Take Care of Yourself, Not Your Toxic Roommates: From A Retired People Pleaser
By: Kamilyah McMiller
As college is coming back in session, here’s a myth: you must be friends with your roommates.
Media overconsumption creates more pressure than ever to find your “forever friends” or have the best time with your roommates in college. I thought this pre-college, but in real terms college is temporary, and you don’t have to fold yourself to fit in because it may turn you into someone you don’t want to be. A big part of college is about finding yourself, which could be difficult if you’re miserable trying to please everyone else. So, here’s my story:
When I started my first year at my out-of-state university, I thought it would be a great year because I would finally make good friends since I never had many real ones growing up. I shared a room with two random girls and a bathroom with two more girls next door (5 total!). Even though it was a big adjustment initially, I figured only time would tell. But, unfortunately, I was wrong.
To start, we had completely different interests. I still tried to converse with them because I wanted to be at least friends since we all lived together. This idea went downhill and fast. Therefore, the first week, they started making crazy rules such as making me pay to put anything in the refrigerator or microwave and giving me a “curfew” that they never followed through with themselves. This curfew would become overruled when all four would attend parties and clubs every weekend and peer pressure me into going with them. Which made me give in on my birthday, but they almost left me in the club and forced me to wash their vomit rug when we got back. So, that never happened again. Frequently, they came back yelling when they came home from the clubs at 2 am (on finals week as well) and would be bed-written to the bathroom in the morning. And since we only had one bathroom, I would always be delayed in getting where I needed to be during the week.
Throughout the first semester, these mishaps didn’t change. They started their new profound love of Hinge and would go on dates to get free dinners or gifts (one even turned out to be a stalker). In addition to the random men, this led them to attach an extra bolt lock on the door every night at 10 pm, causing me to become locked in with them. Also, they would invite random strangers into our tiny room that would sit all over the floor and in their beds. I remember a night when I tried to sleep before they came back, and I woke up to this man hovering over me to ask if I wanted Chipotle. I had no privacy whatsoever as there were three of us in one big room that exposed me everywhere.
Eventually, they stopped pressuring me about clubbing, so they stopped inviting me to their other fun destinations. Often, I sat alone in the room while they were at the beach, shopping, or having dinner because they would never let me know or ask me. I would only find out where they went from their social media. I would read, walk to the park, or go shopping alone to receive any form of entertainment because I felt isolated. And they never addressed me in public, which made me feel like a ghost to them…even if I waved.
Since it seemed they didn’t want to be bothered with me, I reached out to some of the girls who were prior prospective roommates. But they already had their groups. After numerous tries, I didn’t want to judge every potential friendship but found a trend with this concept. I even was stood up by a classmate when we had plans to go to a festival nearby together. The worst part is that I sat in my themed outfit for hours for her not to text me back. Usually, many of the girls off-campus were great, but the ones on campus were cliquey and weren’t very welcoming unless you liked hard-core partying like my current roommates.
Towards the second semester, I became depressed, and my roommates became frenemies. They started talking behind each other’s backs in the most disrespectful way possible. The two in my room encountered a disagreement which led to one sleeping on the floor next door. She even took her mattress, vacuum, and television out of our room. Since the other girls had one-sided views, I was dorm-bound for the last five months with one roommate who would constantly put me in the middle of their conflict. During this, she would wake up at 6 am every day, slam doors, stare at me, and repeatedly complain about how I do my hair (which never mattered before as they knew I was a completely different culture from all of them). I tried to switch rooms during the school-wide room swap, but all residence life told me there were no more prominent openings. So, I was trapped there, as I was thousands of miles away from home with nowhere to go.
For the rest of the semester, I avoided the room most of the day because I didn’t want to face her as she made me uncomfortable and spiked my anxiety. She would openly judge me for doing my everyday things and talk to me about everyone due to the awkward silence. I spent hours in the study rooms half asleep with a Celsius or a Caramel macchiato because I was tired but couldn’t study. With final exams approaching, I felt completely drained due to the constant stress of the room situation, which was unhealthy. I never knew if one day I would walk into the room and they would start fighting or yelling at each other like they have throughout the year.
At the end of the school year, I was relieved to be away from all of them as I felt like a hostage. Looking back, I barely had a decent day because I continuously felt alert about what would happen next. As a result, I lacked sleep and concentration, and I definitely couldn’t be my true self in the room, which created a terrible atmosphere outside the room. All of the judgment from every possible angle started to make me self-conscious. I don’t think anyone deserves that in their first year of college.
If you’re experiencing bad roommates (or college experience), talk to a resident assistant or someone you trust before it turns to the worst. If you can’t try to coexist peacefully, you don’t have to be best friends or make them happy. I learned that you’re not behind if you don’t have a group of girls or friends to blend with because there’s still post-grad and even life after that! So, spend more time with mother nature, or pick up a new hobby and do things you enjoy, not what everyone else does. With college being stressful enough, you don’t want your experience to be based on a drama-filled mess. And could create a dent in your mental health if you’re not careful. In other words, don’t forget to be considerate of others: it’s our first time living too.