I tried to set rules. It felt absurd to have to do it, but I did it anyway. I sat her down at the dining table.
“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to speak calmly. “We need ground rules if you’re staying here. Clean up after yourself. Ask before you borrow things. Help with groceries. No loud noise during work hours. No friends over late on weeknights.”
Vanessa nodded, eyes wide, like she was listening. “Sure. Totally.”
And then she ignored every single one.
The worst nights were the parties.
At first, she invited friends over “just for a bit.” It always turned into hours. Voices rose, laughter spilled into the hallway. Music started low and then crept higher. Glasses clinked. Someone would shout over the music, and then someone else would shout back.
I would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to their joy vibrate through the walls. My alarm would ring at 6:30, and I’d still be awake.
The first time I came out to ask them to keep it down, I tried to be polite. I tried to be the reasonable one, because that was the role I’d been trained to play.
“Hey,” I said, standing in the doorway in my pajamas. “I have work in the morning. Can you guys keep it down?”
Vanessa’s friends looked at me like I was a landlord. Vanessa smiled at them, a little smirk, and then turned to me.
“Yeah, sure,” she said.
The volume lowered for ten minutes. Then it rose again, like a tide returning.
After two weeks of sleep deprivation, my body started to feel brittle. My patience thinned. My temples ached constantly. I snapped at coworkers. I forgot small things. I began to dread coming home, because home was no longer relief. It was another place I had to manage.
One morning, or rather one noon, Vanessa finally emerged from her room while I sat at the kitchen table with my coffee, exhausted.
“Vanessa,” I said, keeping my voice steady through sheer willpower, “this isn’t working. I need to sleep. You can’t keep having people over until two in the morning.”
She stopped mid-yawn and looked at me like I’d told her the sky was purple.
“God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You sound just like Mom.”
Something in me twisted. “That’s not a compliment.”
Vanessa shrugged. “At least Mom is fun.”
Fun. The word stung because it was so revealing. Fun mattered. Comfort mattered. My needs only mattered when they were convenient.
The breaking point came on a day when my head felt like it was full of nails.
I’d woken with a migraine that didn’t ease. I went to work anyway because deadlines didn’t care about pain. By noon, my vision had blurred at the edges, and the office lights felt like knives. My manager took one look at my face and told me to go home.
I rode public transportation with my head down, one hand pressed against my temple, trying not to throw up. All I wanted was my bed, darkness, silence.
When I opened my apartment door, I heard voices. Loud voices. Laughter.
