End of 2019…
…End of 2020
Similar to everyone I personally know… life changed drastically this year. I feel completely different as a human.
This was certainly an eventful year for me, even though I was rarely at events.
I usually try to do a review at the end of each year for my future self to look back at one day. It also keeps my creative writing from becoming rusty.
Overall, I consider myself lucky. This year could’ve been a lot worse for me. There are so many scenarios in which things could’ve been worse. As much as I felt like I couldn’t catch a break… I caught a lot of breaks.
This year was hard for everyone.
So, as much as I’d like to stuff this year into a box and forget it ever existed, I figured I’d do a review for my future self and to share my 2020 experience.
“Has he caught the coronavirus yet?“
I first heard about COVID-19 back in December. My mom had asked me this question after I said that I’d been talking with my friend Rich, who was living in China. I told her “no, I don’t even know what that is and we didn’t talk about it.” He was healthy, as far as I knew.
The topic was dropped until February 2020 because a lot happened all at once after the holidays.
January
If this month were a song, it would be…
Iodine
In many ways, January was my toughest month out of the whole year, and the pandemic hadn’t even begun in the US.
I had gotten a new job in September 2019, so I was just getting into the swing of things before the holidays.
But things had already changed.
The company moved into a brand new building after the holidays. I was getting used to the new drive, the new parking garage, the new walk to the building, and the new building itself.
I was also starting a new graduate school semester – Thesis II & III – the semester every single MFA student dreads and looks forward to simultaneously. I’d spent the majority of December and January writing, revising, editing, and rewriting the first draft of my thesis book.
I felt like I was on the right track with everything when my roommate’s mom suddenly began having some concerning and startling issues mid-January.
I won’t go into major detail here because it’s not my story to tell. But long story short, I dropped most of my life for about a week to help my roommate and her mother.
There were long car rides to various places I’d previously never been, hospital visits, people to find, family to alert, sleepless nights, work to call off, jobs to save, apartments to tidy, cars to fix, organizations to call, people to warn, and shit to pull together.
Everything turned out okay in the end, but it was certainly an adrenaline-pumping, heart-wrenching experience for both of us.
I can’t speak to how my roommate truly felt during and after, but for me, it was equivalent to slicing open old scar tissue and pouring salt all over it.
I felt like I was on a cycle of learning the same lesson over and over again, just from different angles.
I reeled over how much of a flashback this was to something I went through in high school. For those of you who know, then you know. But I won’t take up space with it here.
I just happened to be on the other side of the coin this time around. It was hard to face the fact that I’ve put people through this before.
And it would be shitty of me not to constantly apologize for how I treated my friends during that time. I either shut them out of my life for a while, or I put too much on them to handle. There was no in-between.
But I’ve officially been in your shoes now. It’s not easy to try and help someone who is in a lot of pain. I look back and think about how lucky I was to have you guys. And I’m so sorry.
A special apology to these two in particular. We made amends, but we’re not in each other’s lives. You guys were always there for me, and I hurt you both. I’m still sorry.
February
If this month were a song, it would be…
Unstoppable
I dove headfirst into my busy schedule during most of February.
I worked from 9:30am-4:30pm Monday through Friday and I had 5:30pm-10:45pm classes on Wednesdays. I was completely dedicated to my thesis – the cover, the interior design, the writing.
My roommate and I also needed to prepare for our third roommate to move out of our house in April, when our lease was ending. We had another roommate set up to move in on May 1st – and that was my friend living in China – Rich. He was planning on moving back to the US in April, and he agreed to be our third roommate for the next year.
That’s when I started paying more attention to what was going on in China. I learned that everyone had suspended flights, and those who were healthy were pushed into Thailand. My friend was among those who went to Thailand for a period of time.
Meanwhile, my roommate and I were still trying to decompress from January. I took her and another friend of ours to the birthday party of a thesis classmate of mine, and long story short – it was a fun/rough night.
I also went to more work events and babysat an extremely rambunctious pupper for a weekend.
At the end of that month, there were COVID cases popping up in Washington and California.
I was starting to pay more and more attention to the news in the midst of an already crazy time.
March
If this month were a song, it would be…
Overwhelmed
This was arguably everyone’s worst month of the year. But, for me, it was just A LOT.
Given the circumstances, everything went as smoothly for me as it could have gone.
On March 10th, my graduate school declared that they were suspending in-person classes for two weeks after spring break.
But by spring break, the majority of my thesis was finished. The pandemic could not have hit at a more perfect time in the semester, where we were able to finish it out from home.
On March 12th, Maryland’s governor, Hogan, closed K-12 schools for two weeks as well. I tried going to Target that night to stock up on things, and it was the busiest I’d ever seen it. It took me probably 2-3 hours just to get out of there with a few things that were still in stock.
My boss gave us the option to work from home the next day, before non-essential businesses even shut down. All of my coworkers had packed up their stuff to set up shop at home, so I naturally did the same.
I set up my work station at my kitchen table, where it stayed for months afterwards. Initially, it was only supposed to be for two weeks. But we all knew that it would last longer.
So, given that school and work were now taken care of, I began to self-isolate starting on March 13th. I ordered groceries to be delivered (and I wiped everything down that came into the house), I used take-out and Grubhub, and I stopped going outside for the rest of the month.
Sootie especially enjoyed that I was home all the time. He definitely seemed confused for the first couple of days, but settled in quickly.
The first COVID case in Baltimore was reported the next day, on March 14th. I was starting to get extremely worried about my parents. I hated that I couldn’t visit them since they live several states away.
The stock market also plummeted on March 16th, so my first day of working from home was just terrific. Not to mention, Hogan closed down all bars and restaurants on this day.
My dad started working from home on March 17th, so I was thankful that my parents could start quarantining.
On March 18th and 19th, Hogan announced travel restrictions and a ban of gatherings of more than 10 people in all locations.
Meanwhile, I was getting increasingly frustrated with everything, at this point. I was dealing with internet and phone issues more often than I would in the office, and the volume of work I had was getting out of hand.
But I tried not to complain as much since I could still work from home during a time when a lot of people were laid off or furloughed. Not to mention, we also figured that this was temporary. Once things calmed down out in the world, things would go back to normal.
Either way, I had my first breakdown about the pandemic during these two days.
However, both of my roommates were still going into work. They were both considered essential, up until one of them got furloughed on March 20th.
It felt like a punch to the gut at first, but we knew we’d be okay for at least a month or so without her having an income. And unbeknownst to us at the time, we were lucky that she was “let go” early enough so that she could get a jump start on applying for unemployment.
My school also decided to cancel in-person classes for the rest of the semester on March 20th, and they postponed graduation (which is still postponed, along with my December 2020 graduation).
Meanwhile, our third roommate was slowly moving out of the house and into his own place, deciding to self-isolate over there instead of with us when he wasn’t at work.
Thankfully, about a week or so later, Nintendo Switch came out with Animal Crossing. My roommate spent most of her new free time playing it, as it gave her day structure.
I was starting to lose a lot of sleep and I wasn’t eating very well anymore. I tried to stay away from the news and just focus on my thesis.
Then on March 23rd, Hogan closed down all non-essential businesses. My coworkers and I were talking about the stimulus bill that my roommates and I were qualified to receive in April, and the worry over New Yorkers fleeing to nearby states to get away from COVID when they were supposed to be quarantining.
Meanwhile, I was also trying to get ahold of my friend in China, who stopped answering my messages a few days before I started to self-isolate. There was almost one month until our lease expired, and I had no idea the exact day he was planning on returning to the US – if he could even get back here at all.
Hogan issued our “stay-at-home” order on March 30th.
April
If this month was a song, it would be…
The War We Made – Red
April was more frustrating for me than March, by far.
I was getting deeper into the mentality of “Okay, we just need to make it through this month, and then things will hopefully change the next month.” Every. Single. Month.
To escape reality, I gave in and purchased a Nintendo Switch (the lite) and Animal Crossing to join my friends and family in the fun.
People were also encouraged not to buy masks and to give the ones they had to healthcare officials, who were extremely limited in materials to keep themselves safe and treat patients.
We were also encouraged to make homemade masks – cloth ones. I made two for my roommate and I out of an old flannel shirt, but we never used them.
My aunt was already sewing masks out of cloth, and she mailed some to us.
I used that mask for several months before stores starting selling them online and my mom started mailing me more.
Panic over my parents, roommates, and I getting sick transformed into panic for the cats when a tiger at the Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID on April 5th. Sootie has a permanent upper respiratory infection that mostly affects his eyes when he’s stressed. But I feared that if he caught COVID, since he’s already immunocompromised, he would die from it.
I was also panicking over the fact that everyone was planning on opening everything up again in May. Protestors of the lockdown were popping up everywhere, and it felt like the world was on fire.
I felt that if numbers were continuing to increase during lockdown, then they definitely wouldn’t get better if things opened back up so soon. But I also found out very quickly that most people didn’t seem to care about that.
I eventually had to limit my time on Facebook when I had to fight myself to not remind people that letting others die in order to afford rent was not acceptable human behavior. The amount of political craziness on there was really eating away at my nerves.
I also didn’t realize WHY the pandemic had become politicized. I’m STILL wondering why.
I was also close to finishing Thesis II & III. This month was spent putting the finishing touches on the book and the virtual reading, since we couldn’t have a live one.
I still couldn’t get ahold of my friend in China, and had to let my landlord know that we probably wouldn’t have a third roommate in time for a new lease. Thankfully, he was very understanding and gave us a break on the lease and rent for May.
I finally heard back from my friend on April 30th. He got caught up in three separate quarantines on the way back to the States. He spent two weeks in China before leaving for Vietnam, and then two weeks in Vietnam before leaving for the US. Then he had ANOTHER two weeks in quarantine once he got back in the US – which explained the radio silence.
I was happy that he was finally back in the States, however, all of his money was locked in a bank in China, since the country shut down its economy. No one could take money out or put money in for 9-11 months. He said he would do his best to figure something out so that he could still move in with us, but he wasn’t sure.
May
If this month were a song, it would be…
Turn Off the Radio – ADTR
May honestly felt like one of those rides at an amusement park where it takes forever to climb all the way up the wall, and then it drops you down, brings you back up a little, and drops you back down again.
I realized that I was becoming pretty agoraphobic. Everyone recommended that I start going outside and taking walks, but since I lived in a sketchy area, I turned down that idea. However, I did start taking my roommate out to various places we normally wouldn’t have time to explore on weekends.
Like Devil’s Den in Gettysburg
And Potomac Park
And Pocomoke Forest & Ocean City
The pandemic has been extremely harsh for those who were already germaphobes and hypochondriacs BEFORE 2020. I was terrified of everything I touched outside of the house. My hands dried out fast from how much hand sanitizer I used.
My roommate offered to pump gas and touch everything for me the first several times we left the house. We also eventually ended up at a grocery store for the first time in about a month.
So, thankfully I managed to overcome the slight agoraphobia (and stop it from getting worse). And we had a good time while doing it.
The only bad thing that came out of it was getting bit by two ticks after coming back from Ocean City. That was a long, expensive ordeal to make sure I didn’t have Lymes Disease during a pandemic.
The “stay-at-home” order was also lifted on May 16th and my spring semester ended. We had our virtual reading for our theses.
I honestly didn’t sell anything from the reading, which is usually when most students sell their books. However, since ours was virtual, a lot of us didn’t get enough attention.
I was angry about that for about a minute, since I spent my stimulus check on the printing of 75 books. But honestly, I’m just happy that I received about half of it back to help pay back student loans at the beginning of 2021. Plus, a lot of family and friends that I wanted to give the book to, bought one.
I counted it as a success, and I was definitely happy with the result.
However, my roommate officially got laid off on May 20th.
That was difficult for a little while. She really struggled with what she wanted to do next, which continued for the next several weeks.
There was also a constant back-and-forth about whether our potential third roommate was actually going to move in with us. He was having a lot of financial trouble and couldn’t seem to get it solved in time. I started offering to cover certain expenses for him for the time being, just to get the problem solved, but by mid-May, he eventually said that he couldn’t swing it.
So, we had to scramble and find another roommate. Thankfully, our landlord had someone in mind – the fiancé of one of his friends who was looking for a place to live. We met this guy a few days after my friend said he couldn’t move in with us. He seemed quiet and nice, wore a bandana over his nose and mouth while we showed him the house.
He explained that he had to hurry up and move out of his old place because his roommate drunkenly beat the shit out of him for no reason one night and broke his jaw. He didn’t want that around his son or fiancée (who he couldn’t live with for some reason), so he’d moved out and had been living in a hotel.
For the sake of the story and because I genuinely never want anything to do with him, his name is Jake.
We were desperate, so even though we barely knew him, the fact that our landlord recommended him was good enough for us. He moved in mid-May, and our landlord gave us a “two-month lease,” just in case things didn’t work out. (There was no formal lease signed).
Jake only had a dresser and a bare mattress with no sheets, so it took him literally an hour to move his stuff in, but he was okay for the first couple of weeks. He was always in his room with the door closed, or downstairs in the basement bathroom that we gave to him, so that he wouldn’t have to share the second floor bathroom with two women. He would go out a few times a day and he brought his toddler over on the weekends. Other than that, he was quiet.
It wasn’t the best scenario, but we were happy to have someone to share expenses with us.
And then May 25th came along, when George Floyd was murdered. So now the lockdown protestors were replaced by BLM protestors, even though I felt that protesting in general wasn’t exactly the best idea during a pandemic.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of the looting because every business was already struggling, even though I understood the reasoning behind it.
Ultimately, the situation led to a lot of heated discussions.
June
If this month was a song, it would be…
Nightmare
The entire state of Maryland started moving into Phase Two of reopening, and Baltimore followed close behind.
Meanwhile, my anger started getting out of control.
I was, of course, upset about everything that everyone else was upset about – the pandemic and the way our “leadership” in this country dealt with it.
And I’m not going into politics here, because I don’t like torture. But let’s just say that I was dying for November 3rd to come around.
It was becoming increasingly obvious that the pandemic would be ruining every single plan made for 2020. I prepared for my trips to see family to be cancelled. I prepared for never setting foot on my campus again, and finishing out graduate school online. I prepared for my friend’s wedding to cancel. And I prepared for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas to be different than usual.
I wasn’t optimistic in the slightest, so I had that anger pretty early on before any of those events were even close to occurring.
I was also still upset that I couldn’t finish out my thesis semester like it should have due to the pandemic. Prior to COVID, my parents were supposed to visit for the live reading as well as the Spring graduation, where they were going to let me walk, even though I didn’t graduate until December.
I was also angry that I still had classes to take after thesis ended, even though that was the original plan. I didn’t take into account that I would be exhausted and tapped-out. I was starting up a summer screenwriting class and it took me several weeks to start voluntarily writing again after thesis.
On top of all that, my work situation continued to progressively get worse as each month passed. There was a lot of yelling and complaining at home, not directed at anyone in particular. But my roommate grew more and more tired of my shit.
The two of us were getting into passive-aggressive arguments almost daily. It was ugly.
Living with someone is usually difficult, but the pandemic put too much pressure on relationships and friendships within the same household. So, that was something else I was angry about.
And raging was my go-to coping strategy for feeling so powerless. I didn’t know how to replace it with something else, so I gave it free reign.
And it wore me the fuck down.
So, despite COVID, I decided that in mid-June, I wanted my friend who lived in China (now Ohio) to come visit for a week. I needed a change of pace, I hadn’t seen him in four years, and I felt that he could really help my roommate move in the right direction with what she wanted to do in regards to possibly starting up teaching ESL (It’s what he does for a living too).
I drove out one weekend with my roommate to visit my old college town and pick up my friend. We stayed out in Ohio for the weekend, visited some other friends, showed my roommate around the town, and then drove back on Sunday.
We left our third roommate, “Jake,” at home by himself for the first time.
When we came back, we caught Jake on the couch, using my roommate’s computer. He apologized, and she seemed okay with it in the moment, but later on in the month, she revealed to me that he was using her laptop to download hacking software.
That was Jake’s main complaint. He claimed that our Wifi extender was allowing people to hack into our Wifi, and therefore, his phone. (It makes no sense, I know.) He was always having “phone issues” – losing it, getting it stolen, or it was being “hacked.” We could never keep a contact number for him because it was constantly changing.
Either way, he asked if it was okay if he unplugged the extender. We told him that it was okay, but my roommate started hiding her laptop. And we didn’t see the extender again until a few months later.
We also came home after that weekend to Jake’s bedroom door completely ripped off of its hinges. We’ll probably never get the true story of what the hell happened there.
My friend ended up staying with us for two weeks instead of one, and in that time, he helped my roommate get into the same certification program that he took before moving to China to teach English as a Second Language. So, thankfully she now had a plan set in motion for a new job.
We also continued to go out on the weekends to get some exercise.
We went to Antietam:
And we also went to a cave that was close by:
And, of course, I was still dealing with getting my blood tested twice for Lymes Disease after getting bit by ticks the month prior. Thankfully, I tested negative the second time after an inconclusive test, but they were expensive tests, even with insurance.
But towards the end of those two weeks, my roommate confessed to me that she had been receiving messages from Jake’s fiancée, which was news to me. His fiancée was a friend of our landlord’s, but she asked my roommate if Jake had been bringing home other women. She even asked if we had been involved with Jake, and she gave graphic details that no one needs to know about their sex life and relationship.
And we barely knew the guy.
Needless to say, it made us both uncomfortable. Rich also mentioned that he was now in a better financial position to move in with us, like we all had originally planned.
This put us in a good position to end the lease after two months if we felt that Jake wasn’t a good fit, so we decided to wait and see what happened.
July
If this month was a song, it would be…
Avalanche – BMTH
(TRIGGER WARNING – If you have a weak stomach or get queasy easily, skip the marked part of this section.)
July & August were the worst months for me this year.
COVID cases started going back up briefly this month due to July 4th festivities. Most places were closed, but of course, Ocean City wasn’t. Restaurants had outdoor dining set up and they expanded the mask mandate towards the end of the month.
Speaking of July 4th, I was thankfully able to spend it with family in Maryland. My roommate decided to house-sit for a family member of hers during July 4th as well… which left Jake alone in the house for another weekend.
The morning that I was leaving, my roommate messaged me from her family member’s house and asked if I was on her Amazon account, downloading things. I told her that I had just woken up, but I would check to see if Jake was doing anything on the TV.
As soon as I went downstairs, Jake jumped up from the couch and ran up the stairs before I could even say hello to him. My roommate’s Amazon account was up on the TV screen.
What’s weird is that he hadn’t actually purchased anything… he just downloaded a bunch of random, free stuff from Amazon.
So, I had to put the TV on child lock mode before heading out for July 4th.
I also ended up coming home from that weekend before my roommate… to the grossest thing I’d ever witnessed.
(TRIGGER WARNING)
I had just taken a shower in the bathroom my roommate and I shared (not Jake’s bathroom), and when I lifted the toilet seat lid, there was (what looked exactly like) blood all over the place. It didn’t smell, which took me by surprise. But when I flushed it, some stuck to the walls of the toilet bowl, which made me think that it had been stuck there for a while.
Clearly, whatever it was, had been thrown or projected into the bowl.
At first, I was extremely concerned for whoever had left it. After telling Rich, who had recently gone back to Ohio after visiting for two weeks, he laughed and said:
“There are no scenarios in which blood coming out of either end of your body is a good thing.”
So, after nervously messaging my roommate as well, asking what to do… I knocked on Jake’s door. He opened it and I tell him about the situation. He seems shocked and confused.
“Wait… that’s not possible. No one else was here this weekend. I’m not sick, and I don’t even use that bathroom. I have no idea how that happened.”
Either way, I knew he was lying to me, but he was nice enough to clean the toilet for me afterwards. Since it clearly happened when no one else was home but him.
And then he had told me the next day that he had “dumped ice cream” into the toilet, and that’s why it looked the way it did.
It made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, no matter which way I spun it.
First of all, what I saw was blood red. Since when is ice cream the color of blood?
Secondly, why would you dump ice cream into the toilet and not the trash or sink?
Thirdly, why would you not FLUSH it, and instead, leave it there for days?
Anyways, this remained a mystery for months afterwards.
Around September, I eventually discovered an old ICEE cup of his when deciphering between his trash and recycling – a red ICEE cup. When he said he dumped “ice cream” into the toilet, he meant ICEE.
(END OF TRIGGER WARNING)
At this point, I was over it. My roommate and I decided that night that we were 100% done with Jake, and we were going to tell our landlord that it hadn’t worked out.
We told our landlord during the first week of July, and he said he would start setting things in motion. He said he just needed to find Jake another place to live, have a moving crew move out his stuff, and change the locks.
I also made triple-sure with Rich that he would 100% be ready to move in by August 1st. He promised me that he would make it happen, and that he still wanted to do this.
We continued to put up with Jake’s shit for the rest of the month.
- Like his fiancée dropping by unannounced at 10:30 pm because she just wanted to “talk to Jake,” who hadn’t been answering her messages. She would see my bedroom light on and ask me to let her in.
- He wasn’t paying rent or utilities. He only paid a security deposit and a fraction of what he should have paid for utilities in May.
- His toddler was great at stealing small things around the house, so things would go missing – like the magnets from the fridge or dishwasher and one of my face masks.
- And he would also hoard silverware and plates upstairs in his room, so forks, plates, bowls, and cups started going missing as well.
- He would constantly use our bathroom instead of his own.
- He drank half a gallon of my roommate’s apple juice, and he stole my orange juice.
- He also called an ambulance when he dislocated his shoulder without telling us. So an ambulance showed up in front of our house all of a sudden, and we had to ask the EMTs what the fuck was happening.
- Following that first ambulance ride, he dislocated the same shoulder two more times after that.
- He would leave multiple times a day and tell us he was going to pick up groceries or medicine, and then he would come back later with nothing.
- He continued to keep “losing” his phone, so there was never a solid way to get ahold of him.
Meanwhile, he barely spoke a word to us and only ever stayed in his room upstairs, with the broken door jammed up against the frame.
He was already skinny when he first moved in, but he progressively became more and more gauntly throughout July. His cheeks were sunken in and he was extremely thin.
It wasn’t that difficult to figure out the type of sketchy shit he was into.
So, finally, towards the end of July, our landlord came over to change the locks… with Jake’s stuff still in the house.
It didn’t make sense to me, but our landlord said that he would talk to Jake and schedule a time in a few days to come back with his truck, load up the stuff, and find him a new place to live (which we thought was being taken care of during MOST of July, but apparently not).
Either way, we were happy, because Jake was no longer our problem. We took the liberty of packing up Jake’s stuff for him. And it was one of the first times we really took a look at his room:
(ANOTHER TRIGGER WARNING)
It was grotesque, to say the least.
Anyway, we packed up all of his stuff and threw out the trash.
A week went by, but our landlord never came over to grab the rest of Jake’s things. We messaged him towards the end of the week asking what was going on, and he claimed that he never heard from Jake again after the initial conversation they had the day he changed the locks.
Our landlord said he would stop by to start gathering Jake’s things, but he never did. And the icing on the cake was that I couldn’t get ahold of Rich again.
At this point, I was fuming. I’m talking really upset.
I was already constantly complaining about everything to my mother over the phone. I would go up to my room to do it, but it’s not like the walls were sound-proof.
And even though I had stopped directly complaining to my roommate a while ago, she was very clearly done with my shit again. And on that note, she went away to visit some friends that weekend.
So, I decided to take a break that weekend and not think about anything. That Saturday night, I played Animal Crossing with my cousin, who lives in Kentucky. We were having a good time… up until I started hearing banging at my front door.
At first, I thought it was some drunk asshole who had the wrong house. They didn’t say anything, it was just banging, and it eventually stopped.
About a half hour later, around 10:30 pm, the banging started up again. It sounded like they were going to break the damn door down. And this time, it was followed by yelling.
“LET ME IN.”
“MARISSA!”
“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE. YOUR LIGHT IS ON.”
“I JUST WANT SOMETHING TO EAT.”
“I DON’T HAVE MY WALLET, I DON’T HAVE MY CLOTHES. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING!”
“JUST LET ME GRAB MY STUFF.”
“NOW I’M EMBARRASSING YOU IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR NEIGHBORS!”
“JUST CALL THE COPS IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LET ME IN.”
I just sat on the couch, huddled in a ball, clutching a knife in one hand, and my phone in the other.
I called my mom to tell her what was happening and ask what I should do. She asked me if I thought whoever was outside was Jake, and I told her that it sounded like him. She said to call my landlord.
After I called my landlord, he told me to call 911.
So, that’s what I did.
A cop showed up at my front door and asked me to explain the situation. I got him on the phone with my landlord, who went into more detail and explained that he wasn’t in town at the moment, so he couldn’t meet us in person.
The cop told us that Maryland has squatter’s rights. So even if there wasn’t a lease, if Jake had proof that he was living in our house (like mail, furniture, or clothes), then the cop could not force him to leave.
I was, again, fuming.
However, thankfully, Jake just wanted to get some clothes and some food. He said he already found a place to stay.
But when I finally let him inside, I wanted to throw up.
He was covered, head to toe, in dirt. His clothes were ripped and he had two black-eyes. His head was bleeding. And he was even more gauntly than he had been a week ago.
I hadn’t realized we’d be kicking him out in the street. He had a fiancée, a mother, a son. And we just kicked this guy out without any of this stuff.
I told him that this wasn’t how I wanted things to go and that I was sorry.
It took him and the cop about 45 minutes to gather his most essential belongings, and then they left around midnight.
I didn’t sleep that night.
But the very next day, Sunday, I finally got ahold of Rich after about a week of no contact. And I asked him when he was planning on moving in since Jake’s stuff was still in the house, but he told me that his family was having an emergency. He hadn’t known about the situation until he told them that he was moving about a week before August began, so he was telling me at the last minute that he couldn’t move in with us after all.
I called out sick from work the next day, Monday.
August
If this month was a song, it would be…
I Gave You All
July broke me, so I spent August trying to find my footing again.
This was my first major breakdown since my undergrad days. (In about 3 years.) These are always difficult to explain, because remembering them is extremely fuzzy.
I’ve had a lot of breakdowns over the years, but I’d say I ultimately had one major breakdown in high school, one in undergrad, and this would be my third one.
I don’t cry very often anymore. It was very easy for me to cry in high school and undergrad, but since moving for graduate school three years ago, I just didn’t cry that easily anymore.
Well now, I was crying at the drop of a hat.
Trying to power through work days was like chewing glass. One of my coworkers decided to quit mid-August, and another coworker of mine was thinking about taking another job. That left us very understaffed, more than we already were.
I was also left without a third roommate, a destroyed third bedroom, a roommate who I was extremely uncomfortable around now that I knew my anger was driving her away, and remnants of Jake’s belongings (which are still not fully out of my house, by the way).
I even called my undergrad roommate (who lived with me for 4 years) because I felt so alone. I hadn’t spoken to her over the phone in years, and afterwards, she graciously sent me a taser (for possible intruders) and snacks (because she knows me well).
I also contacted a friend I hadn’t spoken to, or hung out with, since February. I hadn’t contacted anybody in the immediate area since COVID hit because I didn’t want to risk bringing it into the house.
But I honestly didn’t care anymore.
So I brought him over and we hung out for a while. And we started hanging out frequently again.
Meanwhile, my roommate was bringing up the possibility of splitting a third portion of the rent between the two of us and just turning the third bedroom into an office (so she wouldn’t have to listen to me on the phone anymore and we could have our kitchen table back). Then she wondered if we should move into a different building. I even wondered for a bit if I should move out and just live somewhere else on my own, because I was worried my roommate was going to leave me.
But none of those things happened, thankfully.
I finally got my shit together during the second week of August and I took to Facebook to search for another roommate on various groups. Thankfully, we lucked out with someone almost immediately. We showed her the house and she accepted the offer to move in at the beginning of September.
After that was settled, one of my coworkers convinced me to contact another department in the company I work for (a department I’d had interest in since I joined the company a year ago), and ask if there were any openings at the moment.
Thankfully, they made a deal with my boss saying I would be able to switch departments in October.
I entered the third week of August with an enormous break.
My roommate house-sat again for two weeks and I got my first COVID test, the one that goes all the way up your nose and into your brain (at least, that’s what it feels like). Then I traveled to visit my parents for the first time since Christmas of 2019.
My roommate and I spent 3 weeks apart, which gave us the space we’d been dying for since the pandemic started. So we both came back refreshed, and with a third roommate who had just moved in.
September
If this month was a song, it would be…
Looking Up
A semblance of normalcy returned in September.
Maryland entered Stage 3 of reopening while Baltimore remained in Phase 2.
I was still recovering from July & August. I felt like I’d just pulled myself out of a gutter.
Work got a little bit better. A lot of changes were going on, which I’m normally not a fan of, but I welcomed change with open arms this time. I was also started to prepare to switch departments.
I started hanging out with friends more and preparing for my last semester of school.
My roommate was finishing up her certification program and was set to leave the country in a year. She also got a job offer from her old workplace that she decided to take and start in October in addition to preparing to leave in a year.
Our third roommate was settling in very quickly and trying to find work.
Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction again.
October
If this month was a song, it would be…
Arise
October gave us a chance to start over.
Both of my roommates and I started new jobs, and we all seemed to be happy doing them.
My roommate and I also decided to travel to Ohio again for a weekend at the beginning of October, but this time, to get tattoos from my undergrad roommate (a tattoo artist)
We stayed with her for the weekend, I did a little Christmas shopping at the antique mall, and then we returned home.
I also voted with mail-in voting this month (you can probably guess who I voted for)
We carved pumpkins:
Halloween (for me), pretty much remained the same – we held a COVID-safe party at our house a week before Halloween. (The three of us decided to be the Powerpuff girls for Halloween this year):
I also decided to visit my parents again for week for Halloween, since I barely saw them at all this year. I got another COVID test and drove up to see them.
November
If this month was a song, it would be…
Lovely
We hit another rough patch in November.
Of course, the second wave hit and Maryland started stepping backwards in reopening phases.
But most of November went well. I spent it getting used to my new job and finishing up graduate school. And thankfully, Biden won (but felt like it was touch-and-go for the rest of the month).
I finished Christmas shopping for everyone, but I knew that I was just visiting my parents this year and mailing out gifts to extended family. It was hard not to do the usual for the holidays.
Our third roommate was having a bit of trouble with her new job, and she was getting hurt quite often – needing to go to the ER and Patient First several times since she moved in, which was a little concerning for awhile.
And I ended up deciding to stay with my parents throughout Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s (where I still am), instead of going back and forth from my house to theirs. I knew that I didn’t want to ride out a second wave of COVID in Baltimore again.
So, I set up the Christmas tree and we had a Friendsgiving before I left:
However, right before I was about to leave, my roommate and I got into another argument.
I’m not going into the details of it here, just know that my anxiety over COVID will probably never go away, even after everyone gets vaccinated. And the pandemic puts too much stress on relationships with people you live with.
I apologized to her before I left and spent the rest of 2020 with my parents, COVID-free.
December
If this month was a song, it would be…
We Fall Apart
This month was pretty good for me.
I have a little bit of cabin fever, since I spent most of it indoors and isolated from the rest of the world, but it was good to get out of the city for a long period of time.
I’m still working from home, and I ran into a small snag when my boss suddenly put in his two weeks right before Christmas. So work, at the moment, is in a bit of a limbo again. But I’m trying not to worry. I’ve done too much of that this year.
I’m more hopeful about COVID than I’ve ever been since people are starting to get vaccinated, but I’m also trying to keep my expectations low for 2021.
I’m planning on heading back to Maryland mid-January. And I’m not entirely sure what life is going to look like past that.
But I do know that I cannot take another repeat of 2020. No one can.
I’m just happy to be kissing it goodbye.
So, goodbye 2020. And good riddance.
And Happy New Year from Romeo, Jasper, Dexter, Sootie, & I!
-Rissy
rissy stories 
Leave a comment