Throw a Log on the Fire I Thought was Out

As many of you know, last year I had some trouble with my roommate. I lived in the ghetto on campus, with just one roommate. I didn't know her at all before we moved in. We got along great (for the most part) and I loved being her roommate. As we got into spring semester I started noticing things going missing. Expensive things, ie my Mac foundation, my Big Star jeans that I had worn 3 times since Christmas before they went missing, my Skull Candy headphones, among other things. I kept thinking of reasons why I was missing these things... such as, Oh, I must have left my Big Stars at home when I did my laundry, and I guess I left my foundation at Ben and Steph's when I went to stay there, etc. You get the point. But as more and more of the most expensive possessions I owned disappeared I started to get really frustrated. How could I be such an idiot to lose all of this stuff? Seriously, it drove me crazy. Every time I couldn't find something I would embark on a frenzied search through my apartment (all 10 feet of it) until I either found it or gave up, accepting that it was lost.

One Wednesday night I deep cleaned my room, organizing and cleaning until it looked better than ever. I always tucked my black shower flip flops in between my fridge and shoe tub. The next day I got back from my snowboarding class and needed to hurry and shower because I had to be somewhere soon after that. I went to grab my shower flip flops and they were gone. I immediately embarked on another frenzied search of my apartment, while I was 100% sure that I had put them exactly where they were supposed to be and had not moved them. I even had my friend from next door help me tear my room apart. It was all to no avail. They were nowhere to be found. My neighbor let me borrow her flip flops and I showered quickly, incredibly far behind schedule. I ran into my roommate as I was headed to the shower. I said a quick hello and hurried away. The next day my flip flops were right back where I had put them when I had so meticulously cleaned my room 2 days prior. Only then did I remember that my roommate had been wearing black flip flops the day before, which she doesn't own.

Yes, I admit, this may be an innocent borrowing of the flip flops and returning them. But it was one of the major events that led me to discovering what was really going on.


Another example (you can skip this if you're tired and want to get to the point):
I was leaving town with Marci to head out to her house. I had just showered and gotten ready. I was wearing a cute semi-unique Abercrombie sweater that I had borrowed from a friend, but I decided to change into comfortable clothes for the 5 hour car ride. I left the sweater on my bed. There is no cell phone service at Marci's house and when I returned, I had a text from a close friend that lived on the same floor as us. She sounded somewhat ominous and so when I returned home I immediately went to find her. You can probably imagine what had happened. My friend from the same floor had been on the phone in the stair well. My roommate had started coming down the stairs until she spotted our friend. My roommate stopped, said a hurried hello, and took off down the stairs. What was she wearing, you might ask? The Abercrombie sweater, and some Big Stars that looked remarkably similar to mine.

You can imagine the feelings that ensued... Anger, resentment, hurt, betrayal, etc. She was one of my best friends and I had lost all faith in her. I went to my R.A. and talked to her about it. My friend was there to back me up and later I confronted my roommate. At first she denied everything, but when I told her the Abercrombie sweater wasn't mine, she agreed to return it. Over time, my belongings slowly filtered back to random, fairly obvious places. I found my Big Stars wedged along the side of my bed, which I make religiously. It had been months since they went missing and I had moved my bed at least once since then. You get the point. My parents wanted me to make her move out, but I decided something along the lines of Everyone deserves a second chance.

Oh how she proved me wrong. After an accident involving friends, and several serious mistakes, my roommate basically stopped caring. Clothes of mine started going missing again, and on Facebook I found pictures of her wearing some of my favorite clothes (one of which was a Kalamazoo College shirt with the collar ripped out that has been in my family for a long time). I confronted her and tried my best to get the clothes back. I begged, I threatened, everything. What she said to me was, "A law suit isn't worth a couple of shirts." and that was the last I heard about it from her. She would only come home when I was gone or in class, and she didn't sleep there for weeks. She lied to me time and time again until the semester was over, she moved out, and I never planned on seeing her (or my clothes) again.

Here's where I get to the point of my ramblings:
I got on a bus that I don't usually ride today, and by-golly I bet you can guess who was on it. There was my roommate from last year, in all her glory. I didn't realize this until part-way into the ride. And of course, we completely ignored each other's existance.
I sat there thinking of the things I could/should/wanted to say or do. Here's what I came up with:

I could act like we're buddy buddy and totally freak her out.
I could go cuss her out.
I could go punch her in the face.
I could go talk to her and ask for my clothes again (that was a little too pathetic for me).
I could have farted on her lap.
I could have threatened her.
I could go make civil conversation with her.
I could go scream at her and say "Thank you so much for the emotional and mental pain you have caused me. It's so great when I misplace something and have flashbacks and start to wonder if I'm losing my mind."
but of course I went with acting like she didn't exist.

And as I got off the bus, I breathed a sigh of relief, mixed with regret. Why, you ask? I'm wondering now what I should have done. It's nice to think about doing one of the other options, and to be truthful sometimes I get disappointed in myself. I'm not brave enough to talk to her. I'm not mean enough to yell at her. I'm not gassy enough to fart on her (at least not today). I'm not strong enough to punch her in the face. I guess I'll never know what could have happened. So many disappointments, and yet, what would you have done?