I had definitely filled up my tank last night, yet there I was the next morning, staring at the gas gauge, with its notch stuck right at the halfway mark.
This had been happening a lot lately and it wasn’t just my car. Things were disappearing. A dress from my closet. A sweater from a drawer. And then there was the cash.
I was a waitress, and I couldn’t keep any cash on me, because no matter where I left it – my wallet, my car, in my nightstand, hundreds of dollars would vanish by morning.
Now, to any logical person, it was obvious that someone with consistent and easy access to me and my belongings was the culprit.
But, I wasn’t ready to admit that a person I had welcomed into my life was the person victimizing me and stealing from right under my nose.
She had started as a server at my job only a week before I was leaving for college, but we instantly clicked.
So, it didn’t feel weird when after only a few days of knowing her, she told me about her history with drugs.
Before our friendship had really started, I left for school. I remember her telling me she’d miss me, and even though we’d only known each other a few days, I was going to miss her too.
However, college didn’t go as planned. I found myself struggling, and ashamed to admit it.
Home for winter break, she was the first person I confided in that I was thinking of taking a break.
After I decided to take an indefinite hiatus from my education, she became my stand-in best friend at a time when I was lost and my established friend group was away at school. She was three years older than me and became an older sister to me, as I began to trust her and rely on her more and more.
It was no surprise that a few months into my extended school break when I got kicked out of my mom’s house, she was the first person I called. Call it fate, but she was also having trouble with her current living situation.
“Why don’t we just move in together?” I still remember asking.
“Would you really want to live with a drug addict?” she asked me, words that have replayed in my head a million times since.
“Of course, I trust you completely.”
After all, she was very active in A.A. and was dedicated to her sobriety, from what I could tell. I didn’t consider the battle she was actually fighting every day to stay sober.
I knew that she still grappled with guilt from the damage she had done to her loved ones during her prior drug use, and she had explained to me how she becomes a totally different person when high, seeing everyone around her as expendable and second to her true love, heroin.
But to me, that was a person who didn’t exist anymore, and I was blind to the fact that a person’s past can easily become a part of their present.
We had been happily living together for a year and a half without incident, when I first noticed that the $140 I had made the night before at work was missing from my wallet.
I assumed I just lost it, which was annoying and frankly unlike me, but accidents happen, and I figured I’d just make it up the next day.
I had recently returned to school as a photography major, and was so incredibly busy with getting my life back on track that I hadn’t noticed she was fading from me- I’d felt a slight disconnect, but I just thought I’d been too busy for us to hang out lately.
Then, one night she didn’t come home. She disappeared for a whole weekend- not one text, or a response to the many frenzied phone calls I made.
Three days later, she tearfully admitted that she’d been forced to go to a detox facility by one of her friends. She explained to me the details of her relapse- how it had been going on for almost a month, where she had gone to find the drugs, her interactions with her dealer, and how it had caused her life to once again rapidly unravel.
I was blindsided and shocked, but grateful that she had been honest with me. I even enthusiastically offered to cover her portion of rent for the month during her initial bender, eager to make her healing process easier. Of course, she was my family, a sister to me, who would (soberly) do the same for me in a heartbeat, plus she promised to pay me back the next month.
She didn’t stay sober for long. She didn’t do any of the things she promised me she’d do, such as go back to therapy or go to out-patient rehab.
But we continued to live together for months.
I chose to see what I wanted to see, what I needed to see, even as the insanity progressed, causing a descent into chaos for the both of us. Her lies were getting more and more absurd. She even claimed multiple times her car was getting stolen, when she had actually been loaning it to her dealer for drugs.
One night, I finally asked her if she was using, and through the palpable tension, she simply told me she had been drinking and smoking weed a little, but nothing more serious than that.
But someone who’s just casually drinking and smoking weed a little doesn’t steal continuously to sustain their habits.
I even had a friend install a lock on my bedroom door. The lock was cheap and she soon broke it, but I could at least use it in a way to tell if someone had entered my room, even if it couldn’t prevent it.
One day, I asked her why my door had been opened while I was gone, and she frantically tried to tell me it was the wind from the front door that had pushed it open, an explanation that clearly made no sense, but I lacked the tools and the bravery to argue.
Clothes were now rapidly disappearing. I had to go to the bank every few days to replace my debit card after “mysterious” charges kept popping up. I started receiving frequent and angry texts from my landlord saying he hadn’t received payments, and she still hadn’t paid me back for the month I willingly had covered. The situation was clearly escalating, and I had officially lost my false sense of control.
I finally worked up the courage to ask for some gas money, as I had been letting her borrow my car while hers was “stolen.” Sure enough, she didn’t have any cash on her, and asked to borrow my car to go to the bank around the corner. I agreed, as all I had to do was go to class in the afternoon, hours away.
Four hours later, I was still waiting. I started to get anxious, she wasn’t answering her messages, and I missed my first and only class since I’ve returned to college.
That evening’s lie was that she had fainted at the bank and was taken to the hospital. In truth, she had disappeared in my car and overdosed.
And, the $20 she did bring me for gas vanished by the morning.
The beginning of the end finally came when I returned home from work a couple days later, and was feeling particularly anxious about the cash I’d made. She had told me she was feeling sick, symptoms I’d begun to recognize as her withdrawing. I couldn’t shake my uneasy feeling, and settled on hiding it in my car.
Keys in hand, the reality of my empty parking spot in front of me felt like a smack to the face. My car was gone.
We both knew we couldn’t go on like this any longer. The next text I received from her was, “I’m leaving now and you won’t ever have to see me again.”
And I haven’t.
A couple days later, she texted me saying she was going back to the apartment to get her stuff. Not wanting to see her, I decided to spend the afternoon at my mom’s house, waiting for hours to ensure there’d be no awkward run-ins.
When I came home, I immediately noticed the empty space in my closet where my camera once was.
She had been the one to witness me finding myself again through photography, and that was the last thing she took from me.
“I didn’t take your camera, I’m not a monster,” was her text response.
My mom called the police, prompting her to confess, frantically calling me and promising that she’d go to rehab and return my camera.
I hung up on her, and I did not get my camera back.
The next few weeks were a daze. I went through her room, packing up all of her things, and discovering so many of my items, including bank statements, clothing, and even my underwear. In one of her drawers, I discovered a bowl of what used to be pasta, filled with wiggling grey worms.
While cleaning, I felt a “crunch” as I sat on her bed, only to unveil dozens of needles, bloodied band-aids and a tiny crack pipe underneath her blanket.
Four years later, she’s finally paid me back for all that she owed me along with an estimate of how much was stolen. I looked forward to her weekly Venmo payments- it felt like a connection to her, as well as reassurance that she was sober that week.
With the money she paid me, I bought a new camera. And I have changed. I know that finding a spoon covered in ants is definitely suspicious. I know how to safely pack up and dispose of needles. I know not to ignore the signs and the truth in the sake of complacency and comfort. I know you don’t have to stand idly by.
In an apology letter she eventually sent me, she told me that if I ever needed anything, to please ask, but I’m not sure what that could possibly be. She told me that when something funny happens, I’m still the person she wants to tell. I do the same.
As far as I know, she is still sober.