My House of Pain: The Necklace That Strangled Everything

A time in college, when I was much more toxic than I am now—a walking disaster of ego and insecurity wrapped in cheap beer and even cheaper cologne. Back then I was Bill. Bill the Thrill. You know the type, who wore Stetson because it was cheap, and drank PBR, for the same fucking reason. But don't laugh, because I wasn't even anywhere near close to that, a thrill. Just a desperate fucking façade that fooled nobody but myself. Somewhere, in a box that time forgot, buried under the debris of my former self, there is a fraternity jersey, Σ Φ Ν, with that pathetic nickname emblazoned on it like a goddamn billboard advertising my bullshit. And there was MixedUp. My girlfriend at the time. She was in my fraternity's sister sorority—her delicate, black-painted fingernails a stark contrast against the bubblegum pink of her organization's sweatshirts that she wore with ironic disdain. So it seemed natural we would associate, especially for service functions, both of us playing roles in a Greek life theater neither of us fully believed in, her eyes rolling behind thick mascara whenever I'd chest-bump another brother, the taste of her contempt metallic in my mouth hours later when we kissed.

The air in her room hung heavy with clove cheap incense—that sickly-sweet blend that coated the back of your throat like honey mixed with ashes. Blackout curtains transformed midday into midnight, the only light bleeding from Christmas lights strung haphazardly around her poster-plastered walls. The Cure, Siouxsie, all those pale faces staring down as we sprawled across her unmade bed, close but never touching.

Her laugh always ended in that raspy wheeze, fingers scrambling for the inhaler she kept buried in the folds of her black comforter. I'd watch her chest heave, the silver chains around her neck rising and falling as she fought to pull oxygen through narrowed airways. There was something fucking beautiful about her vulnerability—this girl who painted her face white and her lips black somehow more real than anyone else I knew.

Many months of afternoons disappeared into that room. Me talking about everything, her listening with those kohl-rimmed eyes that made you feel like the only person who mattered. The smell of her hair dye, that deep rich Amethyst color, lingered on the pillows.

And then there was Christian Roomie. A slice of sunshine cutting through our darkness every time she burst in unannounced. Hair the color of Iowa cornfields, skin scrubbed raw and pink like some fucking commercial for purity. She'd wrinkle her nose at the incense, dramatically waving her hand in front of her face while clutching that little gold cross hanging from her neck as if it might protect her from our supposed depravity.

"Jesus Christ, can you open a window? It smells like Satan in here," she'd say in that sugary voice that turned every sentence into a sermon. MixedUp would just stare, those dark eyes narrowing, fingers twisting the silver rings that covered her knuckles.

Sometimes I'd catch her watching Christine when she thought no one was looking. Not with hatred, but with something else—something that made her throat work like she was swallowing glass. Once, when Christine pranced around, water droplets, MixedUp's breathing hitched in that familiar way. I thought she needed her inhaler, but she shook her head.

"I don't know what the fuck I want," she confessed one night, voice rough as sandpaper, smudged makeup turning her tears black. We were lying on her floor, the bass from downstairs vibrating through our bones. "Sometimes I feel like I'm wearing someone else's skin. Like everything—even this—" she gestured between us, "is just another costume."

We were in college, did we really know what the fuck we wanted from life? I was a computer science major, that's all the fuck I knew. Binary code and algorithms—my safe little world of ones and zeros where everything made goddamn sense. MixedUp... liberal arts. Does that say, 'I know what the fuck I want for myself?' Hell no. It screamed 'I'm still figuring this shit out' in neon fucking letters. We were both just stumbling through the dark, her with poetry books clutched to her chest like armor, me with my laptop burning holes into my thighs as I coded my way through sleepless nights. The truth crawled beneath our skin like insects—we were playing at being adults, wearing majors like costumes, while our real selves remained buried under mountains of student debt and expectations we never fucking asked for.

I pretended not to notice how her gaze drifted to Christine's perfectly made bed, with its floral comforter and Bible on the nightstand. How her fingers unconsciously traced the outline of Christine's perfume bottle when she thought I wasn't looking. The way her body tensed when Christine touched her shoulder in passing—not in disgust, but in something that looked painfully like hunger.

MixedUp was a contradiction wrapped in black lace and combat boots—kissing me in the shadows while her eyes chased ghosts I couldn't see. Her confusion hung in that incense-thick air, another layer of smoke that made it hard to breathe.

Then one day, her birthday came. And I did something. I mean, you are supposed to do things, right? I thought that was what you did. Shockingly, even in that time, I would call Zoe and ask her. Zoe, the object of my own internalized hatred. The cruel mistress of my house of pain.

The necklace wasn't even that expensive—just a silver bat pendant that caught my eye in some mall shop. But I wrapped it carefully, fingers fumbling with the tiny bow. Her birthday. A gesture. Nothing more.

Their house reeked of forced perfection—pine-scented cleaner and those disgusting floral air fresheners that make your eyes water. Family photos lined the walls in matching frames, MixedUp's smile looking more strained in each passing year. The dining room table was covered in a plastic tablecloth, balloons taped to the corners, sagging slightly in the stale air.

MixedUp's father watched me from his recliner, eyes following my every move like I was some kind of stray dog that might shit on his carpet. Her mother bustled around with that tight smile that never reached her eyes, serving store-bought cake on paper plates with a precision that felt fucking threatening.

"You made it," she said, relief washing over her face. She wore this dress I'd never seen before, something her mother had probably picked out. Too formal, too stiff—nothing like the MixedUp I knew who lived in band t-shirts and ripped jeans, or something equally obsidian in color.

I handed her the small box, acutely aware of her parents' laser focus on my hands. "Happy birthday," I muttered, throat suddenly dry as sandpaper.

She unwrapped it slowly, careful not to tear the paper while her mother stood over her shoulder, breathing down her neck. The silver pendant dangled between her fingers, catching the harsh overhead lighting.

"It's..." she started, her voice small.

"A pendant?" her mother cut in, the word dripping with disdain. "How... interesting."

Lisa's eyes met mine, a flash of something defiant sparking in them. "I love it," she said firmly, clasping it around her neck before anyone could stop her. The pendant nestled against her collarbone, a small act of rebellion.

"You didn't bring that necklace 'cause you're friends," her brother said, not a question but a statement of fact, the kid's voice cutting through my bullshit like a hot knife through butter.

"No, I didn't," I admitted, the words scraping my throat raw.

"I knew it," her little brother said, grinning with a missing tooth. "You actually like her."

"Yeah, I do," I said quietly. "Don't tell anyone, alright?"

But the little shit just shrugged, that sly smile still plastered across his face as he wandered back inside. I should've known right then that I was fucked.

Two weeks later, the storm hit. Lisa called me up to her room, her voice trembling like she'd been standing in the cold too long.

"He's sending mixed signals," her mother would tell her, hissed through tight lips I could only imagine. I never witnessed this shit firsthand, but I heard the stories—how her mom would spit those words like venom across their kitchen table, face contorted into a mask of disgust and fucking disappointment.

Her brother had spilled everything, probably not even realizing what he'd done. Her mother had seized on it immediately—the necklace, my confession, all of it twisted into evidence that I was playing some sick game with her daughter's feelings.

The thought of it made my skin crawl, like insects burrowing beneath the surface. Her mother's voice—sharp as a butcher's blade—slicing through their home night after night. "He's just stringing you along," she'd say, the words dripping with a toxic certainty that poisoned the air. I imagined her mother's fingers gripping the edge of the table, knuckles bleached white, the veins in her neck pulsing with each accusation.

"She told me to break it off," Lisa said, each word falling between us like shattered glass. "Said you gave me that necklace to lead me on, that you were just using me."

I could taste bile rising in my throat, bitter and burning. All I could see was her mother's face across that perfect dining room table, dissecting my gift, my intentions, cutting everything to pieces with surgical precision.

"It was just a necklace," I said, but we both knew that was a lie worn thin as paper.

That pendant meant something. And now it hung around her neck like a noose, choking whatever might have grown between us before it had the chance to breathe.

Now all I had were secondhand accounts, Stories of dinner tables turned into battlegrounds, of makeup applied thick to hide puffy eyes the next morning, of her phone being checked and monitored like she was some kind of criminal.

All because I'd given her a fucking necklace. All because I'd dared to love someone whose mother had decided I wasn't worthy. It turns out, I was not worthy to start with. I would prove this time and time again.

Her gay friend, let's call him Chris from this point forward, would look me over when he was around. "She talks about you constantly," he said later, cornering me outside. His voice dripped with accusation, like I was stealing something that belonged to him. "You know exactly what you're doing."

But I didn't. I didn't know shit.

"I can't be your experiment." she would tell me. I never realized that anyone could be an "experiment". I didn't understand these words. Each word a tiny dagger. Her gay friend appeared around campus after that, eyes tracking me across crowded rooms. "You're so deep in denial you can't even see yourself," he slurred once. I guess this made the statement all the more valuable and understood. But I still never saw it in myself.

By spring, MixedUp had dropped out. Her room emptied of black clothes and band posters, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of incense and the hollow feeling that I'd somehow failed a test I didn't know I was taking. Sometimes I'd pass her dorm building at night, my feet dragging me there without conscious thought. The window where her room used to be dark now, no Christmas lights outlining its shape. The winter wind cut through my jacket, and I'd stand there like a goddamn fool, wondering what the hell had happened between us.

Her friend, Chris, cornered me again at an campus party months later. His eyes bloodshot, swaying slightly as he blocked my path to the bathroom. "She cried for weeks, you know that?" His words slurred together, but the venom was crystal clear. "You straight boys always do this shit. Play with people's hearts because you're bored or whatever the fuck. The sad part is, you aren't even straight, and you don't even know it."

I just pushed past him. My hands trembled as I walked into another room to retreat, until I could find a bathroom that I could lock myself inside. I looked at the mirror, it reflected back a stranger—someone confused and angry and so damn tired of being misunderstood.

I found a small bag months later, that was hers, buried under my bed where it must have fallen during one of our marathon talk sessions. Inside, everything smelled like her, as my throat closed up, a sympathetic asthma attack of grief.

When summer came, the heat pressing down like a physical weight, I saw her once more in out in public—that temple of mediocrity we'd both claimed to despise but secretly found comfort in. Her hair was shorter, dyed a normal brown. No black lipstick. No chains. Just seemingly stripped of her armor, looking smaller somehow. Now actually normal, but the standards of the time.

Our eyes met for a brief second. For one brutal second, everything hung suspended—the noise faded, the crowd blurred. The look she gave me over her shoulder wasn't hate or love or anything definable. Just a hollow recognition of something beautiful that had been strangled before it could be properly named.

That night, I boxed up the few remnants of our friendship—her forgotten bag, a mix tape she'd made me, and other trinkets. I kept things that were sentimental to me. It was a habit of mine, from my own youth’s days. A byproduct of an abusive childhood, where I held onto things that meant value to me, because I had none when I was younger. The cardboard rough against my fingertips as I shoved it deep into my closet, where it would gather dust alongside other unresolved chapters of my life.

And this was how it was for me. For a long time.