Trespasser

I'm frustrated right now, and life has been weird the past few weeks.  The major issue has been with my roommate of the past year.  I've been staying with the boyfriend over weekends lately, and the last few Mondays I've noticed a few things in my room that just seemed different than how I left them.

One day my ceiling fan was on, which I never leave on when I'm gone.  My old phone which I use as an iPod was askew on the dock.  Some built-in bookmark tassels were hanging off the shelf when I always have them tucked under the book so the cats don't play with them.  Then there was my computer.  The monitor was on, and I knew I hadn't left it that way.  I powered up the computer to find a message that it hadn't been shut down properly.  Hmmm...  I did some digging and found some files that had been accessed on a day I wasn't home at all.  Did some more digging and found the log stating it had indeed been turned on and off that same day.

Fuuuck.

Now my roommate had never given me real trouble before.  He lived with me for a little over a year and the worst he did was be a little loud in the kitchen at night and slam the front door on the way out to work.  Every.  Single.  Morning.  But overall, nothing too bad.  Lately he's been drinking.  Like, a lot.  There was an incredible amount of beer and liquor bottles in the recycling bin the past couple of months.  So I knew he was having some problems.

I decided to get a security camera that I could view over my phone.  Got a pretty decent one for not too expensive that has night vision and alerts me whenever there's motion detected.  It's not exactly tiny and is pretty obviously a camera, so I tried to hide it the best I could on a bookshelf surrounded by a bunch of knickknacks.  From a distance it kind of blended in, but up close it was noticeable.

I left as usual that weekend and was nervous all night.  We went to bed, and around eleven o'clock I was notified of movement.  Sure enough, he was in there.  He started out just petting one of the cats for a few minutes, but soon after he started snooping.  He went through my desk drawer then headed to the walk-in closet.  Unfortunately the camera angle couldn't entirely show into the closet, so I'm not exactly sure what he was doing, but he was in there for a long time.  I could kind of see him going through some things, and I know he was in my underwear bin because they were all disheveled.  (Eww.)  He eventually moved on to my bathroom and went through my medicine drawer and looked at all the stuff under the sink.

So the boyfriend and I were watching him as he was going through all my stuff, and I could not stop shaking.  I was so disturbed and knew I wouldn't sleep at all knowing he might go back in, so I asked the boyfriend if he would accompany me the hour's drive home and stay the night.  Of course he did, and we put a keyed entry lock on my bedroom door the next morning and gave him notice to vacate.  He moved out two days later and left a long, handwritten letter apologizing and calling himself every negative adjective imaginable.  He left his room pretty dirty and somehow partially moldy, so there's been some detailed cleaning going on.

I still feel kind of violated.  He never gave any indication of doing anything physically to me (although in his letter he stated how his co-worker suggested things he should do to me... he could have left that part out, thankyouverymuch), but my safe space was intruded upon and rummaged through.  At one point we thought he'd put a camera in my closet, but luckily we didn't find anything.  And I really don't know how long he'd been going into my room.  I really think it was just the past few weeks, but it's possible it had been longer and he'd just gotten sloppy lately.  Ugh, I hope not.  I moved my camera into the main room of the house with a view of both the front and back doors.  I'm just a little paranoid, but I'm starting to feel more at ease.

So now I have my house to myself again.  The boyfriend might move in at the end of the month, and if not, a friend of a friend is interested.  But for now I'm enjoying the solitude.