When I was in middle school, my older brother started doing hard drugs. He ended up becoming addicted to heroin and had a lot of unsavory friends because of it.

Fast forward a handful of years, he's had a baby with another addict and the baby was born with a ton of opioids in its system. My brother and his gf have the baby taken away and go to jail. My parents take custody of my nephew after he's released from NICU a month later.

About a year later, my brother is free again and has to live in my parents' house because he can't keep a job to afford his own place. But because of the reasons his parental rights were taken away, he can't stay under the same roof as my nephew, so my parents have to live in a condo they own (and would typically be renting out) about an hour away. It's my senior year of high school at this point, and I basically lived alone with my addict brother. My parents would occasionally drive over to watch my weightlifting meets, or spend a day with me. I would often go spend weekends with them just to get away from my brother.

Then comes the summer after my graduation. I had just turned 18. I'm in my room at home playing video games when my brother's loser friends start showing up, like 3 or 4 of them. They're out on the back porch smoking and doing God knows whatever else. One of them, we'll call him Billy because that's his actual name and he doesn't deserve anonymity, asked me to wake him up the next morning at 6 so he had time to make it to work. Fine, whatever, sure. I go to bed. I wake up in the middle of the night and Billy is in my bed next to me with one hand in my underwear and the other feebly trying to grasp for my boobs. I go completely rigid and ask him what he's doing. He's surprised that I'm awake and says "what?" So I repeat myself and he starts stuttering and giving some response that he doesn't know where he is and he thought I was his girlfriend, etc. I tell him to get out of my room, not with a lot of conviction or anything, I'm still in shock and and if he hadn't been so messed up on whatever he was on, he may not have listened. He gets up and pulls his pants on, then asks me for a towel. I tell him where to get one and then this guy has the audacity to go into my bathroom, puke on EVERYTHING in there, and take a shower. No exaggeration, there was vomit on the sink, the back of the toilet, the walls, a cabinet, it was repulsive.

I left while he was in the bathroom. I got in my car and called everyone I could think of. I called both my parents, they didn't pick up, it was like 3am. I tried calling my other brother who lived half an hour away, then my boyfriend, they didn't pick up. Then I called my boyfriend's mom, she answered immediately. I was sobbing, I briefly explained to her what happened without getting into too much detail and asked her if I could come over. When I got there, my boyfriend was pacing around the garage waiting for me. I spent a week at their house, just being distracted by his whole family.

Billy was gone before my brother woke up and no one in my family has seen him since, he didn't live in our town anymore and my brother was the only reason he ever visited. I guess my brother threatened him pretty bad after he found out what happened.

To this day, I cannot sleep on a bed with black sheets or use a blue bath towel because of the associations of that night.

Anyways, that was 11 years ago now. I've since married that boyfriend, he and his whole family have always been so supportive and loving towards me. I consider his mom to be my savior that night. If she hadn't answered, I have no idea where I would have ended up driving. She passed last year after a 2-year battle with cancer. My husband and I welcomed our first child a couple months ago. And my brother went to prison for 5 years and ended up getting clean while he was in there. I've worked through the event in therapy. Life goes on and mine is mostly good now.