I'm so angry right now. I just got home from out of town and checked my mail. There was a letter from the city regarding an outstanding parking ticket. Apparently, my former roommate (I kicked her out at the beginning of the month) got a parking ticket in my car and never bothered to A) tell me and B) pay it! The ticket was due today! I had to race to the bank and pay her freaking parking ticket.
I was out of town when she got the ticket and my parents gave her permission to use my car while she was moving out. I'm ok with that.... I'd let her borrow my car on occassion, but to get a ticket and not tell me or do anything about it - that p!sses me off. What if I'd gotten pulled over with that outstanding ticket? I'd have been in huge trouble. What she did is just down right selfish and rude in my opinion.
I know I'm not going to see any of the money. Her parents who are friends of my folks, paid her outstanding rent, though she isn't aware of this. However, she still owes me about $400 in utilities (didn't pay a single bill while she lived here) somehow even though I spent no more than 10 days a month at my place for the entire time I live here my utilities manage to double. It cost me more in utility bills with a roommate than it did without and I wasn't even at my place. Plus she easily owes me $200 for food. I travel a lot for work and she would help herself to anything that was in the freezer or pantry. I understand that she lost her job and is broke, but why am I expected to foot the bill for her!?!
I didn't want to have her as a roommate, I'd had someone else lined up, but my parents encouraged me too, because she was the daughter of a friend and colleague and now I'm stuck with the mess. IT"S JUST NOT FAIR!!!!!!
Small claims court- I'd keep the receipt of the ticket and the proof it was HER who got the ticket with your car and then also receipts of all the bills.
Beerab, both of our dad's are lawyer, so we probably won't do the small claims court. But either way it's not hard to prove that it was her ticket. There are several photos of my in an other province at my bf's dad's funeral the day she got the ticket. It's also on the campus of the art school she was trying to enroll in. It's definitely her ticket, that's for sure.
Kitty, her parent's have been good about paying, they paid her outstanding rent, but didn't pay the utilities. I don't think they were aware that we had agreed to split the bills. My mom intervened (gotta love moms!), and sent her parents an email saying since ___ is out of funds would you please be kind enough to cover the parking ticket? Her parents are awesome, super nice and very generous. So I don't think it will be an issue. I was just angry about the whole situation; there were some serious issues on her part that just made our roommate situation beyond difficult. This was just the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak....
I wouild tell my parents everything and tell them you will pick your own roommates after this. You may never get the money that she owes you , but you can cross her off as a friend, you can't afford her.
I don't know if I'll cut her off as a friend completely. She has some mental health problems, unbelievable low self esteem, sever depression, and the impossible to shake belief that she is a failure and completely unlovable. I don't want to cut her off completely mostly because I'm worried about her. I don't need to be bestest buddies with her. But I don't want her to think that one more person believes that she is a complete and utter failure. Being around her at times is heart breaking and while she'll never be a good friend I don't want her to really think that I've written her off completely. I just keep a health distance between us (and our finances!)
in general, i hate roommates too, although I'm lucky enough to never have had financial issues with any of mine in the past... just horrible drama! counting down the days until I'm in my own apartment in august too.
hope you get everything sorted out with this chick and her parents and hope you can still be there for her when she needs it.
She has some mental health problems, unbelievable low self esteem, sever depression, and the impossible to shake belief that she is a failure and completely unlovable.
Here's the difference between someone who is severely depressed and someone who's just angsty: genuinely depressed people don't advertise to other people that they have problems. Depression is a state of absolute powerlessness; when people have spent their lives fighting and fighting and there's no positive feedback, they just give up and try to turn invisible to the world. When I was 17 I was hospitalized for depression, and I could definitely tell the difference between people who were there with me because they needed help and those who just wheedled their way in because they were trying to escape responsibility.
If your roommate whined to you about how she's a failure and nobody loves her, yet was confident enough to try to establish herself as an artist, sap her parents' money, eat your food and drive your car without feeling guilty, she is not severely depressed. She is melodramatic. Guilt is the bedrock of depression. When you're depressed, you feel like a burden to everyone, like your insides are filled with a black blight that makes everyone's lives worse. It would be emotionally intolerable to increase the burden by acting as selfishly as your roommate.
Her parents are doing her no favors by cleaning up after her messes. You're not doing her much of a favor either by pretending to like her but obviously keeping her at arm's length. She's messed up, not stupid. You know what really would have helped me as a teenager? If girls in my class had stopped inviting me to eat lunch with them so they could feel like they were doing a good deed by letting me know I wasn't invisible, and someone had taken me aside and told me my behavior was abnormal and they would do what they could to make sure I got better. Sure, there would have been tears and indignation, but if I had been shuttled off to that hospital two years prior to 17, I might have had a sliver of a happy adolescence afterwards.
tkm, I genuinely do like her. When she's on her meds and doing well, she is fun to be around and I enjoy her company. She is a truly talented individual. I am aware of her depression, because her parents told me that she was hospitalized twice in the last few years. I do not care for how she has treated me over the few months I have know her. I can care about her, but keep myself at arms length b/c I have no interest in being further abused by her. The two of us would have never been best friends no matter what, as we have very different outlooks and attitudes, but I do think that for the first while I knew her, she was a positive person and an influence in my life that I enjoyed having there. As her situation became bleaker I slowly watched her unravel before my eyes and this is when our relationship began deteriorating.
She did cry to me several times about how sorry she was that couldn't pay me and how it wasn't fair that I was basically supporting her. I am not equipped to handle all the issues that are going on her her life. I have tried reaching out to her in the last few weeks, but all my attempts were met with rebuffs. I wish her the best and hope that she can deal with her problems, because when things are good, she is truly a wonderful person to be around.
If your roommate whined to you about how she's a failure and nobody loves her, yet was confident enough to try to establish herself as an artist, sap her parents' money, eat your food and drive your car without feeling guilty, she is not severely depressed. She is melodramatic.
Sorry, I know this is OT but I just wanted to say that I don't think it's fair to psychoanalyze someone over the internet, especially if you're hearing about them through another individual rather than directly from themselves. I've battled clinical depression for ten years, and during my worst times some of the closest people to me, including my own parents, had absolutely no idea. I've managed to do things that have left me feeling mountains of guilt, but other than one friend and a therapist, no one knew. I could carry that enormous guilt (and to a substantial degree I still do) and yet appear to be a normal, mentally healthy member of society. So her comments to shantroy, while seemingly flippant or melodramatic, could have been her bumbling, awkward way of trying to seeking help. Plus it's important to remember that there are different types of depression, and it doesn't affect us all identically.
And to shantroy, I'm sorry about your friend. There's one thing that's certainly uniform with people battling depression, and that's the fact that until the person truly wants help and would like to heal their pain, the depression won't go away.
Anyway, sorry to butt in to the conversation, but sometimes I can't squash the desire to share my $.02.
Last edited by craftykath; 05-04-2009 at 06:08 PM.
Crafty, I appreciate your $.02! It is hard, I haven't known her that long (only since christmas), but I do know that she is a great young woman. She just can't seem to see what others do. Her sense of self and reality are so skewed that it's heartbreaking. I wish her well and know that her comments and behaviour that are directed my way have no real malice behind them, but are the actions of a young woman who is so unhappy and scared that she doesn't know how to respond any other way. I keep my distance because I'm going through my own issues at the moment and can't deal with everything else. I look at her and see a girl who despite all the frustrations and anger she's caused me, is a girl with a lot of talent and good qualities, but who just can't move forward. She's entrenched in this negative view of herself, which is so far off the mark it's not even funny. There are moments when I just wish I could shake some sense into her, but as you said she has to want to help herself. I hold out hope that she eventually will and come to see herself as the rest of us do.
I'm so Freakin Angry - Roommate rant
