Hey there!
So let me preface this by just apologizing to both the readers (if anyone is reading this) and to myself for not keeping up with my blog like I said I would do in my last blog post. I am pretty disappointed in myself because this is something I really do want to be consistent with and by failing to do so, I feel like I am failing myself not just through lack of blogging, but on sticking to my goals in all aspects. Anyways, I will try harder in the future to be better about it and I will hopefully write my next piece on how my summer goals went and where I’m at now but first, a more pertinent matter that I think many people (especially college students) can relate to.. LIVING WITH ROOMMATES.
Ok so I sometimes need to write just to get things off my chest and usually I do this in a journal because I like to keep things private but I am trying to be more open and get things off my chest more. Enough rambling, let’s get into it.
Roommates. We all have them. Some people love their roommates and become best friends, while others have a horror story from freshman year about some crazy human with a snake or second head or some crazy situation like that. So what happens when roommate situations are not so great, not so bad, but just so? For me, just so is not an environment I like to call my home. I feel like these kind of middle ground living situations are left out in the general conversation of living with people, but if I’m being honest, I think it’s important to talk about.
My current living situation is with three other girls in a student living complex. We each have our own bedroom and bathroom (which is GREAT) but we share the kitchen of course and living room. The walls are paper thin in our complex (we like to joke that we live in a paper house) so there really isn’t much privacy even with the doors closed. I know that for most people this probably sounds like a pretty ideal living situation. And it would be. It would be if I just liked the people that I lived with a little bit more.
From the start things have been weird with my roommates. I knew and was friendly with them all before, even roommates in the dorms with one of them for two years prior! However, I came into this house in the middle of the year last year since I had been abroad in the fall. They were already close friends, and so already I felt out of place. To add to that, the girl who had sublet from me in the fall had become close with one of my roommates specifically and it felt like I was an unwelcome replacement for her friend (even though I was the one who found her to sublet in the first place!)
To add to this, I have a very different vibe from the 3 of them. They have colder, rougher personalities whereas I like to be around people who emanate happiness. I am a pretty sensitive person and feel personally attacked if people aren’t outwardly kind (I’m trying to work on not taking things personally but it is a process!) I personally try to make conversation with everyone, and find it awkward when I am responded to in one word answers. I feel that since we are sharing common spaces, at least a small effort should be made to make light conversation. I’m not saying silence is a problem. Silence can be great too, but not if it is an uncomfortable silence. This doesn’t seem to bother them, but for me, it really gets under my skin. What really bothers me is that I can’t tell if the problem is me or them, something that is beating me up since I am such a self critical person to begin with. It helps to make me feel less crazy when my friends who come over make comments about my cold roommates and how they don’t really feel comfortable chilling by me. What I don’t get then, is why I am the only one out of four of us who feels this way in my house!
Some of the biggest issues I have had include..
- They talk SO loudly when I want to sleep. I need my 8 hours and have asked numerous times that we have quiet hours at 11 pm on weeknights. Yet still, I have woken up at 3 am to loud music and singing, or I can’t fall asleep until 1 because of VERY loud conversations below me.
- They seem to always be home and I instantly feel tense when they are. I can be doing work or watching a video in my kitchen but the second someone walks through the front door I instantly feel tense and uncomfortable, Usually, I don’t last more than five minutes before I leave to go to my room.
- Thermostat wars. oh you know the kind. This might be its own article because I could go on and on. let’s just say, my roommate thinks it’s normal to sleep with the thermostat set at 76.. apparently I’m crazy for even setting it to a (STILL HOT) 72??
- I don’t cook very much although I’d like to try. Again, this goes back to feeling uncomfortable around them in the kitchen. I feel especially uncomfortable if I don’t know what I’m doing on the cooking front and don’t feel I have the space to try out new recipes.
- I am with my boyfriend a lot. This is chicken before the egg scenario. I feel like they’re probably annoyed about this but am I with him because I feel uncomfortable around them? Or was I already with him too much and this is part of what’s making me an outsider?
- Coffee maker. Knowing I can make a nice hot cup of coffee when I wake up is one of the only things that helps me get out of bed in the morning. I have my own coffee maker as I drink at least three cups a day. I recently offered usage of my coffee maker to one of my roommates and thought it would be nice, especially since she said she would only use it a few times. Since then, she has made coffee every SINGLE day and keeps leaving her dirty filter in. She also fails to rinse it out when she is finished. I have asked her numerous times to please clean up after herself, yet she continues to leave it dirty very frequently. Some mornings, I can’t have my coffee at all since she is already using it when I get up which is super disappointing to me. The icing on the cake though is that sometimes I like to prepare it the night before so that all I have to do the next day is flick the button on. I had done this, put the coffee and the water in and all, and the next morning woke up to find that she had removed my coffee, put her own in instead and LEFT THE DIRTY FILTER IN AGAIN. This one really put me over the edge. Any advice on how to handle this situation would be greatly appreciated.
SO all of these things brings me to what just happened an hour ago, and the reason I am writing this post in a building that is not my home. I decided to try my hand at smoothie making the other day. Last night I very excitedly went to the grocery store and stocked up on frozen fruit, OJ, and greek yogurt, excited about the smoothie I would make the following day (today.) Alas, the glorious moment came when I began the smoothie making endeavor, pulling out the blender and carefully placing my ingredients into it. Closing the lid of the blender carefully, I pressed the button and watched the beautiful fruits and juice blending together before my eyes when suddenly the blender just stopped. Ok, I took out the mixing cup with the ingredients and shook it. This seemed to solve the problem as the blender took on its whirring sounds when I put the cup back down. Until.. SILENCE. It stopped again. Ok, I thought. I just need to push it down and maybe try a few of the others buttons. I did this and it worked… for about three seconds. All of a sudden, there wasn’t just silence. The blender started letting out smoke accompanied by the pungent scent of plastic burning. This was bad news. I had broken the blender. I felt embarrassed and nervous. This is the last thing I wanted to happen to an already rocky relationship. So quickly, I unplugged the blender, cleaned out the remnants, dried it and put it away. I piled the half finished smoothie into a to go cup, and fled my house.
This leads me to the now. Currently, I am sitting in a study room outside my home, trying to figure out where I go from here. Normally, I would just own up to my mistake (the blender isn’t mine), write in the roomie group-chat telling them what happened, and buy a new one. The thing is, I feel so much resentment that I don’t want to. The broken blender feels like a metaphor with my roommates at this point. It’s something I could work on to try and fix, but do I want to? A broken blender needs all of its parts to work properly, just as a relationship between people can’t function unless everyone puts in effort. But no-one pays to repair a burnt out, $20 blender. It’s just not worth it. So why is it worth it to put in the effort to fix a low quality relationship?
Comment your responses below and please share if you’ve had similar experiences as me!! Also,I’d love to hear your insight on my situation as well as your take on the blender! (honestly, I know I will end up doing what I think is the right thing and buying a new one)
The luck of Lilah 