1
The Roommates from Hell
“Holy shit, is that my shirt?” I thought to myself when I walked into my dorm room and stared at my roommate in disbelief. She was posing in front of the mirror wearing not just my cutest shirt, but the shirt that I was going to wear that night to the party. That’s when I imagined both my roommates going through my drawers, giggling as they tried on all my shirts, pants and even my underwear. It made me cringe and it made me hate them both.
I started to hate them the first few days after I had met them.I had just gotten back to the dorm one night when Farrah was braiding Jenna’s hair and out of the blue they told me that they thought that I acted air headed and dumb. “Its just the way that you talk to people,” said Jenna, “They’re going to think that you’re dumb and easy.” My mouth dropped open. Yes, I felt hurt. I knew that was not true but nothing inside me could make me have the strength to defend myself. So I brushed it off and silently jumped into bed.
I felt so horrible about having to hear them call me those names. I had to do something, I had to punish them in some way. No, I needed the guts to come out and tell them that they made me mad. But instead of that I said, “Um…hey guys. I just want to tell you that if you want to use my computer then ask me first...please”. Yes, the words came out. Nervous and unsure words but I did it, I finally stuck up for myself, even though it had nothing to do with my air headedness comment that they had attacked me with. It didn’t work though. The next day I walk into my room to see Farrah playing Solitaire on my computer while talking on my cell phone to Jenna. The only thing that ran through my head was, “Its okay, I’ll let this one slide for now.”
My friend Courtney decided to stop by my room one day so we could hang out. I nervously let her in hoping that she would be well-treated by my roommates, especially Jenna, the rude“I’ll say whatever the hell I want to say to anybody” kind of person with the tough girl walk and the vulgar approach to people. I was actually surprised at how politely she treated Courtney… right up until the part where she turns to me right after Courtney leaves and says, “Now that was definitely an airhead” and walks to her room. I followed her into the room and stood there, ready to scream, punch, kick, turn her desk upside down, basically defend my friend in any way possible. In the meantime, she’s shuffling through her desk, about to engage in a session of studying when she finally notices my presence in her room. My lips quiver as I get ready to say something.
“What is it?” she asks me, placing her pen on the desk and waiting for my response.
“Uh, its nothing.” I said stupidly as I walked out of her room.Oh, but I did make a promise. Next time I would stick up for my friends instead of being a coward. But the story repeated itself. They did the same thing to Susie, Jillian, Mike, Gus, Alex, Roberta…
There would be days where I would find my hair dryer and my brush missing from my drawers and of course I would find it in the hands of Farrah, the Queen of “borrowers without asking”, as she ran it through her and Jenna’s greasy hair, thinking that they looked marvelous. My water bottles also turned up missing, the ones that my mom had bought me to put in my closet for my convenience. There would be times where they would both borrow my cute tops and then throw them on my bed smelling of cigarettes and body odor. It made me want to throw up.
All of it pissed me off of course, but did I say anything to them? Nope, I just took a deep breath every time and decided that I would isolate myself from them both until things got better. They stepped all over me and treated me with inferiority, which is not what I was good at dealing with. As this attitude of mine continued, things just got worse and the dorm room became the hell hole that I dreaded to be in every day. Every day when it was time to go back to the dorm, I would hope that they wouldn’t be there because housing had messed up the room assignments, or that a huge comet had smashed into the room while they were in there going through my things. Either one would be great. Of course none of that happened, so I’d just come home and sit in my corner feeling sorry for myself and tell myself how badly I had to move out and get new roommates that weren’t so crazy.
One day I even got the guts to tell them they should move into the same room together, since they had gotten so close. I thought that I was doing them a favor, being helpful to them because their little minds couldn’t think of such a simple concept as moving in together. I knew they would say no so that they could continue to raid my belongings. That same day right before I left for class, I hear my name being called back in my room. “Karla, come back right after class because Jenna and I want to have a talk with you.”said Farrah calmly, almost so calmly it sounded like a mother trying patiently to discipline her child. I just nodded my head again and let them treat me like I was their little bitch. I didn’t want to come back after class. Hell, I never wanted to come back at all, but I did it anyway because I was so used to being stepped all over by them. When I got back from class they were sitting in the room, patting the chair in front of them for me to sit in. I put my things down and waited. Jenna’s eyes burned into mine when she started talking, almost as if I had hurt her in some way. I still kept my cool and waited for my chance to talk.
“Karla, we need to work things out with our housing situation. When you asked us why we don’t move in together, we took that as telling us that you don’t like us at all. You don’t even try to make this work. All you do is isolate yourself from us…” Farrah steps in and continues her sentence. “… and that makes it hard for us to get to know you. We know nothing about you. Oh and also, It really hurt me when you put that password on your computer so I couldn’t use it.” Farrah frowned the whole time she talked which made me stare more at her forehead creases than listen to what she was saying. As they continued with their arguments, I felt my blood boil and my fists clench. My throat was dry and stomach was turning. I had to say something to shut them up. Suddenly my mouth opened as I started off by telling them about me having that one problem I have with telling people what really bothered me and not standing up for myself, then I said, “Please disregard what I just said for a few minutes.”. That’s when I exploded and let them know about each and every little thing that they said or did that made me want to push them out the window. The insulting of my friends, the dirty shirts, the water bottles, the hair dryer and brush, the borrowing of my clothes, the rudeness, the way they treated me, everything came out that had been bottled up for so long. “I don’t appreciate at all having you guys go through my stuff when I’m not here. Wait, even when I’m here, just don’t do it!” I was feeling so good I probably made up more stories to them so they could get my point. They stared at me in amazement. I expected them to get up and argue with me, deny everything I had accused them of. I closed my eyes after I was done and squeezed the sides of the chair, as if I was on a rollercoaster that was about to go through the loop. To my surprise, “Wow, I had no idea you felt this way about everything that has been going on. You’re finally being honest with us. We have been living really uncomfortably since the beginning. Let’s do something about it”, Farrah announced, sounding almost friendly and accepting me into her “Jenna and Farrah club”. Later on that afternoon, we constructed a plan together about how to make this dorm room, “the home away from home” by actually talking and getting to know one another. And you know what? Our plan is working just fine. Today I yelled at them because they developed some film from their camera and a few pictures showed them wearing my clothes again. It felt good to scold them and good to hear them apologize to me.
All we’ve needed to make this work was a little more respect and honesty. I never knew that living with people I knew nothing about was going to be so difficult. I figured that all it required was being nice, sharing our life stories, and kissing some ass just so we’d get along. I never thought about having to set rules for them so that we wouldn’t run into problems.
Today some guy said something to me that was rude and inappropriate. You know what? I told him to fuck off.