Scaredy Cat
While living in the ‘dorms’ at a large amusement park, I found myself rooming with a girl who seemed really nice at first. Things started getting weird when she confessed that she was terrified of the dark and insisted on leaving the overhead light on.
She was also afraid of heights so she begged for the bottom bunk. I didn’t want to get into a fight or be mean so I just resigned myself to pulling the covers over my head at night. It was also a very rainy summer. She spent every stormy night wide awake and jumped every time it thundered. Sometimes, she begged to use my iPod to drown out the sound.
It was a couple of weeks before I realized she didn’t seem to shower or wash her clothes. I don’t know if this was because the showers were small cubicles and she was afraid of small spaces or scared of showering next to people in other cubicles. Maybe she was also afraid of washing machines too. Either way, the room slowly began to smell rather awfully of unwashed clothes and unwashed girl.
One day I came back to the room after work and saw that she had bought half a dozen heavily-scented candles, so she was obviously aware of the problem and this was her solution. I was pretty fed up at this point and requested a room change, which was when I found out that she had been telling anyone who would listen that I was disgusting and she had bought the candles to hide my rancid stench. Soon after, it became unbearably clear who was telling the stinking truth.
I moved 700 miles back to my hometown last year and moved in with a girl from church, figuring “how bad could it be?!”
Boy was I wrong. She was a compulsive liar; lying about things that didn’t even make sense…like the bookshelf fell on her (I checked, it hadn’t moved an inch and there were breakables that weren’t a hair out of place). She’d eat my food and blame it on the cat, yeah…the CAT got up on the table, unwrapped my donut and ate it. She would let people stay at our house all the time and they’d just show up without asking me. Once I was heading to my room from the shower in a towel and they all walked in the front door and set up camp in the living room. And she NEVER EVER once cleaned. She “did the dishes” all of four times and she couldn’t have done more than run them under cold water from the looks of them. She would constantly clog up the toilet and smell up the house, I thought living with a girl wouldn’t create these problems for pete’s sake!
All of the bills were in her name, and I would just write her checks for my half. Somehow the cable/internet/POWER would turn off and it was alwaaaays the companies fault.
What finally made me throw in the towel was when she was in “Ireland” (I’ll explain THAT in a minute) and I came home to a 72 hour notice…turns out she hadn’t paid the rent in THREE MONTHS! I called/texted several times and she somehow got those in Ireland. You guessed it-she FAKED the trip (though to this day she won’t admit it) and was really staying at her parents 3 hours away.
I live roommate-free now with my cat, who miraculously NEVER eats my food anymore, and I could not be happier!
