I don't know if anyone is actually reading what I write on here or not. Nevertheless, I'm still going to write.
My Old Roommate, I guess we can call her Michelle for the sake of remaining anonymous. I didn't understand her at all. For some reason she seemed to have some sort of prejudice against me from the start. I'm not really sure why, because all I did was be nice to her. I guess she started to question my judgement of things when I started hanging around Adam, who is more of a geek than a jock. Michelle in her feminist mind thought that I could do better. She was eventually right, but I'll get to that another time if I feel like it. I made the decision that my beliefs were stronger than those of a person that I just met a few weeks earlier. So I decided to go on my own path. I guess that's when things started to get distanced between us.
At first I thought that we had a lot in common due to the way we acted and how we thought. But we were probably too similar for our own good. That's the thing, for some reason you don't get along with people who are too similar to yourself because you have too much in common and you already know what the other person is going to say because you would say that yourself.
Yet she was so absorbed in her image and how others thought of her that I didn't feel as though she truly understood who she was. She stood in front of the mirror at least 10 times before she left the room, even if it was just to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. She was so concerned with how she appeared to others that she would ask either me or our other roommate, Kendra (mainly Kendra), if something she said or how she looked was fine and acceptable for how she wanted others to see her as.
Her image of herself consisted of someone who was always put together, consistently on top of everything, and always striving to be the nest in everything that she does.
I don't believe that there is one person who can fit that complete description. I believe that Michelle was probably truly the complete opposite of who she really was. I never felt as though I saw the true side of her, even though I lived with her for a full school year. You can't live through life pretending to be someone you are not. And yet you change depending on who you are with. I guess that different versions of yourself can exist, but they are all true to yourself. I wish people were confident in who they are, flaws and everything. I try my best to be myself. But my mind always stops me from speaking what I feel and what I think.
At the beginning of the year she had a long set of pre-determined rules for our room that she had already decided upon probably before she even arrived here. Most of them were completely different to how I viewed college as.
One of her first things was that roommates weren't obligated to be friends and that we could basically decide that on our own time. We weren't going to be friends. We were adults now so we shouldn't have to depend upon each other. I felt as though that was a stab at me because I had woken up them at least once in the previous week because we were thinking of doing something as part of orientation. I was only being polite. Both my roommates were against the idea of having a stranger, a friend of our roommates', sleep in their bed if they were gone. That's when I definitely knew that we were not going to get along. It showed me that they didn't trust anyone, not even their roommates. I don't understand why people can't trust others. What does that show about humanity? Will we live in a state of paranoia our entire lives?
Out of all of these rules that Michelle had, one of her most ridiculous was that private phone calls or skype sessions or whatever would be done in the hallway if someone in the room was studying. Now that seemed reasonable to me. It really made sense. Giving others the chance to study in peace without having to hear someone else talk while they were trying to concentrate. One of the first times I skyped with my friends back home I was out in the hallway like our roommate agreement and rules stated. However, that seemed to be a problem for Michelle. Apparently I was making to much noise for her to concentrate. She then proceeded to come out into the hall with a post-it note that said something to the extent of:
"I'm sorry, but I can hear you through the wall which is making it difficult to concentrate on studying. If you could keep it down, that would be great! Or you could go down to the social lounge. Thanks! :)"I ended up going down to the social lounge, Adam was there, and everything seemed perfectly fine. The irony of the rule that she made was the fact that she was the one who talked the most on the phone. Throughout the year she was constantly running out into the hallway because her phone would be going off. And she didn't have to because probably half of the time Kendra and I were watching something on our computers and not even thinking about homework or studying. It's strange how she made everything more difficult for herself. She probably didn't want to portray a bad view of herself to us.
I feel bad for her. I don't know how she does it, how she can live with that constant worry and seem to be completely fine. You can never judge a book by it's cover.
I wish her the best and hope she learns. Not just in knowledge, but also wisdom.
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