Hell Week

This past week has been Hell for me, really; I mean, it’s been one of the absolute worst weeks I have ever had. There are actually multiple reasons for this. First of all, it was my longest week at work all year long. I had to work overtime, over fifty hours in one week. Second of all, STBE was terrorizing me.

It seems like each day of the week I came home to something different. One day I had a toilet that was peed all over and my internet cable had been shoved down through the floor. The next day, my stove, washer, dryer, and freezer were gone, also the extra food was gone. I had to go to a doctor and get anti-anxiety medication. I was told to change the locks by the lawyer I had to get because of all the threatening things STBE was demanding. I changed the locks. The next day, they were changed back.

Seriously, I came home after working and found that all the locks had been changed back. I had to go back to Lowe’s and spend eighty-three dollars on new locks. I called some people over to help. This day the coffee table and a door knob disappeared from the house. After the locks had been changed, STBE could no longer get in the house. My lawyer pretty much told his lawyer to get him to cut it out.

Honestly, I was scared. I was scared this man was going to do something to me. He has guns. He has swords. He has knives. He knows karate, really, he knows karate; he has a black belt.

Then of course, there were all the long hours at work. I was constantly worried at what I was going to come home to. Would a window be broken? Would one of my cats be dead? Would my stuff be thrown out into the yard? I really didn’t know what to expect.

Things did calm down. By Sunday, I was just utterly exhausted. I had told my bishop I was going to go to church that Sunday, but when I drove into the parking lot, STBE’s truck was there so I left. I can’t mentally handle being around him, not with all this anxiety I’ve been experiencing. Seriously, text messages, text messages, you know those short little messages you get on your phone–they’ve been freaking me out. My cousin texted me one evening to ask if I was ok and I jumped. I jumped because I was afraid it was STBE.

Since I couldn’t go to church, I went to the laundromat on the account of I have no washer and dryer at my house. I sat there. I read. I wouldn’t dare go into the laundromat at night. Nobody else waited inside. I was the only one. Everyone else waited out in their cars. A bad sign? The snack machine was completely empty. The soda machine was $1.25 a soda and didn’t really have anything great in it. There were some arcade games that had clearly seen better days. There was a picnic table with one of those wire contraptions for children that you can push wooden shapes along. It was overall a pretty sad place complete with a security camera in the corner. One guy walked in with a plastic bag, put whatever was in the plastic bag in the dryer and took whatever it was out and put it back in the same plastic bag. He didn’t fold whatever it was.

Several times while I was at the laundromat I was thinking, “I don’t belong here.” I drive a hybrid car. I have two bachelors degrees. My clothes aren’t from Wal-mart and here I am at a laundromat. I wasn’t thinking this because I think I’m better than everyone else, because I’m certainly not, I was thinking all of this and remarking to myself about the situation I had found myself in. One man had the power over me to send me to the laundromat. This is the same laundromat that was robbed not too long ago. It’s the only game in town.

One man who had put me through Hell all week and left me culminating my week in a sparsely populated laundromat with questionable customers.

I hope that this week will be better.