Chapter Seven | The Descent
Some descents don’t happen all at once.
They happen slowly — one small violation at a time — until suddenly you look around and realize the life you built is no longer yours.
That’s how it started.
By then, I had already stopped bringing my daughter over.
She was four — tiny, bright, full of life — and the apartment no longer felt like a place where she could be safe. I met her outside instead, spent the day with her, brought her back to her mother’s house afterward. It hurt, but I couldn’t expose her to what the apartment was becoming.
Then the smaller violations began.
He used my dishes and left them dirty in the sink.
He ate my food.
Drank my milk.
Every time I confronted him, he promised he’d clean up, replace what he used — but he never did. The promises were empty. The disrespect wasn’t.
And then it got worse.
The parties started.
Loud.
Chaotic.
The kind that rattled the walls and filled the apartment with the thick smell of marijuana — and something sharper, something that made me suspect crack cocaine. Strangers drifted in and out like the place was a train station.
Because my room still had no lock, his guests wandered in at night, looking for a place to crash, not realizing I was there in the dark. I’d yell at them to get out. They’d leave without apologizing, without even acknowledging me.
I found myself acting like the adult in the apartment — getting out of bed, walking into the living room, asking them to tone it down. They ignored me. Looked at me like I didn’t belong there. Like I was the intruder.
I started weighing my options.
Move back home?
Find another place?
Endure it for another month or two?
The situation was becoming dire.
Then came the morning that burned itself into my memory.
I got up to go to the bathroom and found Leon and his girlfriend having sex on the living room couch. They saw me — and didn’t stop. It was like they enjoyed being caught, like they were acting out some fantasy I had no intention of being part of.
I turned my head and walked into the bathroom.
A moment later, I heard his bedroom door slam shut.
I guess they decided to take their depravity somewhere it belonged.
I didn’t know how much lower things could go — but the apartment was about to show me.
