i needed those, but i also needed my roots done. priorities, i guess.

after a few months staying there, i came to the conclusion that this place really wasn’t for me. i remember calling my parents crying and asking to move back with them, which they thankfully said yes to. once again, i packed all my shit in a day, took my bunny, and left. i promised to come back to clean the room because it was messy, but within a day the owner had already done it. he was really mad at me for leaving it that way, so i apologized, but i didn’t actually care. if he would have waited literally two days, i would have cleaned it, just like i had promised.

the narcissistic roommate went through every single thing i left there to come back for later. he got into in my dresser drawers and stole my jewelry, high heels, and weed. i confronted him about it, and he tried to lie to me, but eventually realized i knew they were taken, and i wasn’t going to give up on getting them back. within a few days he gave me everything he took from me, because he’s all bark and no bite.

i don’t remember every single thing i went through in that house. my memories feel kind of blocked, like they’re blackened out with an extra thick sharpie all over my brain.

the only fond memory i have in the place was playing on the stripper pole, so at least there was one fun thing to remember.