kittykhat

So... I have a little bit of house drama, that surprisingly still hasn't exploded in my face... yet. I have a *difficult* housemate. She's been difficult since we moved in together, and the sad thing is that we were best friends up until just over a year ago. Our problems seem to stem from a mixture of her never having lived out of home before (and rather than listening to advice, she'd prefer to rely heavily on books on how to live out of home), the fact that things pretty much have to be her way all the time, and when things don't go her way, she's totally passive agressive about it (apart from the times in the last week or so when she's actually screamed at our other housemates, and told them off... for using too much toilet paper, which they steal from uni for us anyway!) I'm normally pretty good at standing up for myself, but in this instance I was so shocked by how she treated me in the first couple of months I didn't say anything, and by that time the pattern was set and I have no idea how to break out of it, so I just try and ignore it most of the time. However, recently S and I have copped a couple of condescending, hypocritical letters re: bills and the dishes, which has pissed us off a little- plus being told off/having our friends told off for tightass reasons doesn't do much to lighten the atmosphere. We also have issues with the interpretation of "communal" in the house at the moment- it seems to mean that we need to share our space cos R has way too much stuff- so there's a communal shelf in the fridge (covered in R's stuff), R has an entire shelf and vegie drawer to herself, and then I have a veggie drawer and half a shelf, while S has the meat drawer and a tiny bit of shelf space under it- so I share my veggie drawer and some of my shelf with her... and as it turns out we also share our spaces with R's shite that spills out of 2 shelves, the fridge door, and a veggie bin.

Anyway, S and I were having a bit of a debrief about it on Sunday morning, when an add came on for an SBS doco about living in a commune. Given that R started off idealistic about communal living but seems to have difficulty actually adjusting to other people's needs or lifestyles, I made the comment that if she joined a commune, she'd probably get kicked out, and S agreed, saying that she'd probably just try to take over it and boss everyone around. I took this another step by comparing R to the leader of a communist country who can't live by the theory now she's got the power (and all the farmer's fridge space) and then said "scratch that, she's the leader of the military in a communist country".



It's important to realise that we were both getting louder and louder, and laughing a lot, when S pointed out how awful it would be if R was actually home at the moment... and would you believe it, for the first time in a year, she was home, in her bedroom on a Sunday morning. I only saw her that night, and she was really over the top friendly, so we're not sure if she heard us and she's plotting to kill us while we sleep or what.
I felt pretty bad about talking about someone that used to be my friend behind their back, and I felt even worse about potentially hurting her really badly, but I'm not actually sorry I think any of the things I said, because it's come to the point where I can't approach her about any of the stuff we have issues with because she just doesn't listen, and it's so frustrating that I have to vent somewhere. I guess I should have just picked a better time/place/method.