On mental illness.

There's a girl at work who is in a predicament with her roommate. This isn’t the first I’ve heard of this situation with her roommate. In fact, this has been going on for the almost 7 months that I’ve worked with her.  

Both she and her roommate are 22 years old. Neither of them are from Nashville. They found each other through one of their mutual friends. 

Initially, she complained that he wasn’t cleaning up after himself. He was leaving the common spaces a mess and never cleaned his dishes once he was done using them. Sometimes he’d have friends over and they’d party in the living room long into the night without courtesy to her sleep schedule. Typical roommate stuff. 

After hearing enough complaining, I asked her what she planned to do about it. She didn’t have a plan, except, I suppose, to continue to complain to anyone willing to listen. 

I asked why she didn’t plan to do anything about it if it was bothering her as badly as she made it seem. She said she hates conflict and that it’d just be easier to just live with the things bothering her.

I doubted this approach and suggested ways I might go about handling the situation. 

I felt if she ever hoped to resolve the conflict, she should confront him. I explained that without confrontation, I couldn’t see a reason why anything would change. Although the confrontation might make her uncomfortable, she could at least find comfort in knowing she did what she could to improve her situation. What he does with the information is up to him.

In my experience, if someone knows their actions are causing harm, he will make an attempt to change. Or, he will take it as an opportunity to rebuttal with critiques of your behavior. The result of the confrontation isn’t the point. The point is that the issue has been acknowledged by the involved parties. From there, the involved parties can decide how they’d like to proceed.

In the end, I don’t believe she ever confronted the roommate in the way I encouraged her to. 

I’d followed up about the situation several times in the following months. Although we never discussed it with much fervor, she led me to believe the situation had gotten better, if only because she acquiesced.

I took her word for it and I don’t recall discussing it again. 

Then, yesterday, we discussed her housing situation again. She’s worried because her lease is up at the end of August and she’s struggling to make a decision.

“Why are you struggling?” I asked. “I thought everything with your roommate was fine.”

“Ya. I thought so too. I guess I’ve just been lying to myself about it this entire time.”

“Ok…”

“Plus, wait ‘til you hear what he did the other day.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well my friend was going camping. My roommate has all of this camping equipment sitting in the house. So my friend asked me to ask him if she could use the pots and pans for the weekend.”

“And what’d he say?”

“He said she could but she’d have to pay for it. Can you believe that?”

“Um… honestly, no. Not really. What a dick,” I said. “Whatever, ya – that’s a dick move but it just reaffirms what we already know about him. So I guess we shouldn’t be that surprised, right?”

Neither of us were actually surprised by this seemingly petty behavior. And it seems that this is just the latest in a long string of annoying, unfortunate behavior she’s had to endure. 

So, I put it to her like this: 

You can either stay and continue to put up with him even though you’ve basically already decided he’s a poor roommate. You’ve determined his behavior isn’t going to change to fit your needs. And you’re not willing to confront him about any of it. The way I see it, each time he behaves in a way that upsets you, he erodes your sanity that much more.

Or…

You can find a new home. You can pack your bags, your dog, and your mental well-being and you can leave what you’ve already decided isn’t working for you behind.

“Yes,” I said, “Picking up and moving your entire life is difficult and inconvenient. But that’s in the short term. In the long term, though, you’ll be rewarded.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“I can see it in your face. This is weighing you down. But if you don’t make changes when you know you should, things only get worse.” 

And I’m no expert in mental health but I think this can be true of so many of life’s moments. 

We’re confronted with situations that we know we should change and we elect not to. And for this, we pay the price with our mental well-being. 

Just because we avoid the problems we know we need to address doesn't mean they’ll go away. 

We’ll probably end up wearing them on our face.