Years ago I was planning on getting an apartment with my girlfriend at the time. My mother was looking to move out of a small apartment and she found a house to rent. She got her brother's ex-wife, so her ex-sister in law, my ex-aunt to move in with her. They were all set to get the house but then found out they were going to need more help financially. They excitedly showed me the house and the property, and it was really nice. I could tell my mother was excited. They showed me the bedrooms, and the very last bedroom was the last stop on the tour. It was the biggest bedroom with a nice view of the property and a nice sized closet. They then explained the situation to me, saying that they need help and if I move in with them, it would only be for three months tops, and this would be my bedroom.
I made the decision to help them out.
At first it was fine. My ex-aunt was nice, and she didn't care that I smoked pot and even smoked pot herself. Everything seemed like it was going to work out. I had a good full time job at the time and was making money. About a month into living at that house, I broke up with my girlfriend., or well she broke up with me. She wasn't happy about a lot of things and me choosing the house over getting an apartment with her made things worse because she had her heart set on it and now we'd have to wait. We weren't going to work out anyways, but that was really the tipping point. We would fight, both at the house and over the phone. Little did I know at the time, but my aunt was running into a spare bathroom that overlooked our kitchen/living room area, and she would eavesdrop. She would then turn around and gossip about my life to people in my family like my cousins or my uncle or whoever.
I started noticing things were moved around in my room when I'd get home. She would go through my things. Read my writings, journals, story ideas ( i like to write ) , project ideas, whatever. She would just go through all of my stuff. If I had any weed in my room, she would steal it, with no shame. Not even just a little bit, but all of it. It took me a while to notice these things and I denied it was happening, like I'd assume I just lost my weed somewhere.
Soon she started inviting strange men over to the house. She didn't look like a trashy kinda lady but she was just into seeing multiple guys at once, for different reasons. One guy got her weed, for free. So she would see him. And he was also married. And when he tried to dump her, she wrote all over his car with lipstick, calling him all sorts of foul names. One day I was sleeping, taking a nap in the afternoon, and I awoke to a strange man opening my bedroom door and walking in. I started screaming "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU! GET THE FUCK OUT!" just as an automatic response. It was kinda terrifying waking up like that. He was just like "Oh chill out i got the wrong room." Like no motherfucker. No. You don't just go walking around in someone's house that you barely know.
Soon she started causing tension between my mother and I. She would complain to my mother when I wasn't around about the smallest of things, like if I didn't drink all of the coffee in the coffee pot after I made some, or if I left a pair of shoes in the living room or whatever. Granted her shit was everywhere. My mother is an anxious person and basically just didn't want any problems so she'd just tell me not to leave the coffee without drinking it all, or pick my shoes up. So I would just follow through with all of that, but this woman kept finding more and more shit to complain about and sooner it later it was obvious it didn't matter what I did, she was going to have a problem with it. It sucked.
Now she smoked weed with my mom, because my mom smoked too, and at first, we would all hang out and smoke weed together and everything was great. But then my aunt randomly just asked my mom for me not to be in the room when the smoke and I was not allowed to smoke with them anymore. My aunt used to give my mom weed but then would say "only if you don't share it or give it to LeavesDirtGrass". I know weed is such a small stupid thing, but it's more about the behavior. She was slowly creating tension between my mother and I, and excluding me from household activities.
Meanwhile, I was in a rough place. I was incredibly depressed from the break up, was placing all of the blame from it on my shoulders and just hated myself. Being around this woman, my aunt, made me blame myself even more to the point where I couldn't be comfortable in my own house. She made me feel like an outsider in my own home. And the whole time I was just trying to do her a favor financially. But i fell more and more depressed. Soon cousins and family members would treat me differently and look at me strange, and this was when I started realizing that she was talking about me, and my mother, to everyone on the phone. Gossiping. Spreading shit she read in my journals or in my notebooks or whatever.
And still I just didn't react. One fine Saturday my mother was not home. She was working or out with friends. It was my aunt's granddaughters birthday, and she was running late from work herself. I had just made a pot of coffee and retreated to my bedroom with a cup of it to play videogames and relax as I had the day off. Once she got home I hear her freaking out to herself about the coffee. I literally just made it. But it was just an excuse for her to take her stress on being late to her granddaughters brithday out on me. So she runs up to my bedroom, and throws the door open. She just starts screaming at me about what a piece of a shit I am from right outside of my room. She tells me that both of my parents hate me and that's why I'm so "fucked up" and that everyone knows how "fucked up" I am, and that I should just kill myself. I stand up, and I'm like "can you just go away?". I get up to go and close my bedroom door and when I get near it, she starts hitting me in the face as hard as she can over and over and over again.
I just stand there like "What the fuck? You just hit me?" I had never been hit for like absolutely no reason before. It was insane. I was stunned. My face hurt. And I looked at her and her response to hitting me was "I'M CALLING THE COPS ON YOU!" I was baffled. This made me feel like tearing my hair out. I did not deserve any of this and had no idea where it was coming from at the time, and now I'm going to be painted the bad guy?
I close my bedroom door and I call my mom and tell her what just happened. She's bullshit. I barricade my door with my big heavy wooden old ass computer desk and I just turn up THE SOUND OF ANIMALS FIGHTING as loud as it can go over my speakers and I play Call of Duty. Loud angry music and violent video games. Meanwhile my aunt calls my cousin, we'll call him JIM, who I was very close with at the time and she tells him that I'm beating her and going crazy and that he needs to get over there and deal with me. He shows up and just calms her down without talking to me, and then she leaves for the party. She comes back at like ten that night, super happy, as if nothing ever happened.
After this point in time I make the decision to stay away from her. That seems to be what she wants. I'm super depressed. I'm hating myself and just agreeing that I'm probably a piece of shit but I can't really put my finger on what exactly I'm doing to piss her off so I decide to just stay out of her way. This means I give up access to any part of the house aside from my bedroom and the upstairs bathroom, whenever she was home. I secluded myself into my bedroom. I just feel deeper and deeper into depression. I hated everything. I thought I was the biggest piece of shit in the world. I retreated inside and was basically just quiet, reserved and detached whenever I was around people. I soon lost my job that I had had for 5 years up until that point. I feel deeper into depression and soon found myself in my bedroom all of the time, except for when my aunt was at work.