“Courage is grace under pressure” is a famous quotation by Ernest Hemingway. Tell us about a personal moment of your grace under pressure.
Personally, I find it hard to exude grace under pressure when you’re a Scorpio. I don’t do grace. I just get revenge. I’m the person that you don’t want to cross, because I’ll go out of my way to take you down.
Sidenote: the reality is, I sound scary, but I’m really not…
When I’m under pressure, I’m trying to keep it all together, and / or I’m ready to cut a bitch.
I remember one particular time when I was living in a share house with a couple of girls, I was away at my friends place, and was informed that my current housemates, both girls (and closeted lesbians), had both decided to move out whilst I was away, and not tell me.
This information came from a mutual friend of ours who thought that what they were planning was just plain nasty.
She then followed up that bombshell with ‘…and I think they’ve trashed your room too…’. She couldn’t give me any further information because she’d only heard them make passing comments about it, but didn’t question them. She just knew that something was up.
I had to go home. I had to confront these bitches about what I’d been told and whether or not it was correct.
I returned home and they were gone. Both their bedrooms were half-empty, and then I opened the door to my room.
The smell was… I can’t even… It was like the smell from the rubbish at the local markets that’s been sitting in the hot summer sun for a week. Ironically, it was the middle of summer, and all my blinds had been left open, so my room was like a hotbox.
It was completely trashed. All my clothes had been pulled down, and strewn all across the floor, along with all my other belongings. It was like the room had been burgled, without anything actually being taken. But the smell, oh dear god, the smell…
The worst part was, that no matter how much air freshener I sprayed, it didn’t go away. It was still there. It was so overpowering. As I started to clean my room up, I still couldn’t find the source of the smell. Not being able to find the source of the horrendous stench of death started to drive me crazy… a couple of hours later I started to discover them… piece by smelly piece.
The first was the opened meat that they so graciously left in the pockets of my jackets, and inside my shoes. Because I kept my shoes on a shoe rack under the window, they were in the heat constantly.
That was lovely. And seeing as how I was the only one who actually ate meat, I knew it was mine. They would have put it in there whilst it was frozen, and then let it defrost in the heat. Hence, I ended up with several pairs of ruined shoes.
Then there was the rotten vegetables. They were put in amongst my socks and jocks drawer. They sprayed my doona with tuna juice, and then put the doona cover back on it!! I found some chunks of tuna amongst my shorts… at least they used the whole tin…!! The pinnacle of it all was finding a watermelon throughout my bed. Chunks of it had been put under my pillows, and then the rest was just left in the cling-wrap and left under my bed.
I literally couldn’t believe what they had done. I was beside myself. Nobody deserves anything like that – they had gone too far, and I wasn’t having it.
I’m not going to say that we didn’t have any issues prior to this happening. We’d been having some heated conversations about general things, like them not paying bills on time, but getting angry at me when I don’t pay on time – which wasn’t a regular occurrence. I’d get angry at them for not paying rent on time, and because I was the main contact, I was the one who copped the abusive phone call from the real estate agent as a result.
They had spoken about the two of them moving out and getting their own place together. I was upset by this, but reminded them that they had a few months left on the lease, and if they wanted to break the lease, they would have to find replacement housemates – that’s generally the rule of how things work in sharehouses.
After that, we were fine. I went on holidays thinking that we were all good… evidently I was wrong.
So when I returned home to find this… I honestly didn’t know what to do because I so full of sheer rage.
I figured that there was only one way to deal with these bitches… and that was to play their own game.
I sent both their parents photos letters with photos of the damage they had caused. I also filed a report with the police for damage of personal property, and sent the bill estimates for having things replaced, cleaned and / or repaired, to their parents as well. I also notified the real estate agent and told them about what the girls had done, as they had also caused damage to the property as a result of their actions.
Now, I had met both their parents, and developed a great rapport with both of them, so naturally they were both beside themselves when they saw the photos of the damage they had caused. One of the mothers was so disgusted by it, that she called the mother of the other girl, and they both agreed to pay half each to compensate me, which I was quite surprised by, and was very grateful for. In the end I used both their bond money to pay for the cleaning of the carpets. Sorry bitches.
Sure enough, I get a rather abusive phone call from one of the girls, going on about how dare I contact her parents, and embarrass her the way that I did, and that I had no right to send them a bill for the damage. At that point I informed them that I had filed a police report, and if they continued, I’ll be adding harassment to it as well. I also informed her that I had told their parents about the police report as well.
I may have ‘accidentally’ told the very strict catholic mother of one of the girls, that she was now actually dating the other girl, and the reason they moved out, was so they could get their own place together and further develop their relationship together.
That didn’t necessarily seem to go down too well either. oops.
After my discussion with the real estate agent, and the police, I didn’t file charges because their parents had compensated me for the damage of my property, but that didn’t stop me from giving a copy of the report, along with the photos to the real estate agent and the tenancy tribunal to have a black mark put against their name.
For some strange reason, they weren’t able to move in to their new love shack. And they couldn’t seem to get approval for any other places either, resulting in them both moving back in with their parents.
The best part was the phone call I got from one of them, acting as though nothing had happened and that we were best friends. I playfully went along with it, giving her a false sense of security. The highlight was her telling me her sob story about having to move in with her parents, and she hated it, and she couldn’t spend time with her girlfriend because they lived in different towns… and would it be possible for them to move back in with me, if I hadn’t already found new housemates.
Oh, it was absolute heaven. I quite calmly basically told her to go fuck herself, and send my regards to her mother, who had called me previously to see if I was okay.
adorablyobnoxious 