Nothing Sucks Like a Roommate

In my mind, you can boil our society down to four kinds of people where living arrangements are concerned: either you’re young enough to live with your family, you’re doing well enough to have your own house or apartment, you’re living with someone else because you don’t have any other choice, or you’re living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere. All of these have their advantages and disadvantages, but for my money, the 3rd is the worst, which is why I’m currently considering throwing all my crap in storage and going alley-hunting.

What is it about people that varies so widely as to make living together as impossible as it seems to be? Even if you’ve got two generally nice, considerate people, giant gulfs in what the two consider the acceptable treatment of others seem to come up. Everyone seems to find a way to feel slighted about something, or like the other is encroaching on their territory. Even people of kindness-centered faiths who share core ideologies seem unable to agree on how those things should be expressed, what personal boundaries need to be respected, what considerations given.

Or is that just me? Do the rest of you find it easy enough to live with people? Admittedly, the lady I rent from would probably drive any reasonable person nuts. She complains if you leave a dish or speck of dust in the kitchen while being perfectly comfortable with leaving two sinkfuls of dishes unwashed for 3 days. She complains about the use of the washing machine, yet uses it as her own personal hamper, forcing you to remove whatever she’s let build up in it over the course of a week if you need to do laundry, and it usually smells… unpleasant. She demands the rent in cash, and every month asks for it anywhere from 1 to 7 days early for unknown reasons. Her brainless sausage of a dog is a “good boy” who amasses heaps of lavish praise for sleeping 16 hours a day, shitting on the floor, and barking incessantly at visitors to the house; and there are many, many visitors, most of whom are related to drug rehab programs, like to spend the night, and equal the landlady in raw volume and sense of “humor”.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Did I mention that my hardwood floor is caving in? In at least 3 places, yes—one of which has already begun to splinter.

So if anyone knows of a nice, cozy alley somewhere, preferably one with a coffee shop nearby where I can leech wifi and recharge the occasional electronic device, do let me know.