You Really Never Know Someone...

...until you live with them. It's such a cliche, but so true. Although the story I'm about to tell you happened almost 14 years ago, the retelling of it makes me feel like I'm right back there in the summer of 1998. In July of that year my younger brother was graduating from basic training as a Marine, so I took a trip down South to go with my family to his graduation. Before leaving the apartment for my trip, I closed my bedroom door. Off I went to enjoy some family time, secure in the belief that everything would be the way that I left it when I got home.

Boy, was I wrong! First of all, on the cab ride home I was thinking about the fact that I had strawberry Pop-Tarts, and I was looking forward to having one. Get home, go in the kitchen, no Pop-Tarts. Ask my roommate if she's seen my Pop-Tarts and her response was "My mom must've eaten them." I'm thinking "Your mom?" Apparently her parents were in town while I was gone, and they stayed in the apartment, rather than booking a room in a hotel. Supposedly they slept in her room, while she and her clubbing buddy slept in mine. Strike one: My Pop-Tarts are gone.

I go into my bedroom to unpack my stuff and notice that there are keys on my bed. Here we go again. Back to my roommate's room to ask her about the keys. Her response was "Oh those must be Paul's keys. We watched a movie in your room the other night, and he must've left them there." What? They watched a movie in my room? Strike two: My roommate and some dude were rolling around on my bed.

Putting stuff away in my closet I noticed that my bathrobe wasn't hanging inside on the door. Why do I have to keep asking this girl about my shit? Off I go to her room yet again. Ask her if she's seen my bathrobe. She asks what color it is, and when I tell her, she informs me that her mother slept in it while she was there. Apparently she thought it belonged to freeloader girl. You remember freeloader girl from my previous post, right? The million dollar question is: How would her mom even know about the existence of that robe unless she was in my room while she was visiting? That pretty much tells me that this chick's parents slept in my bed. Strike three: Some woman I don't even know is sleeping in my robe.

After that, I really had very little to do with this girl because I was raised to respect other people's property and to not touch something that isn't mine without permission. Where I'm from, a closed bedroom door when someone isn't home means "Do Not Enter". Invasion of privacy, anyone?

Unfortunately, at this point in my life I wasn't assertive enough to voice my disgust at all that had transpired while I was gone.

School's Out Forever

For any of you that have ever been in therapy, you know that it takes a long time to change deeply ingrained behaviors. It's easy to fall back into the patterns that you've been following for your whole life. As I mentioned before, I'm an emotional eater. Weight gain is a sure sign that I'm upset or depressed about something. The time that I spent in therapy had helped me to cope with things without feeling the need to overeat because I had a place where I could go to let all of those feelings out. By the the time I graduated from college I had lost weight and was feeling good about myself.

Right after graduation I decided to share an apartment with a friend of mine that was in the same degree program as I was. Her roommate had broken the lease and she needed someone to live there until the lease was up. Because I wanted to continue living in Boston, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. But then as the saying goes, you never know someone until you live with them. In the beginning things started out well, but then I found out that she was letting a friend of hers crash there and share her bedroom. I know what you're thinking. If her friend is living there, why couldn't her friend help with the rent? That's a valid question. Because it was her place that I was moving into, I didn't feel like I could ask that question. Looking back, I think how much easier it would've been if we each had paid a third of the rent. I guess the other girl figured that as long as she didn't pay rent she wasn't responsible for any of the housework. She was a great one for using the dishes and then not washing them. It made for a great existence for the three months that I was there.