Note to readers: This post is a little more disgusting than the average MVWR post. 

My Very Worst Roommate was a good friend from interstate who was planning on moving to Sydney with a friend of hers. Just as she’d quit her job and planned the move, her friend backed out, leaving my friend in the lurch, so I stepped up and said I’d share a place with her.

One of those decisions that as soon as you make it you wish you could take it back, you know? That feeling of, Oh no, I’m gonna regret that! She had moved interstate to avoid debt collectors, although I didn’t know that at the time. Of course, they followed her, so all hours of the day and night we had people at the door or on the phone asking for her and asking for money. She simply refused to pay back money she owed; she felt it was a grand imposition and just disgusting of them to ask for money from a young woman.

I knew she was messy, but I figured that I wasn’t that particular and as long as the mess was only in her room, it wouldn’t matter. I was so very, very wrong. She would use an entire roll of toilet paper each day. That would have been all right, but she refused to pay for it. As I didn’t want to be without, I’d be the one who bought it all the time. Eventually, I refused to share, and when I bought my rolls I kept them in my room. So, she just went without. I don’t know if she used her hands, or if, as I suspect, she just ignored the inevitable skidmarks. She wouldn’t use sanitary protection at home, so her mattress was soaked through with blood. This attracted cockroaches. The cockroaches were also attracted by the build up of rotisserie chicken carcasses she kept on her bed. She only ate meat, watermelon, and mangos, and the meat scraps, mango and watermelon skins just built up where she’d eat in bed. The cockroaches would sneak out of her room and creep down into the common areas. Along with the smell. That rancid, decomposing animal fugue would funk up the entire house. Coming home at night, I’d have to leave the front door open and run around opening windows to try to get some air in the place before I could breathe. That smell, along with the smell of urine, was like a solid, malevolent, living thing.

She also refused to wear sanitary protection around the house until I screamed at her because I was sick of cleaning her blood stains off my couch. When she did finally use sanitary protection, she’d flush the pads down the toilet. This blocked the toilet (of course) and cost about $150 each time to get fixed. When I got angry after the first few times, she just refused to throw them away properly. If she couldn’t flush them down the toilet, then they were going on the floor. I had whined to a friend about that and she’d said ‘Oh, you’re exaggerating! No one does that!’, but then one day my friend and I were sitting chatting in the living room when the flatmate walked into the room with a used pad in her hand. She talked to us, and when she realised what we were staring at (in horror) she just looked at me and threw it on the floor of the living room as if to say,’What are you going to do about that?’ My visiting friend’s horror was such that the flatmate eventually picked it up, but no one ever wanted to stand on that patch of floor again. I didn’t have the heart to tell my visiting friend that most of the living room floor had come in for that treatment.

One of the worst episodes was when I went away for a three days. A stray cat had moved in with us and had kittens, leaving us with four unexpected cats. I was going to put them in a kennel while I was away and she got offended: ‘Don’t you think I can look after the cats for three days?’ Well, no, I didn’t think she could, but I backed down. I put down plenty of food for the first day, told her to change the food twice a day and keep the litter box clean or they would stop using it.

This was the middle of summer and our house got very hot, like an oven. When I came back, she said: ‘I didn’t have to give them fresh food, they weren’t hungry. They never ate what you left for them’. Of course the cats were starving as in the high summer heat their food had gone rancid and was full of maggots. The worst was that the litter tray was not only full to overflowing, the cats had then crapped all around it, all over the floor, in the kitchen and the living room, and even peed in appliances such as my VCR. The cats had walked through the shit, and also my flatmate had walked through the shit, leaving shit prints all around the kitchen and all up and down the hallway. Seriously, I had about six meters of shit printed carpet to scrub when I came back.

She wouldn’t do the dishes, but she’d put dirty dishes in the sink and pour some water over them. Then leave it. Then put a pizza box in the sink on top. Then a chicken carcass. Then some more dishes and some more water. Then maybe some watermelon or mango skins. Then some more dishes and more water. This would go on for a couple of days until I just wanted to scream. It would take my thickest gloves before I could tackle that mess. She painted a set of bookshelves by flicking paint at them, also flicking paint on the carpet, the cupboards, the walls, my couch, my kitchen furniture, my bookshelves, my books, etc etc. She refused to clean this up so I spent several days scraping with a knife once it had dried.

She tracked my pay dates on a calendar so she could hit me up every month for a loan. It took about four months before I finally put an end to that. I couldn’t pay off my own not inconsiderable student loans because I was constantly having to cover her for rent and expenses. She borrowed my books and gave them away to other people, or lost them, or left them sitting in puddles of water in the bathroom. Her excuse? ‘What do you care? You’ve already read them!’

She would record over my VHS tapes where I had favourite rare shows collected. Same excuse, I’d already seen them, so why bother keeping them? She lost her key ring. By dropping it in her bedroom… somewhere. The place was so filthy she couldn’t find even a large key ring plus keys. She had some of my keys – copies of my post office box, so I had to get that recut. She refused to get the house keys recut, but expected me to come home early every night to let her in.

I kept telling her I’d get another set done, but she was determined that one day they would turn up, but she never actually cleaned her room to try and find them. She owned one pair of shoes, they stank. She wanted to borrow mine but thankfully she was many sizes bigger than me. Same with her clothes – she had very little and only owned one fugly jacket. She would have destroyed my shoes and clothes too, if she could have fit in to them.

There were also other petty annoyances. She would have her alarm snooze button go off six or seven times. I was on a later shift, so I would get up later, after having lost sleep to her alarm, and go for my shower. Because she always overslept, she would be in the shower when I wanted it, making me late for work. Then she’d use all my expensive shampoos and soaps and conditioners and skin care products.

I kept cleaning and cleaning even though it was crazy because I just couldn’t stand the filth, and I knew she would just leave it. She’d call me ‘mother’ since I did all the housework and seemed to be financially supporting her, too. She just shed filth and trailed cockroaches wherever she went. We lasted six months, and of all of that, it was her insane argumentativeness that finally broke this camel’s back. I’m just not argumentative or all that confrontational, usually if people want to be wrong about stuff, I’m happy to let them be wrong. But she would pick fights over stupid things, with the excuse that if she picked enough fights, eventually, one day, she’d be right about something. She was never right. I threw her out. I gave away every piece of furniture of mine that she’d touched/bled on. The house was so filthy and damaged, despite my best attempts to clean and care, that we lost the full $1,000 deposit and I was glad to see it go as long as she went with it.

Our friendship did not survive this, and I never missed her for a second. I have to confess, I did some bad stuff too. Toward the end I was so enraged by living in such filth, I used to kick lumps of cat shit into her room. She never noticed, though.

I met my My Very Worst Roommate, Tina, at work. We both worked at a restaurant together and she seemed cool. Turns out she lived very far from the restaurant and needed a place to stay. I lived only a few blocks away and offered to rent her my living room (we live in an expensive city where this is common). She saw it, happily agreed, then moved in.

At first, things were great. We got really close and became good friends. I ignored the fact that she wouldn’t bathe too often and sometimes smelled. I don’t know what I was thinking, that should have been a warning sign. She also always kept the room a mess and never helped me clean common areas. I had to beg her for a week to clean the kitchen and bathroom, which I had been cleaning all along, then got tired of waiting and just left the bathroom for her to clean, which she finally did after a week.

One day we decided to take a roadtrip together, and that’s when things went downhill. I guess the 12 hours of driving really got to her, and she started snapping at me for no reason. Throughout our trip, we only did what she wanted to do. She didn’t care that I had never been to that part of the country before (she used to live there) and barely took me sightseeing. It was my vacation, too. We got into a big argument on the last night of our trip. On the way back, we barely spoke. She was only 19 and a pretty bad driver, so when she stopped really short on the way home I screamed, thinking we would hit something. She told me, “I swear to God, if you scream like that again…” When we got closer to home, she became super agitated with the traffic and again took it out on me by giving me an attitude.

When we got home we went our separate ways. The next day I had to work, and she came to the restaurant to hang out. She apologized to me for her bad behavior, and we hugged it out. All seemed well. The day after that, we were scheduled to work together. At our preshift meeting, the manager was talking about something random. He turned to Tina to ask her a completely neutral subject (something like what her favorite dish was at the restaurant) and she snapped. She gave him a nasty look and stormed off. We were all baffled. The rest of the shift, she kept shooting me nasty looks and talking with a girl who didn’t like me. They kept looking my way and laughing. Real mature. This continued throughout the whole shift.

I got out earlier than her and ran home to cry. I texted her not to sleep at my apartment tonight. She came to pick up a night bag to stay at a friend’s house. When I asked her what her problem was she said she didn’t want to be rude (too late) and say what it was, then stormed out. She never agreed to talk it out with me and ended up moving out after that.

She did leave me a parting gift, though- a room full of trash and her body odor! The floor seemed to be her garbage can(though thank God there was at least no food on it) and I found everything from bank statements to condom wrappers on the floor. She also left anything she didn’t want for me to get rid of, including a futon stained with food and something that looked like a bodily fluid (I’l give you a hint- it was white).

I had a friend, A, who called and asked me if she could stay with me for a few nights because she was having some problems she needed to escape from. I had an extra room, so it was no problem.

Well over the months I became increasingly put out in my own home. Although she was staying in another room, my belongings seemed like a free-for-all. I had a makeup desk in my room where I would get ready daily and she set up shop on one half of the desk, but used my makeup and all my hair gadgets. Once she was ready, she would go to my closet and pick out her clothes for the day. Because I was going to school at the time and she was not, I would study in the evenings and she would have Monday through Thursday night parties inviting over other aimless people.

The most disgusting thing she did was she would only take baths, then not rinse out the tub and leave a very gross dirt ring around the tub for me to come along and clean out. This one still gives me the creeps today. Well, six months later, I tried to rack my brain for excuses to try to get her to move out. (Remember she was only a guest, supposed to only be sleeping over a couple nights.) I enlisted the help of my uncle asking if I could say he will need to move in because he worked in the area. So I set it up with her that she had to be out on the Sunday as he would be there on Monday. I had some errands to do that day and gave her some time to collect what little she had.

I got home and WHEW she was finally gone … along with half my belongings including two of my winter coats. I chose to not make a big deal out of it with her as I chalked it up to being the price I had to pay to get my ‘roommate’ out.

Now I am very careful, when I have guests. If I know they have problems, I try to make their stay as uncomfortable as possible. When her equally problematic sister (but more honest) came to ‘stay a couple of days’ and was turning into a roommate, I took a different approach. I stayed up all night bugging so she got no sleep, wouldn’t make meals, instead sat down with a bag of chips and kept a ficticous diary about how I am falling for her boyfriend. LMAO!  Note to friends: Don’t move in on my makeup table.

My Very Worst Roommate has since been dubbed the Rabbit Killer. A year after graduating from college, I moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a girl who had been one of my best friends in middle-school and high school. We hadn’t seen much of each other during college because we were on opposite ends of the country, but when we both ended up in the same town, it seemed like a perfect arrangement. After a few months of living with her, I discovered that she had never quite grown up. She didn’t have a high paying job but as soon as a new video game system, video game or DVD box set would come out she would instantly buy it. Then when the first of the month rolled around and I asked for her half of the rent and utilities, she would act like I was the biggest creep and would go into sob stories about how she didn’t even have enough money for food.

On top of that, she was insanely dirty. I’m not the neatest person myself, but I try to be sanitary if not tidy. She would do the strangest things, like leave a completely untouched Jamba Juice in the middle of the living room floor until it molded over. Why would you buy a smoothie and not even drink any? Building management even had to come into her room once to fix a leak and wrote her up because she was so messy that they deemed the space dangerous.

It all came to a head when she decided she wanted to get a pet rabbit. I put my foot down and said no to pets because I knew that she wouldn’t be able to take care of it. She already was incredibly messy and I knew that it would just make the apartment even grosser. She argued that she could keep it outside on the balcony, but I told her that it would be too cold for something to live out there. A few months later, I walked out onto our shared balcony and discovered a pet rabbit. She told me that she knew I had said no, but that she knew that if I saw the rabbit, it would win me over. I was angry but decided to drop it. Fast forward to a particularly frosty Thanksgiving weekend, and my roommate came into my room crying and asking for a box with a lid. I asked why, and lo and behold, the rabbit had frozen to death. She insisted that she didn’t know how it died because she knew everything about rabbits and they are fine in the cold. I decided to not make matters worse by telling her “I told you so” and gave her a box and a hug.

Fast forward a month later when I had friends visiting over the Christmas holidays. I hadn’t been on the balcony in a while but the friends were smokers and so we went out there to have a smoke. Then I hear, “Hey, what’s in this box?” I look, and it’s the same box I had given the roommate for the bunny, with bunny still inside! I was completely mortified that a dead rabbit had been on our balcony for a month. When I brought it up with my roommate later and asked her to get rid of it, she started crying and said I was heartless and that it had to have a proper burial and there was no place to bury it where we live. I finally convinced her to take it with her when she went home for the holidays and bury it there.

The final straw came a few months later when I went back out on the balcony and discovered a new pet rabbit living there. I decided to move. A little while after moving out, I heard from some mutual friends that the new rabbit had killed itself by jumping off the balcony. Even it couldn’t stand to live with her anymore.

My very worst roommate was once my best friend, but things quickly changed when we moved into a group house and I discovered some rather disgusting habits. I met N freshman year and we became fast friends. We lived next door to each other in the dorms sophomore year.  Although we went to a celebrated party school, she began doing some hardcore drugs that I wasn’t into.  But we remained good friends and we signed on for a group house with a couple other close friends for our junior year. The day I moved in over the summer before fall quarter began, I noticed that she was very upset. She admitted that she had stolen some money from her last roommate, who I knew very well and was friends with. At first I thought no big deal, $20 or something, she’ll get over it.  Turns out that N had taken her former roommate’s credit card and taken over $2,000 from an ATM over the course of one quarter.  The police questioned her and she ratted out some dealers on campus in order to not receive any jail time. So now she had an irate former roommate and local drug dealers on her bad side.

She had a job that summer at a local clothing boutique. She would often come home and give me “presents” like shirts or little knick-knacks.  I was naive enough to think she was just getting a discount or they had extra merchandise. Turns out she had been stealing from them for months and eventually got fired. I would only find out about this months later when I also found out that she got arrested at a grocery store for stealing cigarettes.  So even though she was a rampant thief and was lying to me, I thought she was just going through a rough patch and would get back on track.  Even after she got kicked out of school for blatantly plagiarizing a paper for a psychology class, I figured that she would either re-enroll or wait a year and go somewhere else. I still had faith in her and wanted to be her friend.

She paid rent, but almost never had money for bills (which were minimal as there were five of us sharing a three bedroom house).  Yet she always had plenty of weed, coke and ecstasy — the latter of the two were becoming an increasing habit and starting to scare me. She convinced me that she had it all under control. I was no angel myself and we often threw parties in the house.  We were all underage at the time so I didn’t feel I had the right to judge what she wanted to do to her body. Although the lack of paying bills was starting to get to all of us.

She was having sex with lots of random guys at this time, most of whom she met online and would have one night stands with, and never hear from again. She shared a bedroom with one of my roommates, J. They had a large living space, which they promised to use if they ever had overnight guests. On more than one occasion N would be in bed with some random guy having sex and J would flat out yell at them to get out. Sometimes she would, other times she would wait till J fell back asleep then continue entertaining her guests. One day she came home after being gone for two days with no contact with any of us on the arm of a much older man.  We were all 19 or 20, this guy had to be in his early 40′s. She claimed he was a friend of her dad’s from the Navy. At this time I was still giving her the benefit of the doubt so I believed her. But the last straw for both J and I was when we discovered this “friend of her dad’s” was actually some creepy dude she met online who would drive from two hours away where he lived, pick her up and take her to a motel, then leave her hundreds of dollars at a time. She quite literally had become a crack whore.

So the stealing, lying, not paying bills, drug binges and prostitution just became too much. We confronted her mother about these issues when she called asking where N was because she hadn’t heard from her in weeks. She then confronted us and accused us of telling our mutual friends about the whole stealing incident from her former roommate. We told her right then and there that she had a week to get out, get help and clean up her life. It was really hard to lose such a close friend, but having no self-esteem and an addictive personality turned her into a monster. She asked me to still be her friend and I said I would if she promised to get her life together. This was about 10 years ago. I just read in our hometown news that she was arrested as an accessory to armed robbery.

MVWR experience started when two of my housemates decided it would be a good idea to get it on. Of course, this was not a good idea. They dated for about two months before it all went to hell. He was way more into her than she was into him and it didn’t take long for him to turn into crazy drunk stalker guy. I felt bad for him for a while but his behaviour got so annoying my empathy did not last. He’d go out, get wasted, rock up at 5AM and bang on her door for ages demanding that they “talk.” She, of course, was at the house less and less and pretty much stopped coming home completely when she got a new boyfriend so the drunken banging, screaming and crying ended up being pretty much for my benefit only (our other house mate was training to be a nurse and was hardly ever there either).

It all culminated in the night he came home steaming drunk, started the now customary banging/screaming/crying routine and she was actually home for the night. She told him where to go, slammed the door in his face and locked it behind her. This did not go down well because he then proceeded to go batshit crazy. All I heard from the sanctuary of my own now locked bedroom was a lot of banging, crashing and the sort of noises you’d expect when a seriously drunk guy is trashing the shit out of your living room and hallway. After it had been quiet for a while, this girl and I ventured out to survey the damage he’d done. He’d totalled the place–mirrors smashed, my computer and wireless router smashed, deep gauges in the walls where things had been thrown around, it was epic.

What we were kind of confused about though was the fact that the carpet was soaking wet. Confused, that is, until we moved the strategically placed towel that was on the floor that it turned out had been placed there to stop the gushing flow of boiling water from the fresh hole in the hallway radiator. That’s right, he’d put a hole in the radiator, covered it with a towel, and proceeded to pass out on the floor while hot water pissed out all around him. We couldn’t wake him up for love or money. A late night plumber was eventually called after we managed to rouse him and several hundred pounds later in emergency plumbing bills, the hole was fixed. Our possessions however, were not. My computer was thankfully salvageable with the only real lasting damage affecting my USB ports, which had been unceremoniously torn out of the tower itself. I really have no idea how he managed to do that.

We were stuck in that place until the end of the school year and things got progressively worse until we all pretty much hated each other by the end of it. The atmosphere in that place was pure hostility. I remember coming home after a holiday once to discover that crazy stalker dude had somehow severed the ADSL line. I have no idea why, apparently it happened at party he had. Because that’s what people do for fun at parties, right? I never saw or spoke to any of them ever again after I was able to get the hell out of there. Worst year of my life.

MVWR was a friend I met in the dorms this past year. I always wondered why her roommate couldn’t stand her and treated her so poorly. I found out. We moved in a two bedroom apartment, which I found by myself and it was a joint lease. So when we moved in, she immediately suggested we take bubble baths together and have sleepovers in each others rooms. NO!

Then we went to Walmart to shop for apartment appliances. We needed a microwave, toaster, silverware, trashcan, trash bags–all the things that are “joint” purchases for the whole apartment. My part of the total was $300. She said, “Oh well I’ll let your take care of this stuff and I’ll decorate the apartment.” At first, I left it, not wanting to create a fight but was hoping she’d pay me back half. So three weeks later, she paid me (barely) half back. Then came grocery shopping time and she told me that I should buy the groceries and she would drive us to Walmart. The mega store is less than a mile away and we have a free bus and I again said no. She constantly ate my food, used my detergent and didn’t pay for anything. She said I should pay the electricity and she pay cable. I wanted to split it, but she refused to give me her Social Security number, so I couldn’t put her name on the electricity.

So by October, we were falling out. I already didn’t like her too much. She was obnoxious. She would beat on my door constantly when I tried hiding from her and would always invite herself to where ever I went. I never liked hanging out with her and there about 10 people at the university that liked her. She stopped paying her rent and since it was a joint lease, we were equally responsible. My rent was paid in advance so she used my surplus to cover up her lack of payments. There was nothing the apartment people can do, nor did they care.

She has now left for the summer and I’m sure she’s going to screw the people she signed a lease with next year because she’s not coming back. She didn’t have money issues–she just wanted to screw me over.

MVWR was my first. M and I had been acquaintances for years and became very close about one year before we lived together. We moved into an apartment my first year of college. I came from a less-than-ideal household and had very little money to my name as I was completely supporting myself. However, I’m an extremely proud person and would never accept help from anyone – my rent was never late, bills were paid (and they were in my name), and I bought my own food. M sneakily figured out about how much I made at my jobs and would casually find out how many hours I worked during the week so she could calculate my paycheck. She would bring it up and ask me how I planned to pay for this or that, or if I came home with a pizza how I could afford to buy it, and my answer was simple: budgeting. M seemed to think that because she had (way) more money than I did that I was out to get her.

She insisted that the cost of anything having to do with the apartment be split halfway immediately. I was okay with buying the paper towels while she bought the toilet paper, but she still insisted that we exchange money. She constantly bought unnecessary knick knacks for the house (without telling me first) and insisted on immediate payment. Sometimes this would catch me off guard and as I was on a very tight budget I wouldn’t be able to pay her until my next paycheck – but I still did, even if I didn’t think we needed placemats or a new napkin holder. M and I started out with a chore schedule, but it didn’t really work out because the two of us were busy with work and school. Eventually, every Sunday I cleaned the apartment from top to bottom by myself. M would conveniently be away on Sundays. At first I thought she worked every Sunday, but soon found out that she went to her mother’s “for dinner” – a dinner that apparently lasted from morning until night.

She soon admitted that she felt that her contribution was “monetary” and that she didn’t feel that she should have to share chores with me because she bought things for the apartment (even though I paid her for everything). She and I both had boyfriends who were over a lot, but her boyfriend was an absolute pig, just like her. I once found an overturned half-empty pop can in the living room and watched it to see if either of them would pick it up. Two weeks later, I did. He was a good cook, but our kitchen was constantly a mess from his meals. If there was ever any left over and I was offered some, they would hold it over my head for weeks that he “cooked for me” so the least I could do was clean up. I once accidentally ate a frozen pizza that belonged to M. Instead of saying something to me about it, she wrote DO NOT EAT in permanent marker on any food she bought (this is after I had recovered from an eating disorder – she would also say insensitive things to try to trigger it during fights, but that’s a different story).

M would constantly start fights with me but would never speak to me face to face. I didn’t have a text messaging plan on my cell phone, but could receive messages.  At first, she’d shut herself in her room and send me nasty, passive-aggressive text messages knowing that I couldn’t reply. I would stand outside her door and ask her to come out and discuss it. Eventually she would just storm out and sit in her car to send me the messages. I had decided that I’d had enough and was going to ask her to move out. Another friend of mine from school was looking for a place and was content to wait until I had sorted everything out. A mutual friend of ours had recently moved back from Florida and we had a Welcome Home party at our apartment, so I decided to wait until after the party to discuss it with her. I later found out (weeks after) that M and our friend had already planned to move in together and she had told everybody at the party.

She put on quite a show, telling everyone how much I depended on her and that she had stayed so long because she didn’t want to “screw me over” and that I was going to go back to live with my parents.  M sorrowfully told everyone how guilty she felt for “sending” me back with them, but they assured her that it wasn’t her fault I couldn’t “pull my weight.”  As I said before, I’m an extremely proud person and this insulted me. I flipped a shit and finally let M have it. Our last few weeks together were chilly and filled with M’s passive aggressive battle tactics (she threw my clothes on the floor to take back a laundry basket that a mutual friend had given us as a housewarming present filled with cleaner because she was “better friends” with her so it was hers, left a half full garbage bag on the floor in the kitchen – which was immediately attacked by our cats – to take back the garbage can she bought even though I paid for half of it, refusing to answer me about the final bills which I eventually just paid by myself, and turning all of our friends against me – what I get for not discussing our situation with any mutual friends), but the best came at the end. She left one thing behind in her room – a photo of the two of us. I burned it.

I moved in with my best friend, M, over the summer. I was so ecstatic because it was the first time we were both getting a place of our own. We talked excitedly for hours about all the plans we had upon move in. During these countless hours of conversation, there was one important thing my BFF forgot to tell me and as soon as move-in day came-she laid it on me as I was carrying my suitcase up the stairs: her ex-boyfriend was moving in with us. Apparently, she had forgiven him once again for being an abusive jerk and he would be spending the duration of the summer with us.

The problem with this arrangement though, was that I absolutely hated the kid and all three of us would be sharing a single bedroom. He was an ex-convict, openly racist, and verbally and physically abusive to her. I tried to tell her that I wasn’t happy, and that it was either him or me. She chose him and said I should just talk to him and forgive him; otherwise, I could move out. At night, the two of them would either argue until 2 in the morning or spontaneously have sex with me sleeping only a few feet away. In the morning, I was awakened to him leaving for work at the local gas station at 4 in the morning and her picking a fight with him as he left. She was completely codependent on him and sulked in the room while I bustled about, doing all the chores in the apartment.

I would ask her to go out, but she no longer had any interest in me; her entire existence depended on her boyfriend. Well aware of the power imbalance, he broke up with her almost every other day, leaving me to pick up the pieces as she groveled on the floor, begging him to take her back. I tried to make amends in order to ease the living situation but after being exposed to a white guy who openly berated me with condescending black jokes (I’m of African American descent) and ate all our food without paying a dime for rent, I’d almost had enough. Mind you, I’m one of those people who love to laugh at themselves. His jokes weren’t comical, they were laced with pure hatred for minorities.

The final straw though, came during one of their daily arguments, he hacked up a ball of phlegm in his throat, and proceeded to spit on her. I followed him down the stairs, and pushed him out. Without fail, they reconciled and he was back in the apartment the next day. I began the silent treatment towards him after telling her once again that I didn’t want him living there. They then put on a united front and pretended as if I didn’t live there, ignoring me together.

Finally, one day, I decided we could possibly call a truce, as I combed my hair in the bathroom, I called M’s name. She sat on the couch with him, ignoring me, and then leaned over-kissed him on the check and said mockingly: “I can’t hear her–I think she’s speaking black again.” Enraged, I bypassed them on the couch, where they were both wrapped in each other’s arms, laughing. I slammed the door behind me and left for work, I was a waitress. Later that day, she showed up at my job and apologized. I decided I would try a bit harder with her boyfriend, and we began speaking again. I noticed though, that he was a bit more on edge than ever before.

One day, as he stood screaming at her at the top of his lungs, his nose suddenly erupted in blood. He took it as a sign that he needed to calm down and left the apartment for the day. Soon enough, things became strange for me as well. I began having no appetite and feeling excessively energetic. On one of my energetic highs, I suddenly got up and announced to M and her boyfriend that I would go for a run. I went out, in 90 degree weather, and ran for an excess of two hours. I came back home and threw up. I told M about this, in which her eyes widened in guilt. She then confided that she had been breaking open adderall tablets and spewing the contents in my and her boyfriend drinks for the past few weeks. When I told her I could’ve died from her actions, she simply shrugged her shoulders and said “Well, I just wanted everyone to be happier.” I promptly moved out not long after.

MVWR may not be what you would consider your normal VWR. She cooked and cleaned; in fact her idea of relaxation/therapy was cleaning. H and I had actually met through my former fiance four years prior. We hung out a lot and had a lot of very good times. In fact, I was even her maid of honor when she was married. The downfall of our friendship happened when I moved in with her when my fiance and I had a horrible breakup. At the time, H was in the middle of a divorce with her new husband, whom she had cheated on. Sadly, this was not much of a surprise considering that after they married she claimed they wouldn’t last longer that two years and she had only wanted her “dream wedding.”

Aside from that, for the first month we got along fairly well. I rented out her spare bedroom and things seemed to be going okay until she met her new (complete douche) boyfriend through World of Warfcraft. At the same time, my mother, was having a mental breakdown. My parents and I were dealing with the loss of my brother, who had passed from brain cancer six years prior. It still affects me, but I sought help, while my parents felt that seeking help meant you were weak. So, I had to deal with my mom calling me and crying that she should be dead because her son was dead. It was very hard and I did my best to talk to her and deal with what she was saying. But, H, who was a nurse, was not very understanding. Once, I was crying in my room and she asked me why. I told her why and she told me that my mother and I should get over it because people die and it’s been six years, so what’s the big deal? I tried to swallow that response as being “tough love,” but then my mom started losing it.

She believed that my friends were trying to kidnap me and my roommate was in a sex ring, plus selling crack/cocaine. She showed up one night at 3am pounding on the door and begging me to leave with her. H told my mom that she would call the cops on her and to get out of the apartment. I agreed with H’s reaction and called my dad to tell him to get my mom help. Sadly, he did not. And he told me that my mom was just really upset and just worried about me. I actually talked to H about all that my mom was dealing with, and apologized for her behavior because I was really embarassed. I thought that since H was a nurse she could give me some insight. Instead she told me that she didn’t care what my mom was going through and that she would call the cops on her if she showed up again. The most disturbing part was the fact that H and her boyfriend found it hilarious and laughed in my face. She actually said to me, “Where is Steven Segal when you need him?”

Luckily she did get the help she needed and we found out she had a severe case of bipolar disorder which also caused her hallucinations. She simply reached her breaking point and it all came out. Yeah, I know that maybe it made me the VWR for having all this crap happen, but I thought that a friend of four years (plus having a nursing education) would be a little understanding. Instead, H told me that if my mom was released she was never allowed over and she would call the cops if my mom ever came over. I told H all that my mom’s doctors told me and H did not care. H’s boyfriend even told me that my mom was a psycho b*tch and should never be allowed back into society. I had enough and moved out. It’s been two years and H and I haven’t spoken since. I know that what happened did not make me a great roommate since I brought unwanted drama, but was more serious, and I suppose not everyone can deal with that. I’m simply still hurt that a supposed best friend/nurse could be so heartless and uncaring. On the upside, my mom is still seeking therapy and I’m trying to help my parents out the best I can. I also have a lot of very helpful and caring friends. So, I think it all turned out for the best.