Heidi the Human and Layla the Cat in Space
This is part one of Heidi the Human and Layla the Cat Heidi slid on all fours trying to get traction under the cupola, standing…
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This is part one of Heidi the Human and Layla the Cat Heidi slid on all fours trying to get traction under the cupola, standing…
I do not think my mother realized how much I talk to and about my cat when I moved back home in my mid-thirties. One…
Having a keychain with a user-friendly clasp, Alisa found it easy to remove her office key, the master key, and the key to the front…
I want to acknowledge that Bird was not the worst roommate in the world, after all, she never tried to kill me… I have always…
I want to acknowledge that Bird was not the worst roommate in the world, after all, she never tried to kill me…
I have always worked hard to be a good roommate, but I confess, that there are things I would do differently now being able to look back at my time as a roommate with the eyes of an older adult. The first warning sign that she was going to be a bad roommate, was that she did not acknowledge or say thank you for the homemade “Welcome” card and chocolate I gave her. It was small, first warnings usually are. I pay more attention to warning signs now. Even though it was a small thing, I gave her extra opportunities to acknowledge the gift and she did not. It is unlikely that a decent person would not say thank you.
I admit that I was disappointed that she was an American woman. I had pushed for myself to get into the international dorms hoping to get a roommate from another county who could introduce me to things I had never heard of before. However, I did not hold her Americanness against her, after all, that would have been hypocritical of me. I did not let my roommate disappointment hold me back. I did delight in getting to know the woman in the dorm room next to ours who was from China. We had the same sense of humor, and I enjoyed her company immensely. This joy was one of the two things that probably kept me from going completely insane during the single semester I put up with the worst roommate of my life.
I will not give out Birds real name, or real nickname because that is unkind. Bird is the nickname she gave herself, So, I asked her if she liked birds. She frowned and said “no” with venom. Now, I understand that sometimes we are gifted unfortunate names at birth, but there is no reason to give yourself a nickname that you do not like. Especially when you are going to a college far away from your friends and family. Even if it was a foolish choice in her youth, she is an adult now, and college is one of the best places to start over. Her last name was a peculiar choice too, although, less of a choice as it only had to do with how she pronounced it. I did not expect her to give out a false last name. Disgusetang, (not the actual last name) I asked her if it was pronounced Dis-goose-tang. No, it is pronounced, but not spelled like disgusting. Why did she not change the pronunciation?
There were lots of things about her that were annoying but not the end of the world. She had lofted her bed but did not sleep in there, instead choosing to sleep in a small circular chair underneath the bed. Every time I left the room, she would move her things to my side of the room, until, by the end of the semester she had taken over 75% of the room. She had her own mini-fridge, and TV but only used mine.
She also engaged in behaviors some might call torturous. She stayed up all night playing games on her computer with the sound and room lights on, frequently not going to bed until I gave up on trying to sleep sometime in the morning. Even when she left the room she would leave her computer on with the sound on, so there would be highly repetitive computer game noises nearly all hours of the day and night. When she slept she snored, so, it was never quiet in the room. I began to spend as much time out of the room as possible, early in the semester.
I have lots of stories that show her immaturity, like the time she was supposed to go to a gaming tournament and her teammates called her forty-five minutes after it started and asked how far away she was. I heard her say that she was nearly there. It was in the building next door, so if she left, she could get there in five minutes. She did not move though, she sat there for another hour and a half before she left. She came back sometime later sobbing because they had started without her. I felt no sympathy for her. She showed disrespect to her teammates both by being late and by lying to them. She thought they were being unfair, I thought she was lucky they did not kick her off the team. It blew my mind that she expected them to wait over two hours for her to show up when she had already lied to them about what time she would get there.
I will warn you now that if you are squeamish, you may want to skip the rest of this paragraph. Bird would blow her nose, but instead of putting the used tissues in the trash, she would leave them all over my desk, school supplies, and computer. She did not wash her hands after going to the bathroom, she did not wash her hair, clothes, or blankets, ever. I am not someone with OCD levels of cleanliness, but I felt like I could almost see the gross germs flowing off of her onto me and my things. When I asked her why she did not wash her things, she said she was afraid her clothes and blankets would unravel. Now, this may cause you to feel bad for her, perhaps she could not afford new things? Nope, her family was wealthy and her parents indulged nearly every whim she had. The only time I ever saw them give her a boundary, was when they told her they would take away her gaming books if she continued to flunk every class.
Do not worry, even if you had to skip the last paragraph you will likely still understand why I could not stand Bird. When I moved in she let me know that she was bisexual. This did not bother me in the slightest, I had a close friend who was a lesbian, and we had gone on vacation together and shared a bed together. There was no issue, and I was not afraid, because we had a relationship built on trust and respect. I respected the fact that she was gay, and she respected the fact that I was not. No issues. Unfortunately, there was no trust or respect between Bird and me and she would on several occasions make vulgar comments to me about my “boobs” that made me deeply uncomfortable. At first, I tolerated it because I did not want to be homophobic, but then I realized if a man spoke to me the way she did, I would slap him. So, I told her, after one of her creepy comments, that if she acted on what she was saying, I would kick her to the floor as hard as I could. This was a clear, genuine threat as I had at least half a foot in height on her, and was strong. She did stop leering at me and making suggestive comments after that. However, one time after that little talk, I did turn around to find her with her mouth open about to bite me. She may have meant it in a playful way, but as I had never expressed any affection towards her, and instead was as courteous as one could be while filled with repulsion I told her that was off-limits too. I do feel you should not have to tell your adult roommate to not bite you, this should be ingrained in their basic social skills by the time they get to college.
It had not occurred to me that I would be at risk of living with a racist in the international dorms, but I found out that I had been naive in that assumption when Bird started making anti-Asian remarks. One time, with an enormous smile on her face, Bird told me excitedly about her plan to make a banner that said: “no foreign people” to put on our door. I told her that absolutely would not be happening. I asked her why she was staying in the international dorm if she hated foreign people so much and she said it was because the rooms were three inches larger than in the other dorms.
Because I lived in the dorms, I was required to be on the cafeteria meal plan. The school was small, so, the cafeteria was hardly ever open when I was not in class. The food in the cafeteria was so bad I would not be able to eat much, and whatever I did choke down would regularly come back up into the bushes outside the cafeteria. I destroyed my metabolism by having less than 600 calories in my system every day. I think usually I would have about half of that. As I had no money and could not stand to be near my roommate I ended up taking a lot of walks, I walked at least 4 to 6 hours a day to relieve myself of all the tension I felt when I was in my room. The campus had some fantastic walking trails to the north of it, and I spent more time on those than I did in class. I felt so much peace on those trails, the fresh air and nature were healing for my mental health. I saw a deer once, and that felt special and a little magical. The walking trails were in a high fog area, and it would feel almost like I was in another world, where things were sanitary. It is interesting how I felt cleaner literally surrounded by dirt than I did in that dorm room.
Inevitably I lost weight, I lost a lot of weight and fast. I cannot remember when the first time my pants fell off of me was, but thankfully I was alone by the football field. My pants just swooped right down, as if they had no interest in staying on me. There was nothing to hold them up, and by the end of the semester, I was holding on to my jeans in large fistfuls on both sides of my hips to safely get from point A to point B without showing everyone near me my underwear.
I was a highly dedicated student, unhealthily so. When Bird, lied to her professor and told him that she had missed the test because she had been in the ER, when in reality she had just slept through it, because she had been up all night playing games, I lost my mind a little bit. The fact that I was not eating much, I constantly felt unclean, and that she was making sleeping difficult did not help either, I am sure. I went to the student handbook hoping there would be a number I could call or a website I could go to, to report her. Or even someone on the faculty that handled student misconduct. I read the whole 140-page document twice. There was nothing in there. It was the last straw for me. On my isolated walks, I noticed a little pond that a body could be hidden in. However, as far gone as my brain had traveled, I never hurt her in any way.
I left that college after that semester, not because of the roommate, I had another place to move into lined up, but because I did not know what I wanted to do academically. Before I left, Bird’s new roommate showed up. A bubbly, sweet, woman who was Asian. Bird looked sick. I tried to follow the new roommate out of the room, to warn her, but she was too fast and I did not get a chance.
When I left the dorm room for the last time, I was hoping to escape having to talk to Bird ever again, but unfortunately, she woke up and hugged me. I patted her back trying to end the contact as quickly as possible while holding my head as far away from her filth as I was able. She told me I was the best roommate ever. I questioned this as I did not feel that she had treated me well. She explained that the first week she had tried to get rid of me so that she could have the room to herself. This means that everything that happened after the first week had not been deliberate plotting, but her natural self. In hindsight, I think I was the best roommate she ever had because I only fantasized about hurting her but never acted on it. I highly doubt anyone else would have had such restraint. Sometimes I still think about her, I hope she has grown and matured, I have. I stuck it out with her because I was worried I might end up with someone worse, but now I know that sometimes a chance for something better is worth the risk of something worse.
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