Whenever I read the stories like this involving someone that’s clearly completely crazy I always feel kind of sorry for the MVWRM, I’m sure my sympathy wouldn’t last long if I was the one living with them though!

what a creeper

Yikes! She sounds like she needs therapy! I’m glad you got out before she started going through your trash to take unmentionables…

Good story– I would have PAID to see your face when you witnessed her sofa shenanigans.

I, on the other hand, never feel sorry for crazy people anymore. ‘Sickness’ is the kindhearted explanation, but firsthand experience leads me to believe that most “craziness” is more like myriad false conclusions manifesting themselves through action.

I feel bad for them depending on what kind of crazy they are.

Her brand of crazy? Meh. I feel somewhat bad but not too much.

i agree…half of the ‘crazies’ are usually just spoiled and manipulative and can’t stand not being the center of attention. At age 4 ok….at 24? i have no patience.

The people I’ve known who might fall into the category of having ‘mental illness’ or ‘personality disorder’ manage to handle the mundane tasks of their daily lives with absolute clarity (balancing a checkbook, driving a car, feeding themselves, etc) but their interactions with others are fraught with chaos.

If mental illness has a biological root cause, why would it manifest itself so selectively? If you’re lucid enough to — say, remember your ATM password — why aren’t you lucid enough to remember that what you’re telling me is a gross lie? More likely, you simply never had the internal dialogue with yourself that rational people have had, about the various pitfalls of lying.

I once knew someone diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He was perfectly composed & sane-acting around me at the beginning of our acquaintance, it was only after we were friends for several months that he starting throwing irrational tantrums in my presence. Once, while in the middle of one such tantrum, another of my acquaintance (who he didn’t know very well) entered the room. The tantrum stopped instantaneously– he was suddenly calm, composed and rational.

That was the moment I began to suspect that what’s conventionally deemed “mental illness” may be nothing more than habitual self indulgence & ingrained fucked-up premises.

I don’t know if I’d classify it as mental illness, but this chick definitely has issues.

Lisa – i wish to subscribe to your newsletter

I think a few people her are confusing mental illness with severe co-dependency issues. This girl isn’t nuts, she just desperately wants someone to love her. Unfortunately, this desire manifests itself in a way guaranteed to push a lot of people away.

That’s the whole problem with the concept of ‘mental illness’– the definition is so vague as to be meaningless, the consensus on what constitutes “illness” varies with as much rhyme & reason as lapel widths & skirt lengths.

@Lisa I don’t think most of the people here could be described as having a mental illness. I would imagine many have personality disorders, have had bad childhood experiences, are badly brought up or are just simply unpleasant people. I feel sorry for them in a kind of abstract way, it’s not their fault they’ve ended up with these issues, but unfortunately unlike mental illness problems such as personality disorders are basically permanent. People with genuine mental illness, (depression, bipolar etc) can usually be treated with medication/cognative therapy.

I mean, it’s not one or the other. You can be mentally ill and ALSO be an asshole. I don’t necessarily agree with the diagnosis that some people are making here – mental illness is really, really complicated and not an all-or- nothing thing, so that someone might be capable of acting totally normal until they can’t anymore, hence Lisa’s “normal a lot of the time” comment. And JoJo, yeah, bipolar disorder CAN be treated with medication and therapy, but it often takes a LOT of tries before they get the dosage right, and even that doesn’t get a person 100% back to normal – it’s not like you wander into a therapist’s office, say “I am bipolar,” and they tell you “Take Medication two times a day” and you say ok, and then holy jeebus! You’re cured!

Sorry for the rant – I just think it does a disservice to people with actual mental illness to say that they “just want attention.”

**should have added as a disclaimer – of course there ARE people who use it as an excuse, and those people suck. It’s just really hard – harder than you’d think – to accurately determine who those people are vs who really has a problem.

I have to say that I think most anti-social behavior can be boiled down to anxiety disorders. These people will do anything, even if it is harmful to them, if it relieves even a bit of the anxiety. Relief is an addiction. They cannot cope with life’s pain and disappointments so they supplement with their personal drug, OCD or hording or a silly fantasy about being their roommate and having her boyfriend.

Sika, I don’t know if this is what you meant, but you made people with anxiety sound like they’re on par with meth addicts or something, like they’d whore out their baby sisters for a “relief” fix. In reality, a lot of people suffer from anxiety – not just an inability to cope with life’s pain and dissappointments, but an inability to cope with things like breakfast-cereal choices and whether to put on socks or underwear first without completely panicking. They would do anything for relief because it’s a shitty way to live, and most would give anything to be able to just chill the eff out and live a normal life. But it’s like anything else – if you’re a decent human being, you try to keep your issues from affecting those around you. If you’re a jackass, you assume your troubles give you an excuse to treat everyone like shit, and you proceed through life as such.

Is is me or are a disproportionatly high amount of people on MVWRM/MVWD called ‘K’?

On the mental health debate, I think the real question is whether or not stupidity (IQ or social stupidity) is a mental health issue? Why do we feel sorry for people who are medically retarded when plain stupid people presumably have no more capacity to overcome their affliction?

Regardless of the reason why the roommate of the story was behaving the way she was, it must have been a nightmare to put up with. Congratulations on surviving, OP