Housemates from Hell

Dearest darling blog followers, the time has come for me to share something very deep and dark about my living arrangements from this past year. Many of you know my roommate. She is adorable and funny and even shorter than me. However, those of you who have not have the privilege of visiting my humble abode have not met my other housemate. I have not blogged about her all year. However, last night she vacated the property (and the country) and so I feel that I can now tell the tale.

She was, to put it succinctly, the housemate from hell. Never in your whole lives have you met anybody as filthy, dirty, selfish, inconsiderate and offensive.

In our very first conversation she told me how disgusting she thought gay people were and how they make her want to throw up. She then proceeded to tell me that all she really wants to do it get married to somebody very very rich. In fact, most times that she met boys, she would inquire into their financial status to see if they were suitable sugar daddies. This wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't so very vocal about her homophobia and racism and love of patriarchy all the time. For the whole year though, I just smiled and nodded and changed the subject.

She was also probably the most filthy and messy person I've ever lived with. She once left a pot of porridge on the stove for a week. She cleaned her toilet once the entire year (only after she had projectile diarrhea) and had mountains up to my hip of rotting used tampons and pads. She dropped glasses of wine in the kitchen and left the wine and the broken shards of glass all over the floor and counter top. She just went to bed and didn't leave a note to warn us in the morning that maybe we shouldn't walk around barefooted in the kitchen. She once dropped an entire kilo of sugar on the floor and left it scattered and crunching under our feet for 2 days. She left so much half-eaten food around her room that she acquired a mouse infestation. Luckily she was on the third floor and the mice stayed in her room. But still. GROSS. Requests for her to clean even public spaces (like the wine and sugar coated kitchen) were consistently ignored, leaving myself and my other housemate and even our friends to clean up after her dinner from sometimes up to a week previous.

Of our 12 wine glasses she broke 6 as well as various mugs and cups. She went through a stage where she lost her key on a weekly basis. She never paid a bill and it got to the stage where she owed us over 1,000NIS in unpaid utilities.

She had obnoxious friends who would have very loud screaming matches at any hour of the day or night and would leave their dirty g-strings on the coffee table. Or would make out (and then some) in our living room. This made for many awkward breakfasts.

She would have very loud conversations on skype with her father about how she smoked all this pot and didn't get high. Or about how much she has or has not pooped today. Or about how many women he has fucked. No, but seriously.

Luckily, however, she has left. She is taking a sabbatical from studying art 2 days a week. And after a year of not saying anything and of being polite and considerate and of smiling and of saying 'ok' I let it rip on her. I told her that she was obnoxious and inconsiderate and selfish and filthy and that she could not leave the apartment without removing the piles of half-eaten food and rotting tampons from the room. It felt good and bad.

It felt good because she caused me a lot of strife over the year and I needed to let her know that. It felt bad though because I yelled at her and I feel that she brought me down to her level.

Also, more than anything I feel sorry for her. Her parents sent her away from home when she was 14. She was sent away from America to Kfar Chabad and then Tzfat and then Lod and various other girls high schools in a foreign country. She hasn't lived in a home for 5 years. She lived in dormitories with strange girls with no parental attention. Ultimately she doesn't know how to live with people. She didn't make friends with the girls at school and she moved schools year after year.

If I could do it again, would I behave differently? I'm not sure. Given her authority issues I don't think constantly coming into conflict with her over her hygiene or social habits would have helped the situation at all. Would I take back the chastisement I gave her just before she left? Probably not, because without it I would have been left to clean up the mess. But it would be great to know how to deal with situations like this better in the future.

I didn't blog about her all year because it's not nice to write these things and complain about people and let the whole world know their dirty laundry. Also I didn't want to be a complainer. But ultimately if this blog is a record of my life in Jerusalem and she was unfortunately a largish part of that life and by far the most negative element of it then this blog wouldn't be complete without a post about her.

Now let us never mention this matter again.