A Letter To My Abusive Roommate
I don’t know why you chose to target me out of all the roommates, but I hope you find peace.
It was my first semester of junior year when I transferred from a community college to a four-year college. I was so excited to be living on campus after two years of commuting to school. Little did I know that I would be rooming with someone manipulative and verbally abusive.
Let’s talk about how you traumatized my very first experience rooming with fellow college kids. It was August and I remember meeting you for the first time. You seemed extremely nice and so did your good friend who was also one of my roommates as well.
You gave me a good first impression when I first met you and I was so happy to be living with four other college girls. I remember the first time we all went out to a party. It was at your boyfriend’s parents’ house which was pretty much a mansion. I attended with an old friend and former boyfriend. Everything seemed normal and I was experiencing the typical college life.
Everything was just fine. Until…
You started to distance yourself from me. As humans, we can sense if something is off. I remember sensing that. I had no clue why you suddenly decided to distance yourself from me. I am the type of person to confront someone if there is an issue and to talk it out like adults.
I asked you in person if something was wrong and you said we were fine. I thought okay, maybe I am just overreacting or being paranoid. You started to subtweet about me on Twitter. The tweet went something like “I don’t understand how it is so hard to wipe down the counter after cooking.” This may not be exact wording since some memories are a little fuzzy, but you get the idea. I knew this was about me because I was the only roommate home and I just finished cooking.
I remember how mad I was. I wanted to go next door to you and tell you to say it to my face, but I didn’t want to start a heated argument in our apartment so I let it slide.
I texted you on a later date saying that I feel like you are mad and something is wrong. You kept telling me that nothing is wrong and that we are fine. I asked one more time and you snapped at me and said, “we are fine Justine.” I knew we weren’t fine and I didn’t know where to go from there. I tried so hard to work it out with you.
As the days went by, you still wouldn’t bear to look about me. You would sweep right past me and avoid me any chance you got. The vibes were so bad and I could feel it. You treated all the roommates except me nicely me so I knew it had to be me. There was something you hated about me.
I will never forget that time that you purposely threw a party in the living room when you knew I had to be awake at 6 a.m. for work. I tried my best to sleep through it and wear earplugs, but your friends were so loud and drunk. It wasn’t even the weekend — it was a Tuesday. I was so mad that I stormed out of the apartment and speed walked to my former boyfriend’s apartment.
This was at 1 am on a college campus. It was a dangerous situation, but I had to leave if I would get any type of sleep. You looked at me with a smile and laughed when you knew I was bothered by the drunk friends and loud music. The look on your face made it look like you won and that was the purpose of the party. You wanted to torture me.
I will never forget the disrespect I felt before we went off to winter break. Our apartment bathroom was disgusting. It had black mold in the shower. I decided to clean it during finals week. Yes, during finals week.
I had to set hours to the side to clean the bathroom instead of studying for an exam. I spent hours cleaning. I texted the group chat asking nicely if you girls can use caddies when it came to shampoo and conditioner because sitting it on the handicap chair in the bathroom caused dripping water which created the black mold. Did you listen to my text message?
Absolutely not.
You purposely put your caddie on the chair when I particularly asked everyone to not. You didn’t even acknowledge or say thank you for cleaning the bathroom for everyone. You decided to disrespect me instead. Who does that? You clearly.
It was finally winter break and we haven’t seen each other in a month. Here I am hoping that you had a relaxing month away from me and that you would somehow forgive me for what I did that I still today don’t understand.
We came back from winter break and you were talking to me. Kinda.
You told me that you liked the YouTube channel that I created over winter break and that made me happy. I thought everything was back to normal. NOPE.
The bad vibes were still there. I decided to move in with my former boyfriend because I couldn’t live in our apartment anymore. I felt the negative energy and it wasn’t good for my mental health.
Spring break came along and this is when everything went more downhill then it already was. I remember seeing your boyfriend tweet about how he loves sunflower seeds and I simply replied saying that I am a fan too. I had no problem with your boyfriend. He was always kind and respectful when he came to the apartment. The tweet was so simple that I didn’t think much of it. You and the other roommate then insisted to subtweet me about it.
When we came back on campus, it happened. You blew up. Remember that time you said we were fine? You lied so hard. You let everything build up until it was time to explode at the end of the school year. I stopped by the apartment to pick up my car keys to drive to the doctors to get an MRI done, but little did I know that I was going to be told off.
You came into my room and started to yell at me saying that I am not allowed to use the TV in the living room anymore, no one likes me, to stay away from your boyfriend and so forth. You called me a psychopath and told me that I needed to get my brain fixed. I will never forget that. I was completely frozen and didn’t know how to respond.
After my doctor’s appointment, I went to my former boyfriend to cry it out. This was the finale of indirect verbal abuse. Since then — I was paranoid every time I had roommates. I thought I was the problem. I had many sets of roommates and I have never experienced something like this since the time that we lived together. I don’t know why you chose to target me out of all the roommates, but I hope you find peace.
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