Dormmate drama
(Warning: this post is a little vent-y)
I wanted to write a little about the dormmate I had.
She used to be from another fancy private school[1], but transferred here at the start of 12th grade. Which is technically impossible, transferring from a private school to a public one. I don't know how she -- more specifically, her parents -- did that.
We also get random new dorms each school year, so just by chance, I got lumped in with her. There were supposed to be 4 people, but only 3 really stay there.
I don't beef with my dormmates. We usually get along well. But not her. She was spoiled rotten -- guess I should've expected it. Her parents could get her transferred to a public school, after all. But the thing is, I don't mind. I don't mind her personal lifestyle habits; I don't mind if she has to take 30-min long showers and blow her hair for an additional 20; I don't mind if she had to sleep through the first period; I don't mind if she has to use 2 desks to put all her stuff, since there were only 3 people anyways so we had a spare desk. I don't mind any of these.
What I do mind, a lot, is her blatant disrespect for everybody else. It was like she thought she was the main character and everyone else is an NPC.
We got along for a while. But there were signs. The most obvious one was the card thing. We had to use our school cards to swipe the dorm door open. One day, I was inside and heard knocking, so I opened the door. She was outside and went in. I asked her, in a chitchat manner, "forgot your card?" And she replied, "no, it's in my bag, it's just too much trouble to take it out."
There were so many things wrong with this interaction I don't even know where to start. She legit thought it was okay to trouble other people to avoid troubling herself. And the fact that she said it out loud, to my face, proves that she did not even think that was wrong. I'm convinced that to this day, as I'm writing this post, she still thinks that I am the asshole for not even wanting to do the extremely simple task of opening the door at her bidding -- can't Tofu see how hard it is for me to take the card out of my bag??/s
(By the way, we use our cards to buy food too -- would be a shame if she starved because she could not get her card out of her bag.)
That was the first time. On the second time, after asking "forgot your card?" and receiving a similar answer again, I got pissed and said, "I'm just a servant to you, right?[2]" Upon hearing that, she slammed the door -- which was nice, actually; she loves leaving the door open behind her until someone else (usually me) goes to close it.
I don't know her exact age but she couldn't have been younger than 17. We're nearly adults. She still acts like a literal spoiled baby.
Apparently, my servant statement was the breaking point for her. Yeah, an off-handed, casual half-insult. During later arguments she would constantly bring that line up and go "how are you a servant? How come I think you're my servant?" or something like that, probably thinking she actually had a coherent argument, or anything better she could nitpick about my behavior. Again, like a child.
The breaking point for me, however, was the trash can thing. So our dorms don't have trash cans in them; we had to bring our own. But most of the time, there were cans left by the previous inhabitants of the dorm. Not this time though. So I brought a trash can here, along with trash bags, for us three to use.
I had one rule: if it's empty, put a bag in it. The bags are here. Right here, for everyone to take. Grab one. Put it in the can. And then throw trash.
She kept on throwing trash into a bare can. I talked to her. I told her, the bags are right there, put one in! She could take none of it. I didn't throw wet stuff! Those are all dry stuff that wouldn't stick to the can! What's wrong with that?
Km km. It is my trash can; you can follow my one and only rule or I could just not let you use it.
I put the can on my table. It's mine now. Neither of you gets to use it. Actually I would've let the third girl use it anyways since she didn't do anything wrong, but whatever.
Then came the maddening thing: she still threw stuff into the can anyways. Not only behind my back, but also right in front of me, even! She walked over to me desk, threw some shit in, muttering "I'll borrow this for a bit, thank you[3]."
If I carved her face out, my family won't have to buy extra food for a month. That's how thick her skin is.
Heated arguments; the dorm manager got involved; she was yelling, screaming incoherent bullshit -- clearly on the defensive, which worked, since neither me nor the dorm manager could get a word in; and when she finally allowed our input she would cut into our speech about three characters in. The funniest thing was once she mentioned how I was constantly getting in fights with other dormmates, even before she shared a dorm with me -- the third girl told her that! Which was funny on so many levels. She was the "new kid" and she dared talk about my past in front of the dorm manager, who had known me for two previous years? In addition, this was my first time sharing a dorm with the third girl too. This convinced me even more that she thinks we're all NPCs.
For a long while, even just thinking about her made my blood boil. Fortunately, sometimes she goes home to sleep. Unfortunately, it means every night is a surprise of "will she be here?"
Something had to change. I used to think that there's only one semester left, so I could roll with it; and if I quit, or moved to another dorm, it would be me losing. She'd win, and I'd lose. Looking back, that was extremely childish.
But I decided to move. There was an empty spot in a dorm full of my friends, so I moved there.
There were a lot of physical problems in that dorm. The door can't be closed properly and water keeps leaking out from mysterious places. But I am happy. I am with my friends! I started looking forward to each night, instead of dreading them.
So, if you'll excuse me sounding like a sloppy old cartoon moral narrator: sometimes we get in situations that make us uncomfortable and we just go with it, thinking we could handle it. Maybe its annoying dormmates, or maybe it could be a relationship we no longer wanna be in, etc. Move the hell out. There's got to be somewhere we can move to!
Wow, my longest post yet, a vent post. Venting sure is the muse of inspiration!
When we started high school there was a kid on the roll-call, but she never attended, and we were told she decided to go to some private school. They had the same surname but I couldn't remember the girl's full name, so I couldn't make assumptions. But if they were indeed the same person, then she didn't technically transfer here I guess. She was supposed to be here in the first place. ↩︎
我就是来伺候你的是不？ ↩︎
借扔一下谢谢 ↩︎