Growing up, I thought the word "roommate" was synonymous with the word "friend."
For the majority of my life, when I thought of roommates, I thought of people like Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom, or all the other magical friends those kids in books meet at their boarding schools. I thought that, when I finally got a roommate, they'd instantly become my best friend.
That was proven wrong as soon as I got to college.
Freshman year started off just fine. I was only two doors down from my high school best friend and her roommate, another girl whom I had quickly become great friends with. I lived alone my first three days on campus because my roommate came to live on campus later than we were supposed to. She came in a full 24 hours before classes started, with her parents and 5 siblings in-tow to help her move in. She seemed really nice, and I was both excited and anxious to get to know her.
As soon as her parents left, she became a different person. She would sneak out in the middle of the night, not bothering to be quiet as I tried to sleep. She would bring in friends and sneak in alcohol on weeknights. When I came in to try and study for my exam the next day, she would shoo me out of the room so that she could watch reruns of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."
I dealt with it for that school year, eventually getting to the point where we would fall into a routine of constantly texting each other to coordinate who could do what, and when, within the walls we shared. We would coexist, mostly in a peaceful manner, but with the silent understanding that neither of us would ever be friends.
It sucked, but eventually, I managed to get over it. I kept telling myself that the next year, my sophomore year, would be better in the roommate department. I was so wrong.
My sophomore year may go down in history as being the most stressful year of my entire life, all because of my roommate situation.
Just like the year before, I started the semester living alone. I had one roommate, a really nice girl, for about four days before she inevitably dropped out of college. This left me for about a week without a roommate. Then, once East Carolina began to renovate one of the dorms on campus, and I suddenly had a lot of contenders for new roommates.
I was placed with a girl who turned out to be my worst nightmare. And I knew she would be as soon as she came through the doors with too much stuff. She was a freshman and had made the fatal mistake of over-packing. Within the first 10 minutes of meeting her, she asked if she could use my closet space that I had put my books in as storage for her extra shoes.
I tried not to be too bothered by her. In fact, I made an effort to try and become some sort of buddies with her, but everything started to spiral out of control.
It only took a few weeks, but gradually, she began to unfurl. What began as a stray shoe or pair of panties on my side of the room became piles of her dirty clothes laying on top of my bed when I'd come home from a full day of classes. What had originally been her waking up early in the morning for Bible study became her coming in at 5 am with three other drunk people, and asking me to leave the room. What had originally been "let's be friends" became accusations that I was stealing from her, and threats to have her stepdad "follow" me.
The next week or so became a living hell for me. I was going in and out of meetings with my resident advisor, calling the neighborhood service office to ask if the other girl had turned in her key yet, and nights of moving heavy furniture in front of the door to make sure she didn't come back.
In the end, she left my room. It seems like a very simple resolution to a conflict that was traumatizing, but that's what happened: she just moved out. That statement doesn't account for the pure terror I felt on mornings when I'd wake up to find the door unlocked and my stuff rearranged, or the stress I felt every time I had to talk to someone who worked with the school. That's exactly what happened, though.
I know it feels like the worst thing in the world as it's happening. Trust me, I've been there. I know the pain you're feeling; the questions of self-doubt, wondering if you're the bad roommate or if it's them. I know it's hard, but I promise you, once you move out of that situation, you'll never think back on it again.
