Bugging Out

I had this roommate in college who I paired up with in a two-bedroom suite. I hadn’t known her before, but after we moved in together, she straight out told me that she didn’t care about cleaning or about things being clean, so I had to put up with dirty dishes filled with growing things and reeking, actual dirt gathering in the shower after she’d use it once and make-up smears all over the bathroom. After a few months living together, she didn’t even say hello when she walked into a room.

It was Christmas vacation time and I was able to leave about a week before she did. She lived upstate, so I knew she would probably travel later, and I then returned a week before she did. I wheeled in my suitcase and then went to go into the bathroom. I looked over into the bathtub and see that it was so dirty from mold growing out from underneath her non-slip bath mat, that there were actual bugs crawling all around the shower and on the floor. I looked at my towels and her make-up foundation was smeared all over my hand towel, as well as on the bathroom sink.

Before I even was able to unpack after a six-hour flight, I had to get on my hands and knees to clean her bath mat, wash down all the bugs (they were all over underneath the mat) and mop the floor. Upon cleaning the bathroom, I discovered that she had also used half my unopened box of tampons and had also tried stealing some of my silverware (when she wasn’t home I found the missing utensils a few days later in her cupboard, hidden under some food packages). She never said anything about the tampons and I’ll never understand why she would try to steal my cheap silverware.