I've had some bad room-mate situations in my time, but nothing really compares to the experiences I've had in the last few months. I have a certain room-mate named Sara, but to protect her identity I'll refer to her as "Psychotica."
I didn't know Psychotica before she moved in. My first experience connected with her was when she moved in. I was the only one home, and I'd heard from my other room-mates that our landlord had told us that "someone" was going to move "sometime" into the last available room in our apartment. Our landlord has a nasty habit of not communicating anything with us, so needless to say we were left with only the vaguest understanding that we would soon get a new room-mate. Our landlord also typically sends people to look at the apartments without telling us, so we're constantly surprised by people ringing our backwards doorbell and saying, "Tim said that you would show me the apartment."
Well, one Sunday (my laundry day) this lady rings the doorbell (DONG-ding) and says that her daughter is coming to live in the last room. I knew that the room had been taken, but thanks to the lack of communication from our landlord, I had no idea who had taken it. I said, "Um, someone's going to be moving in there soon..." Without giving me a chance to finish what I was saying or clarify with her that I was indeed talking about her daughter, she freaks out and goes away, presumably to tell my landlord that someone had told her her daughter's room had already been taken by someone else. No one bothered to talk to me about this. I didn't see any more of anybody until they came to move in, all the while giving me dirty looks for causing all of this trouble.
I didn't really get to know Psychotica very well during the time that we lived together, but I was able to gather that she came from a small town (and therefore had a small-town mentality) and thought that everything that I did, watched, listened to, ate, said, or liked was, and I quote: "Stupid."
I know that as different people, we all have different interests. But while I might not be as excited about something as someone else might be, I at least try to respect their opinions. Psychotica made no effort to do so, nor did she make any effort NOT to voice her opinion of me and the things I did.
I'm a passive person. I'm willing to take a certain amount of lumps (up to a point) if it means keeping the peace. Even I have to admit, though, that it was getting on my nerves. Psychotica flung the "That's stupid" response at me constantly. Although that was annoying, I never thought that she was actually crazy (I mean CRAZY crazy, not "She doesn't like 'The Lord of the Rings'?! She's crazy!" crazy.).
It all started over a Phase 10 game. We'd played it once as an apartment with little to no incidents. The next time we played, however, somehow everyone went away being angry with each other--angry to the point of door slamming and the Silent Treatment.
The next day, Psychotica made cookies. I came home and saw them sitting in a pile on a plate on the kitchen counter. I didn't have any, because there were all kinds of "baking chips" in them: chocolate, mint, butterscotch, etc. I didn't think this eclectic cookie would taste very good, so I didn't have any. I found out later, though, that one of my room-mates (coincidentally the room-mate that Psychotica was most angry with) had eaten one, and had been up all night, not sick, but buzzed. THEN I found out that Psychotica was addicted to prescription medication, and that she had probably crushed up some of her pills and put them in the cookies.
That scared the HELL out of me. I wouldn't have minded if she'd put salt in the cookies, or that stuff that makes you pee blue, or even marijuana. But prescription pharmaceuticals crosses a major line. If someone had had a reaction to the medication, for example, we could have been dealing with a homicide!
Needless to say, I no longer eat ANYTHING that Psychotica has made or bought, even if it's something like wrapped candy. I need to live in a place where people don't think it's acceptable to poison each other! In fact, I need my own place.
