I Am A Survivor Of Kleptomania. Here Is My Story.

By: Anonymous

Target. Sephora. Barnes and Noble. The Vitamin Shoppe.

You name a store-

I’ve robbed that bitch.

It all started junior year of high school. After working hard at an upstate New York apple orchard all summer, I had only saved up $700. The stakes were high. I could only find so many ways to cope with being asked “Why are there stray bullets all over the farm?” by a customer every hour. So I did what every sad, 16 year old girl does and blew all my money on Shein clothes and marijuana. 

Suddenly, the stakes were higher. I was three weeks into the school year, and finally able to drive –

yet had a mere $70 left. So I ate my McDonalds every night for the rest of the week and started on my journey as a Broke Ass Bitch.

Being a Broke Ass Bitch is a science. There are calculations. Plans. Experimental law-breaking. And to really master this science, one must first find themselves crossed in a Walmart at 9PM with $3.83 in their checking account. 

Walmart is like the jungle. Every man for himself. Take what you can and fucking RUN. So I went to the makeup section with my best friends and stuffed every mascara I’d seen on Tik Tok in my $15 Shein cargo pants (green, of course). The rush of adrenaline, often confused with guilt or anxiety, is unlike any other when you’re robbing a Walmart. Don’t even get me STARTED on Target. The best, or maybe worst, part of it all is that it is nearly impossible to get caught.

Being a Broke Ass Bitch may take years of being in college with $40 a week to master, but the thievery is almost encouraged. Try it yourself. Leave Target with a bag full of groceries and tell me if those teenage boys in bright yellow security vests DARE to stop you. 

As the years went on, and college forced me into a pit of deep dark depression in which I only felt joy if I acquired something for free, it became a REAL issue. Some random lady on Tik Tok said she was a lawyer and that Target might arrest me in ten years! 

So here I am, ridden with anxiety, waiting for the feds to come break down my door. I text my best friend asking to hangout. I was too stressed. All I could think to do was STEAL. I wanted so badly to see my friend in her dorm room. 

And then she hit me with this: “Come join me I’m at THE PRUDENTIAL CENTER.”

The Fenty Cream Blush in shade Crush on Cupid started singing from the Prudential Sephora, so loud that I heard it from Buswell Street. 

Before I knew it, we’d robbed three Sephoras. We were criminals. Felons. It was too late. It became a part of us. And I got some awesome makeup that day: A Bobbi Brown matte lipstick, a Makeup Forever red lipstick, a Charlotte Tilbury pink lipstick, two brown lip liners, and more!  

As we dumped out our tote bags full of evidence on the sinking floors of my South Campus apartment, our hearts started to sink as well. The negativity finally sunk in as we realized:

We can never go to Sephora again. 

I imagined being unable to go to Target, Walmart, Barnes and Noble (fuck this place and I will FOREVER be robbing them). And I knew it was time for me to slow down. My inexplicable talent for swindling the fuck out of every business conglomerate in America finally needed to be checked. I didn’t slut myself out for an internship just to be thrown in JAIL.

Four months later, I am a completely new person. I pay for my all of groceries at Target and stay the fuck out of Sephora. Stealing is easy. Kleptomania is even easier when you already have OCD! But never believe you are above the law, folks, even if you are white. Consequences matter, and the moral of this story is:

Stick to stealing from City Co and call it even.