Sober house roommates wanted me gone

The other two tenants were a bit older than me, and we didn’t really have much in common. My roommates, as I was advised to call them after moving in, were cigarette smokers, older and more street worn than me. And that's about all I knew about them. Because that's all I saw them do. Smoking cigarettes nonstop on the deck right outside my window, sharing stores of their glory days on the wrong side of the tracks.

This was a women’s only sober living house. It was owned and run by a nurse, who herself was a former alcoholic.

The gusts of noxious cigarette smoke would waft into my room. Every night. I could hear my roommates cackle at jokes they shared with each other that were usually lewd and sexual in nature. This wasn't my kind of thing. And these ladies just weren't my kind of people. No judgment, but they’re just not for me. I don’t like those kinds of jokes. Or that much smoking.

After a few months it was getting clearer that my life wasn’t really getting any better. The place was far away from any amenities, and I didn’t have a car. I was way out in Langford, a sub city outside the capital of British Columbia and I was trying to get a job.

The landlord advised me that I shouldn’t be. As a recovering alcoholic herself, she knew it was best for people to take time off work to get better - at least ten months or so. She was an expert in addiction issues apparently, just because she was a nurse. But I was so bored and going stir crazy. It was Covid too.

I started to deliberately avoid my roommates because I really had nothing in common with them. And their conversations were always revolving around the toxic nature of their relationships with their ex-husbands. And the lewd jokes, always with the lewd jokes. Innuendos too. And if I didn’t laugh, it was awkward. At first I tried to laugh - feign it. But eventually, I just couldn’t. I didn’t really need to. I just didn't have anything in common with them, their lewd sex jokes as innuendos, and that’s my right.

And if I ever tried talking to them about other stuff, they seemed totally disinterested in anything I said. They didn't talk about job histories, or hobbies, you know stuff that people who want to make friends with other people talk about, I thought. I certainly tried, but anything I ever said was just met with their silence afterwards, it was really awkward.

It got more awkward and obvious as months went by. They avoided chores we were supposed to share. And then started to get frustrated with me for being so quiet all the time and not joining them when they’d go anywhere. I wasn’t interested.

I didn’t like either of them personally. Both were just…Disingenuous, and disrespectful to everyone except out landlord. And they constantly complained about their supposed trauma - their children for not wanting to be in their lives after they abandoned them for drugs and alcohol. Their bosses who were tyrants anytime they were employed. Everyone was a narcissist in their stories and they were always empaths who used drugs and alcohol to cope with the narcissistic abuse they endured.

I got it. I’ve heard enough. You’re an empath, yep… ok can we talk about something else? No.

Fine I’ll just keep to myself.

My schedule outside of required duties there: Read Reddit or other stuff online. Talk to whatever friends I had online. Play word games. Covid lockdown, what else could you do?

I could tell they were not pleased. With me, for keeping to myself. And that I did. Always. That’s who I am. It’s how I live and like to.

They didn’t. None of them. Including the landlord. Who also was into lewd sex jokes and innuendos, I found out. After enduring them from her too during our group meetings she set up weekly over Skype.

Meetings I’d grown quiet in, since they had nothing to do with sobriety an everything to do with the aforementioned humor.

And they were mostly just sessions for the landlord to lecture us on how much of a respected important person she was for being a nurse. And giving up alcohol. And all her charity work after getting sober. Heroic strories she’d constructed herself that seemed void of the humility other former addict stories shared.

And even her sense of humor too, was what she said made her a success.

I guess it was in her mind. Since she made innuendos of a sexual nature to punctuate her success stories somehow. I really can’t describe how, but she did. Maybe she was trying to be relatable. I don’t care anymore, though. Because she’s not. My roommates weren’t either.

That’s not my fault.

They had noticed my reticence to participate and it angered them.

One evening, I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing the floor doing the chores, because my other roommates never did, and I accidentally broke the mirror that was adjacent to the wall because I banged into it. I cleaned it up and told my roommates after knocking on their doors and telling them to watch out for shards, as I’d accidentally broken the mirror downstairs. I may have missed some. Be careful!

The next afternoon, I was surprised to see landlord show up. She was there to speak to me specifically.  We talked a bit about the mirror incident, which she oddly knew about, but I clearly explained it was an accident that happened after I was cleaning. I should have told her, I guess.

I did admit though that I was getting quite depressed, isolated from Covid lockdown, nothing in common with my roommates, and I did want to move out soon on my own, closer to town and get a job.

The nurse/landlord already knew all of those things. They weren’t relayed to her by me negatively before either - I’d been honest sharing this with her in the past. It’s just how things were there, way out of town, with little for transportation, or things to do or people to do them with.

She came to see me that day, after the mirror breaking night, with her boyfriend, who himself was a recovering addict, covered in tattoos that he got after he overcame his addiction. And they convinced me to go to the hospital to speak to someone just for the night, because clearly things were getting a little bit too much for me and I'd return after getting some help. I'd return back to the sober house is what they advised. “It’s just for the night.”

I wasn’t really opposed to it because I did the admit that I was quite depressed. It was Covid and we weren’t really given anything else to do but isolate inside.

The landlord really spoke about what she was doing that as though it was a service she was offering me. Because she knew I was struggling with depression, being there, and she wanted me to see someone and get some extra help and come straight back. She said it was because she cared about me. And wanted to do everything she could to make sure i was going to get better in my journey at her sober house.

Their reflection of events told a different story. One that shattered their sense of security. Into as many pieces as the mirror I broke.

I found out later, that my roommates had a totally different version of the mirror story. At the hospital, though. That psychiatrists and nurses interrogated me about for hours after I got there.

They had an entirely bloody, and completely different version of things that I’d have to find out and then convince the hospital staff wasn’t true at all.

The two roommates’ creative version was empty of any factual elements they witnessed themselves. And this fabricated version they relayed to the landlord herself the next morning after I broke the mirror cleaning.

The two of them corroborated for each other to the landlord, on the phone, on the deck outside my room. Where they usually smoked, shared lewd conversations, and filled the air with nicotine at my expense outside my window.

But this time I did not hear or witness their story. Or smell their cigarettes. It was when I was out walking the next day. When they knew I was gone.

In my mind I did have a vision of them telling their version of events, opaque clouds of cigarette smoke coming from their mouths as they fabricated a demonic tale regarding me breaking the mirror.

A tale so masterfully crafted, by those with genius unknown to anyone like me, had convinced the landlord herself to act upon it at once.

Theirs was fictional story, that they were able to sell as the truth. A story of a truly fearful event that took place the previous evening. One where I was, in their eyes, a maniac. An absolutely terrifying maniac, who had without any warning, broken a mirror. With intent to use the shards to harm anyone in my presence.

I was overtaken by some demonic force, according to their narrative. And they said it occurred because I was a mad, psychotic and unpredictable person – this was but one of my outbursts hey started to notice but only now needed to begin reporting, now as they were too scared before. And only now did they have the courage with me being gone out walking.

I was out of my mind, they said. And needed to be put in the psych ward. Immediately. They were terrified!

Both ladies had posted the above on their Facebook walls that morning. I wondered why. And then I found out why. It was about me. They were working in unison on social media vague booking this about me too. Diabolical!

The part that gets me though is this…

Both of them had phones. Both of them knew how to call 911. And I’m sure they knew how to call the landlord. They called her all the time for other things. And even that morning with ther fake story.

And it wasn't even late at night when it happened. The real event, when I bumped the mirror while cleaning. It happened at 7:00 PM. The previous night.

I barely spoke to them. Or exchanged a bad word, ever. I never really said anything to them at all unless it was necessary by that point. What was this psychotic character you created all about?

And why did they not call 911 as the event they described happened - the emergency of the state of danger they were in would have not warranted a call to the police at the exact time of event? Or the landlord?

They both had working cell phones. In their rooms, where I wasn’t. Rooms they could safely lock themselves in, and were on these phones as I was downstairs cleaning and accidentally breaking the mirror at the time. I could even hear the candy crush chimes ringing out of their rooms at the time - since that’s what they were both doing. Playing candy crush. At the same time. An investigation into their cell phones app use would prove this were it to be brought to real justice. But never would such a thing be brought to justice for me, for candy crush, for anyone.

I did find out why this sort of narrative they created was not questioned. Much later, though.

And that you’ll have to wait to find out why. In the second part of this story. If you care to. I’ll post it in part two.

To post it though, I’m depending on you. So send me a message to let me know if you’d like to read more. Or subscribe. Or both.