My first flatmate after moving overseas may have been the craziest person I have ever met. She was a coworker and, at the time and one of my first friends in the country, and she seemed normal enough- until we signed a lease. The first red flag should have been her mother. Bipolar Chick was her mid-20s, but she’d moved overseas with her folks, and had been living with them; one of the reasons she was so keen to move in with me was she claimed she wanted out of their house. That, in itself, seemed normal- why yes, an adult would like their own space where their mommy doesn’t enquire as to their whereabouts. But things quickly took a turn for the insane on move in day, when her parents pulled up with a carload of her stuff. Throughout the unloading process, her mother glared at me without saying a word. After one more huffy sniff as she went outside for another load, Bipolar Chick’s dad pulled me aside to tell me her mother was ‘a little unhappy’ that I’d ‘stolen’ their daughter. Um, ok.

I really should have realized right then that the crazy apple doesn’t even try to fall far from the crazy tree. First came redecorating. At first, it was fun: we went to a fabric store and I made curtains, we got some funky sofa cushions, normal. Then one day she declared she wanted to paint. Without consulting me, she started the project, painting cabinet doors and walls bright, eyeball searing shades of turqouise and yellow and fushia, until I was basically living in Willy Wonka’s Nightmare. It wouldn’t have been so bad except she wasn’t particularly talented about it- she didn’t tape edges or anything, the paint was uneven and splotchy, and at some point she’d decided our perfectly fine wood baseboards and doors were the wrong shade, and had slopped baby-poo brown all over them. Then came the candles; first, one or two, then they started taking over the place. Every flat surface was covered in them, even though her cat (we’ll get to the cats shortly) loved to push them off, shattering the ‘decorative glass holders’ she also sprinkled around the flat.

She also started amassing bits and pieces from her mom’s house and friends cast offs- so by the end of it, there was no clear ‘design’ just a mass of conflicting florals and patterns and genres, as if Laura Ashley had done something horrible and unholy with Rainbow Brite in the middle of my living room. Next, there were the cats. Bipolar Chick had one when she moved in with me, one very small, well behaved cat she was loathe to leave with her parents. Even though I’ll allergic, I agreed- with an understanding that Bipolar Chick would be responsible for vacuuming regularly and that the cat was to be kept out of my room. After just a few months, I arrive home to find she’s adopted a second cat- surprise!- who’s also extremely fluffy. This cat was also almost as crazed as her owner; she liked to pounce and bite your feet when she felt neglected or hungry. Which was all the time, as shortly after this, Bipolar Chick did the only logical thing for a single cat lady with nesting feelings to do: she got a boyfriend and spent every waking moment over at his house.

During the week, she was around a bit more, only spending two to three nights at his, but on weekends she’d disappear for 72 hours straight, not checking with me first that someone would be available to feed her cats or change their litter. When I finally snapped and told her I wasn’t going to provide kitty-care without notice forever, her response was to adopt a third cat (this one with a creepy lazy eye that made me think of it as the Zombie Cat), and relocate with boyfriend to our sofa- where they never left. And where she would sigh and make heavy-handed comments about how they really wanted some ‘privacy’ if I dared to be in the flat when they were. Of course, she was also bipolar. I didn’t know she was diagnosed or on meds until after we’d moved in, but at first, I tried not to judge. Then I realized she wasn’t REALLY on meds. She had, at some point, been diagnosed and prescribed medication, but by the time I knew her, she had decided she knew best and instead bought high doses of Prozac over the counter (the wonder of living in a certain part of the world- you can buy basically anything over the counter with the right money). Which she didn’t take regularly.

Her mother constantly badgered her about the drugs, saying it was a ‘weakness’ and she should deal on her own, so she’d go through cycles of weaning herself off them by just not taking them for days at a time. Or else she’d forget to stock up, the stores wouldn’t sell to her, and she’d be cold turkey until she could get more. When she’d go back on them she’d Prozac-load, taking more than recommended at one time. And through it all, she liked to drink. A lot. She’d make herself rum and Coke after rum and Coke every night after work, or else consume at least the majority of a bottle of wine (she was a generous alcoholic though- she’d make me a drink or pour me a glass too, as if I had a glass then she wasn’t drinking alone and she could claim we’d ‘split’ whatever she’d consumed. I’m not a big drinker though and would usually decline, or else sip one glass all night long). On weekends, she’d  pack it away, and she would, going through the same cycle each time: bubbly and the life of the party, then hating everyone in sight saying terrible things at top volume (sometimes even calling people not present to rain abuse at them), then, inevitably, the vomiting.

Through it all was her mother, who, despite only meeting me in passing occassionally, had a deep and powerful hatred of me. I kept trying to figure out why, but could never really pinpoint it. She liked to say horribly mean things to other people in front of me. My favorite was when, after Bipolar Chick’s brother came to visit and we hit it off, their mother told a friend that he was clearly interested in me, but he’d never do anything about it because I was fat and he knew she wouldn’t approve. The friend was sitting in a lawn chair on the other side of me- mother had to lean across me to deliver this zinger. And then the lies would start: I’d hear from Bipolar Chick that Mommy Dearest claimed I’d said such-and-such about her to so-and-so. If pressed, she’d name a time and a place- and repeatedly, they were locations and times where I had been demonstrably somewhere else (once i wasn’t even in the country). Before long it progressed to Mommy saying I was spreading tales about Bipolar Chick, which led to paranoid confrontations. Bipolar Chick started listening at my door.

One evening, while on the phone with a mutual friend, trying to smooth out her latest escapade (she’d packed herself a goody bag of liquor after the friends birthday party, including four bottles of decent wine, a case of beer, and three full bottles of hard liquor from their party supplies, earlier in the evening, then hidden it in the house so she could take it home at the end of the night. She’d claimed to be ‘too drunk to go home’ and had tossed my cell in the pool, so we had both ended up sleeping at the friends house. The next morning she’d gone home without me, and when I returned, I discovered her stash and immediately told her to return it or I would), she burst in the door, snarling, to scream at me. It was so bad my friend on the phone’s mother could hear her screaming through the phone, and demanded my friend come and pick me up immediately. This went on for a while, until I started going down the block to sit on the curb to even call my mother.

After the liquor debacle, things went downhill- Bipolar Chick started a Facebook campagin of status messages, alluding to the horrible girl in her life, but she wouldn’t name names as she’s a bigger person, in between crying jags and tearful demands for hugs from me. Then, one day at work, she sent me a Facebook message telling me to move out (I should note: she was literally down the hall at our office when she sent this). She wanted me out within two weeks, at which point she claimed her father would be changing the locks. When I’d left, I’d asked for my half of the damage deposit, as well as payment for my half of things we’d purchased together- like the sofa. She paid, and I went on my merry way.

My Very Worst Roommate situation happened when I was 18 and freshly out on my own. I took an apartment that I obviously could not afford and had to find a roomie. I met this fella at my place of employment one evening. As he asked me for a date, I politely told him I was not interested but in need of an apartment mate. He readily moved in!

All was fine till one evening about three weeks into his stay, he went out for a night on the town. That was cool because I had invited some friends to come over and hang out with me. Well he ended up back at the apartment before my friends and he was clearly inebriated. Then things took a turn for the worst! He began pounding his fist on the table and looking at my with really crazy eyes telling me how much he f**ing hated…. he F**ing hated life… he f**ing hated women… he f**ing hated everything… including me. Boy, was I scarred!

Thankfully before things got out of control, my friends arrived and he passed out. He moved out the very next day and I am so happy I never heard from him again.

My freshman year of college we were randomly assigned roommates. I had never met my roommate before. I came from a small, hick town, but he was the biggest hick I’d ever met.

The only thing he liked to watch on TV was “professional wrestling” and porn. I would often “go to sleep” before he got back to the room for the evening to avoid watching wrestling, but he would still turn on the TV and lights after 10 p.m. when I was in bed. He apparently owned only one CD: Eminem’s first album, which he played repeatedly.

He also liked to drink a lot. After two weeks of talking about how well he could hold his liquor and how he has drank a 12-pack by himself and hardly been drunk, I came home around 11 p.m. one night to find the residents on our floor carrying him up the stairs. They said he had seven or eight beers. He decided two things needed to be done at that time (after he threw up in our room), shower and call his mom. He told me to call his mom collect (this was before everybody had cell phones). He laid on the floor naked and told his mother he was drunk. He eventually fell asleep on the floor naked and was gone by the time I woke at 8 a.m. the next morning. His mother had came and picked him up.

I switched roommates a week later. I only ever saw him one other time, about a year later he howled like a wolf at my friend (who was a girl) from across a parking lot.

When I graduated high school, I moved to a different city where I barely had any friends, so I ended up living with my sister, AH. We moved into a condo with our guy friend and after his lease was up, FF moved in. I didn’t like FF at first, but my sister did. She convinced me we needed another roommate and didn’t really have any other options so I agreed. After my sister got a job that took up a lot of her time I started hanging out with FF more. Things were okay at first, but then I started noticing how often she borrowed my clothes without returning them. Then after a few months, when we eventually stopped hanging out as much, I would see pictures of her out wearing clothes that she had stolen out of my closet. I then saw more pictures of her visiting her family wearing a pair of my shoes.

FF also had a raging alcohol problem. She would go out and get completely wasted every night of the week and said cruel things that she didn’t even remember. She became weirdly obsessed with my sisters puppy and would post pictures of herself holding the dog and pretending like it was her own. She eventually went out and bought her own puppy without mentioning anything to AH or me about it. I even caught her calling her puppy by the same name as AH’s puppy! I made some good friends and stopped hanging out with FF even though she still tries to contact me. I hate to admit that I never had the guts to call her out on all of the stuff she did and all of the stuff she stole from AH and myself. She was just too weird. I felt so unlucky to have to deal with her my first time out of the house. It should have been a way more enjoyable experience. Good luck to FF’s new roommates. You’ll see her true colors soon enough.

Despite the protestations of my friends, I decided to room with a notoriously moody friend of mine who I’d known since high school.  At first her lack of boundaries and burgeoning alcoholism were merely annoying, but they steadily progressed to the point where most debates or conversations devolved into yelling matches. For a year, I endured temper tantrums, constant scolding for drinking all her booze (never touched it), never paying my share of bills (untrue), never cleaning the house (she’d come home two hours before me and begin cleaning – never leaving me any chores to do), and more. I knew things were going down fast when I came home to discover her attempting suicide. Instead of flipping out, or calling the cops (I should have, in retrospect), I calmly nursed her back from the edge. When I tried to speak with her about it later, and tell her how it had affected me, she blew up at me instead, calling me an awful friend who was never there for her.

A few weeks later, it all came to a head when she decided to throw another enormous temper tantrum — this time because I wouldn’t share my dinner with her (she had already helped herself to a large portion at this point). Having taken all the abuse I was willing to take, I threw my plate of spaghetti on the table, and told her to have as much as she pleased, because clearly it meant so much to her.  She had been saying some deliberately hurtful things to me during this whole episode, while I just stood there and took it. We then argued for an hour about whether or not she had even said those things. I decided to leave the apartment before I lost my temper. Instead of letting me leave, she physically blocked my exit, even grabbing onto me to force me to stay and talk things out.  As I was standing in the doorway trying to leave, she grabbed onto my messenger bag and the doorjamb in a death-grip, and refused to let go. So I did the only thing I could. I used my basic judo knowledge to try breaking her grip.  It worked, but she wasn’t expecting it — she careened into the doorjamb and stumbled over.

At that point, I ran out the apartment foyer and didn’t look back. Even though she had assaulted me, I had to wait a full month for her to move out. Apparently, she had told the landlord that she was moving in with her boyfriend. The one who had just dumped her the month previous. Not wanting to make things any more difficult, I just went along with the ruse. This was a situation that didn’t need any more escalation. After that, she had the gall to ask me if I’d help her move. I told her I would, and then flaked out on purpose. Fifteen years of friendship down the tubes because she wouldn’t put down the fucking whiskey. Thankfully, my new roommate is absolutely awesome.