Last night I had an interesting dream about my old roommate, K. She was crying and a bunch of her friends were around but they were all ignoring her. She went over to a few of her friends and they turned their backs on her. Watching this happen, I felt bad and went over to her. I asked her what was wrong and she just kept crying. I tried to comfort her and tell her that everything would be okay, but she kept crying. I told her I wasn’t going to leave until she told me what was going on and that she could talk to me if she needed someone. She finally opened up, but I can’t remember what she told me.
I think that my dream says a lot about the relationship K and I had. She was very self-conscious and sensitive to the way other people viewed her. I think that may have been her biggest problem; she was paranoid and believed people did not like her, even if they didn’t even know her. My other roommate, E, and K did not get along at all and I was stuck in the middle of their disputes. E said that K was messy and loud and she never cleaned up after herself (this is actually true, E and I spent countless hours cleaning the kitchen because she left bread crumbs and jam stains on the counters and left the stickers from peaches on the sink and peas on the floor). K said that E was too quiet and kept things bottled up and refused to buy toilet paper for the bathroom they shared (this was somewhate accurate – E bought toilet paper but it was the generic kind so K refused to use it, but E did keep things bottled up and never spoke to K unless she was forced into it).
Being friends with both of them, I tried not to talk about it one way or the other. E and I had been roommates since freshman year and we played soccer together, so K sometimes thought that I was leaving her out. At one point, right before spring break (K was going on spring break with her other friends), K decided to stop talking to me. I admit, I didn’t do much to try to talk to her because on the last day of school, I had a huuuuuge debate that was worth half of my final grade in one of my classes. I spent my time the last weekend before spring break and the days leading up to it (spring break started on a Thursday) studying, researching and writing talking points.
That weekend ended up being the best weekend of my life. I went out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday with E and my friend Iz. I went home on Sunday and stayed until Sunday and by the time I got back from spring break, K had completely stopped talking to me. She also stopped talking to Iz, who had gone out of her way to comfort her in the situation. K moved out. At that point, she was telling anyone who would listen that she could never forgive me for what I had done – which was ridiculous because I hadn’t done anything except my homework (and I admit that I rarely opened a textbook in undergrad, so it may have been weird for her to see me studying, but whenever I had a project or a paper I usually could sit down and get it done).
Since she moved out, I have considered writing her an email or a card trying to figure out what she was thinking, but I decided against it because I don’t think I deserved to be treated that way. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really didn’t care for her too much anyways. I used to get sick all the time, and whenever I was ill she would try to one-up my illness. It was as though no one lived a life harder than hers. And she also made comments about how I was spoiled, which I’ll go ahead and admit. I am spoiled, but I know that my parents can support me. Her dad was working two jobs to send her to school (and by 2 jobs I mean two factory jobs…) and her thanks to him was complaining that her car wasn’t good enough. So what does he do? Get her a new car for Christmas. You can’t tell me that two facory jobs can afford to send her to a $34,000 per year university AND get her a brand new car AND support himself and his stay-at-home wife who is undergoing all sorts of medical treatments for lupus. I’m sorry. But even I don’t ask my parents for new cars and my dad makes over triple what her dad made from his 2 jobs. And my car is a 2001 Buick that has well over 100,000 miles on it. (Ohhhh how I love my Stuttering Stan the Man.) It’s better for me to get the selfish people out of my life because I’m trying to fix myself and become less spoiled and start becoming more self-sufficient.
So I guess the moral of the dream was that no matter how much I reach out to her, she will take her time in “forgiving” me. So it’s not worth it. She’ll just ignore the efforts. And I am NOT all about wasting my time.
S.
