If you haven’t read my first post, you can find it here.
Ok, I’ve gotten a whole slew of advice since I posted about my predicament. I still don’t understand why I was so convinced no one would be able to help. Maybe I was just having a freak out. I really don’t know any more.
I’ll try and address the advice that I think was actually worthy of consideration. Sorry if you didn’t make the cut. I may have just forgotten some of your advice, my memory isn’t great these days. But, some of you are fucking nuts! Like, I’m not going to murder my roommate, ok? I’m not 100% that she is, in fact, a vampire. I could just be having weird dreams. I could just have a crush on my roommate. I could be having a psychotic break from college stress. I even did some research on the anemia thing, and I suppose there might be a plausible explanation for that too, but that one combined with how thirsty I am all the time lately strongly points to substantial blood loss.
Someone suggested I check my body for wounds, especially any kind of puncture wound. I got a hand mirror and with that and the wall mounted bathroom mirror I checked pretty much every inch of my skin. I don’t see any signs of injury, not even any bug bites. So there goes the bed bug theory someone came up with. I did check my bed and other furniture for signs of bed bugs though, just to be sure, and there was nothing.
A lot of you mentioned garlic. I thought of that one all on my own, and it doesn’t seem to bother her. One night when I was cooking, she wandered into the kitchen and asked what I was making. I think I mentioned that her family is Italian. She made some joke about how I was making our apartment smell like her mother’s kitchen with all the garlic I was cooking with lately. I accidentally knocked a head of garlic on the floor with my elbow while I was chopping an onion, and she picked it up and handed it to me. This whole time I was watching her body language out of the corner of my eye for signs of discomfort. She seemed as cool and collected as she always is. So, I don’t think the garlic thing bothers her. I haven’t been able to get her to try my cooking though, she always has some excuse about being on a specific diet and having already eaten. Plausible stuff. Oh God, if I’m wrong about all this, she has got to think I’m some kind of nut after all the weird stuff I’ve been doing and saying lately!
I also stopped by a local Catholic church. They let me have several plastic vials of holy water for the price of the containers they were in, about 50 cents per fluid ounce. I got a dozen of them. They thought that was weird and asked why I needed so much, and I couldn’t exactly tell them ‘to exorcize my roommate that I think is a vampire,’ could I? I mumbled something about blessing my house and wanting to make sure I had enough. I’m pretty sure they think I’m a headcase, but I never have to go back there, so I guess I don’t care.
I’m kind of taking events out of sequence, and I’m sorry for that. I just wanted to address all the advice in some sort of logical order so that I stop getting ten messages an hour saying the same thing over and over again. Do you all even read the other comments before commenting yourself? Probably not. It’s pretty clear some of you didn’t even read my post real close either. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound salty, I’m just under a lot of stress, and I’m not getting enough sleep.
Anyway, back to the holy water. I had it lined up in little rows of three on my desk, next to my laptop. My desk is against the wall, just inside my room, and I usually leave my door open when I’m not sleeping. So, my roomate wandered by and saw the bottles. She stopped to ask what they were. I don’t know why, but I told her they were holy water. She laughed, and picked one of them up and screwed the lid off. She proceeded to poor a small amount of it’s contents into her palm and let it run down her fingers before flicking the water into my face and saying something that sounded like a prayer in Italian, it might have also been Latin, I don’t really know. So, I think the holy water thing is ruled out.
Another thing I might mention. She stepped inside my room to grab the vial, and right over a line of salt I had laid down across the threshold, so I think salt is out too.
I also bought a rosary at the church I got the holy water from, and I had that hanging on the wall over my door, that didn’t seem to bother her either. I hadn’t really expected it to. She commonly wears a cross of her own around her neck, but someone mentioned that there is a difference between a cross and a proper crucifix, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Someone else mentioned vampires being compelled to count seeds or grain spilled in their presence. So I ‘accidentally’ spilled some rice while cooking with her in the other room watching TV. I swore loudly when I did it and she came over to see what was the matter. Without being asked, she got the broom and dustpan and swept it up. It didn’t look to me like she was counting anything. So, another theory debunked.
I was really starting to lean towards me cracking up at this point. I mean if she really was a vampire, wouldn’t one of these things work? I made an appointment with campus mental health services and they got me in within a week. I was nervous telling them my whole story but just like you all said, my therapist listened and didn’t judge me. She did refer me to a psychiatrist, and that led to me getting a prescription for Alprazolam (Xanax). That seemed to help. I certainly felt a lot calmer about things, and it was helping me sleep.
Ok, now for the weird stuff. Someone in the comments on my last post mentioned that I should try to leave during the day, you know, when vampires and my roommate are supposed to be asleep. I tried that, and I lost my fucking car keys! I never lose my keys. They are always in my pocket, and when I take my pants off and throw them in the laundry, I take my keys out and put them on my little bedside table. My mom always called that a nightstand, anyway. They weren’t in my pocket, and they weren’t on my nightstand. I tore my room apart looking for them, checked all of my pants in the dirty clothes. I even checked the clean ones I hadn’t worn yet. Couch cushions, kitchen, bathroom, I checked everywhere! Except my roommate’s bedroom, for obvious reasons.
Eventually it got late and I realized I needed to get to work. Do you know how I got there? That’s right, I drove. My keys were in my pocket the whole time. I swear to you that I checked my pockets, and they weren’t there. But as soon as I wasn’t thinking of running away, suddenly I could find them. I didn’t even realize the strangeness of this fact until after I got home from work and hopped back on Reddit to a whole raft of comments on my post. I’ve tried to leave two more times during the day, and each time I can’t find my keys, but as soon as I stop thinking about trying to escape my living situation, they turn up. It’s like when I’m thinking about leaving, for good, I can’t see or feel my keys, but as soon as I stop thinking about leaving, suddenly I can. What the fuck is up with that?!
I’ve tried walking, taking a bus, even calling an Uber. I always end up back at my apartment. The Uber driver had a good laugh at my expense (literally) wondering why I would ask him to drive me to the edge of town, only to then ask him to drive me back. I do not remember asking him to take me back to my apartment. Nor do I remember changing buses, or walking back to my apartment any of those other times. This shit is freaking me out! I have no trouble getting to my classes or to my part-time job, but when my intention is to leave and never come back, somehow I always get in my own way and end up back at my apartment.
I’m having those weird dreams more often too, which is strange, since I’m mostly sleeping during the day now, I’ll get to that. If you haven’t read my first post, here’s the gist: I wake up with my roommate sitting on my bed in the middle of the night, then she crawls under the covers with me, and her body is like ice. They always end the same way too, with her mouth on my neck and me feeling cold all over. Then I wake up horrendously thirsty the next morning.
What am I going to do guys? I’m sooo tired. Work has put me on mandatory medical leave, which was nice of them after they caught me sleeping on shift for the third time. They really should have just fired me. I’ve missed a lot of classes too. My guidance counselor is recommending that I withdraw, saying that with the medical problems I’m having it won’t even count against me. I’m living off campus, so it won’t affect my living situation (ironic, that). And through all of this my roommate has been very understanding. She is covering my portion of the bills now that I’m no longer bringing in an income, and she even cooks me dinner on nights when I’m too tired to do it myself. It should be sweet, her bringing me dinner in bed and spooning it into my mouth when I don’t feel like eating. Why do I insist on hearing a sinister undertone in her admonitions that, ‘you must keep your strength up’?
I’m spending a lot of time talking to her about my problems. I’m too tired to resist the itch to go out and talk to her at night. And that’s what it’s like, a maddening itch. I don’t want to talk to her, I just want to lay in my bed and sleep, but the longer I stay in bed the stronger the desire to go talk to her becomes. It’s like a panic attack if I resist it too long. The only sleep I manage to get is when she is sleeping, or when I take melatonin on top of my Xanax, which you aren’t supposed to do, by the way.
She is very supportive and a good listener. I’ve tried asking her straight out if she was a vampire, she just laughed at me and showed me her teeth. She made some sort of joke like, ‘where are my fangs?’ I swear sometimes though, her shadow doesn’t move right in the flickering half-light of whatever classic movie she happens to be watching that night. I’m probably just imagining it.
I’m so, so tired. I don’t know what else to do. Am I just going crazy?