When our previous fourth roommate moved out the other two were talking about how they don't want someone moving into her empty room. They did not explain their reasoning, and refused to answer when I asked. All they said was how they were praying that no one else would move in the following semester. Now, this is a ridiculous hope. There are literally thousands of undergraduates at this school, a good amount of them living on campus. In fact, there are so many students that the school is currently having a whole new dorm community built to accommodate any possible overflow. There literally was never any hope of having three people living in a four person apartment. When I explained this, one of my roommates confessed that the next girl to move in would soon move out because she intended on scaring her. She also admitted that our other roommate would back her up and join her to make this girl feel so uncomfortable that she would have no choice but to leave. So once the new girl, K, came in, my roommates had nothing but bad words to say about it. K has many food allergies, and that was why she had to move into our apartment. She could not eat at the dining halls because they cross contaminated foods, giving her many allergic reactions last semester. She brought her own food, her own cooking utensils, and her own pots and pans to avoid any allergic reactions. I can understand this because I have food restrictions of my own. No soy, no dairy, a limited amount of fats and sugars, and a limited amount of alcohol. I'm also quite used to it because my sister has a somewhat limited food vocabulary, and I've gotten used to cooking for her to accomodate that. For me, this was no problem. K wanted to have her friends over so that they could see her new place. They were freshman, and they all live in dorms, so it was a different experience for them. They were making every attempt to control their noise level, which was minimal, but I assured them that it wasn't a problem.
Immediately when K's friends came over, one of my roommates had to lock herself into her room. When the next one showed up, the one who intends on scaring her to death, she immediately came into my room and asked who all of those people were. Somehow she couldn't quite figure it out for herself. When I told her they were K's friends, come to see her new apartment, a distressed look crossed her face. My shut-in roommate emerged from the dark confines of her room to say we should have an apartment meeting about it.
Forest came over and we spent our time together in my room for some privacy and some Honey Boo Boo. By the time he left K and her friends had gone out and my roommates had just come back from grocery shopping. I could hear them whispering conspicuously in the kitchen, so I went out to have a listen. Together they were expressing how inconvenienced they were by K's reasonably sized canister of cooking utensils and moved it from one side of the stove to the other (why?). Then they said how they would love for her to have an allergy attack. They knew K was somewhat uncomfortable with alcohol, so they schemed that they should always have a bottle of wine in the fridge to deter her from...living? Maybe? One of them also went on to say how she had such a blistering headache from all the noise K's friends had been making, and how she hoped they weren't going to keep her up at night. (K's friends were over at 3 in the afternoon.) I'm not really sure why they are acting so aggressively to a girl who they only briefly met for a few seconds, who is friendly and polite, and makes every effort to keep our apartment in the order we had it in. I don't know why they have to criticize the fact that she keeps her sanitary supplies in the supply closet, which is always shut, or why they are pretending to be inconvenienced by her food allergies, but it's already gotten on my nerves. If it wasn't enough that they were doing this kind of thing to me last semester, now they feel they have to be even worse to this lovely, charming girl. If I were acting this way towards one of them it would be a fiasco. But since they're the ones doing it, they've reasoned that it is somehow okay. I know the "golden rule" is such a cliche, but it's appropriate. Treat others the way you would like to be treated. Especially when that "other" is a really nice person who wishes no ill upon you.
How am I to turn this around? I know that if the two of them acted so outrageously negatively on the very first day they knew her, it will in all likeliness only get worse. But I've had so many roommate issues in the past that I want to remove myself from any confrontation instead of engaging in it. I've learned that unless someone's actions are interfering with my grades, my sleep, or the way I feel about myself, the fight just isn't worth it.
...But they did bring up how I "ate all the brownies" again last night, and that almost got crazy. I don't even like brownies.
Forever the honest,
Stephanie Lato
Forever the honest,
Stephanie Lato
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