The Vine: March 7, 2002
Hi Sars,
You might remember that I asked your advice last year about my flatmate who thought he was striking a blow for the proletariat by stealing a tin of tomatoes. Since your advice totally rocked (i.e. confirmed my own opinion), I’m asking for it again.
My tomato-pilfering flatmate “Jack” recently had a little cash-flow crisis —
he was fired, and two days later he bought a new iBook and a $1500 video camera. We had a few calls from our letting agent mentioning we were behind with the rent, but we assured them that it was there, we’d all been paying it into the account as per usual. Two weeks later, an eviction letter arrives. We went through our receipts (Jack was out at the time), and our rent added up. We called him. He assured us that he’d paid it, but he’d lost the receipt. We asked which day he paid it. We called the agent, and asked them to check. The money wasn’t there, i.e. Jack had lied to us and somehow thought we wouldn’t find out. We told the agent that we’d fix it up, borrowed money and paid the arrears, and put all Jack’s crap into boxes, left it on the street, and told him to come get it before the garbage truck arrived. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave his iBook and video camera at home or we would have made a quick trip to the nearest pawn shop and hocked them.
Anyway, the upshot of this is, I am starting to feel I’m tired of having to deal with share houses — rent, splitting bills, people who don’t wash up, et cetera. I have lived with twenty-two people over the last six years, and I can’t even remember all their names now. But I can’t decide whether I want to move out on my own or not.
I just got a temporary promotion, which hopefully will be made permanent in a month. Technically, with the promotion, I could afford the bottom end of the 1BR apartment scale. But I love the house I live in, it’s big and has a nice garden and I have a great room with a balcony. I quite like my other flatmates. The house is in a good area. I only have to pay a quarter of the bills. The rent is reasonable. The only household stuff I own is a bed, a knife, and a fridge. I don’t have many friends in this town (I only moved here a year ago), and I kind of rely on my flatmates for company. But it would be SO NICE not to have to put up with other people.
So as a single-person household, do you have any advice for living alone vs. living with others?
Cheers
A Room Of One’s Own
Dear Room,
Living alone is great. You can come and go as you please. You can eat the last cookie. You can play your music when you like and watch what you want to on TV and ramble around the place half-naked getting dressed. Nobody ever walks in on you. Nobody ever leaves the bathroom a pigsty. Nobody ever borrows your stuff.
But by that same token, nobody’s ever around to tell about the date you just got home from. If you want to go out for a quick pint, nobody’s right there to walk down to the pub with you. Roommates provide an automatic social life, an alternate wardrobe, a handy receptacle for blame. When you live alone, you can’t rely on someone else to dust in the living room or get the phone on Sunday morning. It’s just you.
I love living alone; for a bossy, prickly woman like myself, it’s perfect. Occasionally I miss not having someone to yell “I’m home” to, but not often. So, if you get really fed up, try living alone — but I would caution you that, once you’ve lived on your own for awhile, it’s hard to readjust to living with other people again. You get into certain habits when there’s nobody else around that don’t hold up with other people in the house. If you make the change, know that it’s sometimes rocky to change back.
And tell Jack I still think he’s an asshole.
Dear Sars:
Okay, here goes. I’m not one to ask out for help (more on that later), but I am a strange woman in a strange land, with no one to talk to face-to-face, so here goes.
Eight months ago, I met the man of my dreams. After countless bad relationships based on my own self-esteem problems, I found someone I wasn’t afraid of, wasn’t afraid to be myself around, someone I see as my home, my partner, my future. I moved from NYC to L.A. to be with him, and we are about to move back east so I can work towards my dream of being a social worker.
Bliss, right? Heh. Here’s the kick in the head. I have a list of emotional and mental problems a mile long. Severe depression. Anorexia. Panic disorder. Social anxiety. Self-abuse. It goes on and on. I have been totally honest with “Dan” about all of this. My highs, my lows, my ever-changing meds, all of it. For the first time in my life, I feel like I really want to fight this, not only for US, but for ME. I feel stronger than I have ever before.
But it’s taking a toll. He’s scared of my “darkness” winning. He talks about losing me to the darkness, how, when I’m in a bad patch, I become a different person. He’s scared. He loves me, and he’s scared. And so am I. He runs me in circles about wanting to marry me and being convinced he’s not strong enough to marry me.
I love this man. I adore this man. So because I love him, should I let him go? Should I spare him from myself? Am I beyond selfish to force him to endure this? I feel like I can conquer this, but should I drag him down in the process? It doesn’t seem fair. I’d love to know your take on this. Am I, as I always feared, too crazy to love?
Thanks, Sars. I’m not asking for a miracle. I’m just looking for an opinion.
CrazyScared
Dear CS,
Everyone has problems. Everyone has shit wrong with them, reasons why they suck, things that make them hard to love.
But Dan does love you, and more importantly, Dan is an adult. Dan can make the tough choices; Dan can decide whether he can hack it with you or not. It’s not up to you to decide that for him, and you shouldn’t feel that it’s your responsibility — that you have to turn him loose because it’s “the best thing,” or because you think he’ll eventually leave anyway.
You love Dan, so…love him. Don’t talk yourself out of him just because it’s hard; it’s always hard, for everyone. It sounds like the two of you communicate well, so keep doing that. Acknowledge the problems and doubts, discuss them, try to deal with them together. But don’t just assume that it won’t — or shouldn’t — work out, because prophecies like that tend to fulfill themselves.
Tags: boys (and girls) roommates
