Bye Bye Bye (Roommate woes)
In late January/early February, my brother John and I moved out of his one bedroom apartment in Redwood City to a "three" bedroom house in Daly City with my mom's friend's daughter...probably one of the bigger mistakes I have made in my life. But it actually all started right after I decided to work full-time instead of going back to school. The day after I told my parents I was stopping out, I suddenly get a call from my mom's friend to congratulate me and then let me know that her daughter who lived close to where I was working was looking for a new place and roommate and that she was a "good cook"...Flash forward a few months and we are back where I left off. Now the 2nd Tuesday after moving in, my housemate, who is a hopeless rAvEr/PaRtY Guhrl, decides to let around 16 of her new friends crash at our place after a party. So when her crew steps in at 3:00AM-ish, I'm cool, but since most of my stuff is all in boxes all there in the rooms where theses 16 guys are crashing, I just asked my housemate if these were friends that she knew well. She said yes, and I went back to sleep...
When I woke up for work a few hours later, most of the guests had left and sadly enough, my dreamcast and some games and gone...I was calm about it, but I did want it back, I told my housemate and my friends my stuff was missing and she admits that she didn't really know everyone crashing at the house and that some friends of friends of friends of...something or other had stolen my stuff. Fortunately the friends who were still there were gonna help me get my stuff back, so swore one of housemate's friends..."on his son's life" no less...of course I didn't want it back that badly and in all honesty it was like under $350 which was stolen and they could've taken much more, but most disturbing was my housemate's nonchalant attitude (she didn't even offer an apology). To make matters worse, day after day, she gave excuses of why the stuff wasn't returned, swearing it would be back the next day and then getting all pissed off when I would politely inquire if there was any update. Eventually, her friends bought me a new dreamcast but I never did get my games and other stuff back and the whole episode left a lot of bad feeling, so we all agreed to part our ways and no longer room together. Of course this was kinda tricky since her mom's name was on the lease so I had to talk to the her mom...
The mom was surprisingly cool when I told her about the decision and that my brother and I were totally prepared to move and that we were not made or upset, but just that living together was not a good idea. Strangely enough, she told us that she didn't trust her daughter to find two replacement roommates to live with her and pay rent and told me that she would move her daughter out of the house in a month and not to worry. She then offered to pay for everything still not accounted for, but stated that since it had been old stuff stolen that prices should be lower for the items and that I should "bargain" shop when looking for replacements. That was kinda annoying but I thought that this would all be over soon and that my brother and I could get on with our lives...boy was I wrong.
Instead of trying to move, my housemate goes to Hawaii for a few weeks. When she gets back I ask her about what's going on and she assures me that she is looking but that she wasn't able to find anything within her price range... I offer to help but she said that everything would be taken care of by the end of the month and not to worry...hmmmm I heard that before...
Before I continue, I should explain about the "three" bedroom house. It was "ghetto," like the house Dr. Dre picked up Snoop from in the beginning of the "G-Thang" video, but it was cheap...around $1500 a month for the "three" bedroom house -- almost unheard of in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, it was located right under the flight path of SFO, so airplanes were flying overhead everyday at 2:00am. Also, the "three bedrooms" were a master bedroom with a walk-in closet and bathroom which went to the housemate, a second bedroom was half the size of the master bedroom which went to my brother, and a small room about half the size of my brother's room that I was suppose to sleep in. But the room was so small that when I put a desk and a dresser in the room, I couldn't fit my inflatable air mattress which I had been sleeping in since I moved in now several months ago. My brother and I agreed that when my housemate moved out, he would take the master bedroom and that I would get his room and finally get a real bed to sleep on (I had slept on his couch before the move and now after putting a desk and a dresser in my room was back on the couch again).
Okay, so another month passes, my back is starting to hurt and I am constantly woken up by my housemate and her friends on their way to and from the parties they go to nightly. We make no attempts at pleasantness and the only contact we had was the bags of trash from her room that she would put in the kitchen trash can which my brother and I would in turn take outside on trash days. I ask again about what's going on with the housing situation and she tells me to talk to her mother and that whatever the mother decided would be what happens.
I have always tried to be respectful when talking to my mother's friends and also calm, collected, and levelheaded during an argument... but within minutes of talking to my housemates mother, the gloves came off... I asked about the housing situation, and the mother immediately accused me of being unfair and impatient and how she had not wanted this situation to occur since her and my mom are such good friends, adding that she was surprised when her daughter and my brother and I had decided to move (even though it was her idea in the first place). I agreed that I had never wanted my stuff stolen and this whole situation to occur and then she lectured me on how I am so immature for still holding a grudge and even mentioning that when everything should now be fair and even since my stuff had been returned (which of course it hadn't). But is wasn't about the stuff, it never was. It was more about the poor handling of the whole situation and all the headache and trouble I had to go through and endure due to the whole situation and both her and her daughter's attitude. In response she "triumphantly" added that such a story would "hold no grounds in court" and I told her that this wasn't a legal issue and that I really just wanted to put an end to this all. She then attacked me again as being more immature since I cannot simply try to move on and cut off situations or people that I no longer want to deal with and somehow managed to bring my mother into the argument and about how she raised me poorly and how I have this terrible relationship with my mother and that she and I live in a delusionary world...The whole time our voices were escalating and this was the first screaming argument I had since high school! Quickly realizing that this was getting us no where fast, I calmed down and told her that if her daughter couldn't move out, then my brother and I would (even though the cost and time and headache of looking for a new place and actually moving there would be double the amount of just moving one person ). She agreed that the first people to find a new place could leave and then hung up on me.
Now I was furious. I first wanted to tell my housemate of the new situation and looked in her room and she was no where in sight. My brother suggested we leave to the nearby pak n' save to vent and cool, but I wanted to talk to my mother before anything else could happen and explain and vent and hopefully cool. My mother was very understanding and since I was both frustrated and furious, I was very frank and raw about my feelings towards my mother's friend hoping to get my mother to understand my feelings not so that she would take action, but so that she could support my brother and my decision to move out. After venting for awhile, I tried to deal with my frustration but joking about the wickedness of the mother, and or course I was being a little too loud and careless, because unknown to me, the daughter was still in the house...
After one particularly harsh joke, she burst out her room in tears screaming about how my mother's a good women she respects and that I had no right to talk shit about my mother. And even though I felt justified in my comments since I had to deal with her vicious mother who personally insulted and attacked me and my mother, I did feel that maybe I had gotten carried away and that it was only right for her to stand up for her mom and so I tried to apologize. But she wasn't having any of that and told me how disgusted she was with me and how she lost all respect for me and how she would never speak to me again (not that she ever spoke to me anyhow).
I really did feel bad about making her cry, but I felt worse about the situation I put my brother in. All this time he tried to be neutral, but I really put him in a bad place since he was caught up in the middle and even though we discussed and agreed upon the idea of moving out ourselves, I really did force our hand. But my brother was understanding and was almost as disgusted and frustrated about the whole situation as I was and after a day of web surfing and calling and calling and calling we were able to find a nice place in San Bruno with a high speed internet connection to boot. And much to her credit, our soon to be ex-housemate's mother generously gave us to the end of the month to move (which worked out since the new place didn't have availability til the 20th). And now my brother and I have moved to our awesome new place, no longer lost in fog, subject to the deafening noise of overhead airplanes and best of all no longer having to deal with my mother's friend and her daughter. My mom has since tried really hard to spread her goodwill towards other philosophy to me and my attitude towards her friend and daughter and while I do not wish them ill, I do see no reason why I or my loved one should waste any more time or energy dealing with them when there are so many other nicer and wonderful people out there in the world. Just remember that the moral of the story is to never room with the child of your parent's friend who you haven't seen in years...
We are happy because we are finally about to move out of that ghetto shack! ;P
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