I Was The Worst Roommate

By Jesy Odio on September 24, 2012

I WAS THE WORST ROOMMATE.

Couple weeks before school started, I received an email with the name of my roommate for my first year in college. I looked her up on Facebook but came across several profiles of pregnant Mexican adolescents, and decided to not message any. She’ll add me anyway. I thought she had an exotic, eccentric name; one which, unfortunately, I am unable to reveal due to obvious private and personal reasons.

Once she added me on Facebook, I did not make an effort in contacting her or introducing myself whatsoever. By the way, she was not pregnant. She messaged me a few times before school started, and I agreed on bringing the mini fridge as long as she would bring the microwave.

This is one of our few online conversations:

Me: “Hey, can I get the left bed.”

Roommate: “Oh, hey! How you’ve been? Sure! SO excited for school to start! See you soon!” Notice my lack of question mark.

We did not talk about coordinating room colors or about classes. I kept hearing about my friends synchronizing who would bring the popcorn, or the TV.

The day we moved in I was too busy organizing my side of the room to stop for one minute and introduce myself. I assumed the other girl who had started moving in her stuff to the other side of the room would my roommate.

I filled my shelves with books and textbooks, she filled hers with food. She lent me money when I ordered a pizza for my friends, and I don’t recall ever paying her back. She brought me tea while I was sick. Mint tea, actually, my favorite.

I told her to stay out of the room every time my boyfriend would visit, and she saw me cry when we broke up. She never asked anything about it, but she always made sure that I would have a box of Kleenex next to my bed.

During Fall Quarter, I could tell she was homesick, and I didn’t do anything about it. I was rarely ever in the room, while she would remain in there all day playing videogames and watching some show on Hulu.

Before she finished moving in, her mother approached me and told me that my roommate is extremely timid. I realized she had trouble making friends at first, but I never invited her to eat with me or meet the people I had hanging out between classes.

In fact, we had two classes together during our freshman year. We would often walk to class together, but never sat next to each other in class. She offered to revise my essay, and borrow her notes.

One time she got locked out of our room while I was at a party off-campus. The Santa Cruz transportation system is extremely reliable during the week, but on a Friday night, it seems like the buses willingly want you to get to whatever event you’re attending thirty seconds after the cops have rolled the event. There was no way I was going to make my way back just to let her in the room.

A couple months after that incident, my roommate texted me informing me that she had gotten locked out…again. After I came back from a hectic stereotypical college night, I tried opening our door, except this time when I inserted the key into the keyhole; the lock fell unto my hand. We were told by our RA (Resident Assistant) the lock would not get fixed until tomorrow morning and to find a place to stay over the night. I walked away with my phone on my ear contacting my friends to let me stay over the night at their dorm as I noticed she had no idea who to call, and so began to start knocking on people’s doors while I was already out the door. I got locked out of my room plenty of times, and she made sure to run after class to hand me her key.

Often, I used the floor of our dorm as a walk-in closet; I seldom did my laundry, or threw away the thrash; I washed my sheets twice during the entire school year. There were several weekends in which I would travel to San Francisco or Los Angeles. I don’t think I ever told her about my plans, and now I wonder if she ever worried about my long-term disappearances.

I had friends visiting all the time, and I probably never gave her a slight warning in case, you know, she was undressing or needing of some privacy. When my friend, Tom, got locked out of his room one time, I offered him my bed to sleep at while I stayed over at my friends’ house. The room smelled of testosterone and sweat for about a week. I definitely did not warn her about

I bet if you asked her about me, she would probably deny the whole thing, but just because she was a total sweetheart. Despite my annoyances and eccentricities, my roommate never complained or whined about any of this.

School will be back in session any time soon, I wish you all the best. I encourage you to create a harmonious, positive environment between you and your roommate. I didn’t mean to show everyone how heartless I really am, but to brag about how lucky I got to have the most understanding, sympathetic, and considerate roommate I could ever ask for.

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