My Shit-hole Apartment (Part 2)

 So, remember a few times when I talked about my past apartment-living nightmares? Well, the other night after killing so many roaches in my kitchen that I lost count, I decided that it's story time again on my blog to-if nothing else-remind myself that it can always be (and has been) worse. So here we go...

Source

Living Away From Home Year 2

Off Campus

(The House From Hell)

Looking back, dorm life was not the worst thing in the world. Sure, it was challenging at times and I lost all semblance of privacy, but overall knowing what I know now, it wasn't a nightmare. However, at the time I was 19 and young and naive and a little wreckless and thought I knew everything, and by second semester of my freshman year, I had had enough of dorm life. So, my roommate, Jessica and I decided we liked each other well enough to live together off campus for our sophomore year. We were big kids now. We found a house that was off campus but still close enough that the walk didn't suck too much. There was precious little parking available on campus, and what little parking was available you had to pay out the wazoo to use, so short walking distance was optimal.  The house we found was an 1100 Square foot quaint 1900's house with laundry, and a dishwasher. It was perfect.


What the house looked like when we pictured it
Source

 The downside to this great little house we found? It was a 6 bedroom house and it was just me and Roommate Jessica, so we needed to find 4 more people to live with us to afford it. To make a long story short, we did end up with 4 other roommates, and before that sophomore year was up we would vow to never have roommates again. Other than myself I had a unique cast of characters I called housemates:
-Roommate Jessica: We were randomly paired together freshman year in the dorm and decided we didn't want to kill each other while sharing a room, so sharing a house should be fine, right?
-Brian: You may remember him from my first post on Harvest Moon.
-The Imp: I do not believe I have spoken of The Imp up to this point. There is a reason. The Imp and I dated for about a year and it was bad news bears. We dare not speak his true name.
-Diva: I think the nickname I give her here implies it all, but let's just say we did not part on good terms either.
-Fucking Joe: Brian's friend, and the most spoiled, foul-smelling, inconsiderate prick I have ever had the misfortune of sharing space with.
Shannon: Brian's then-girlfriend's older sister. She was pretty awesome. (You may notice that I have listed more than 5 housemates here. Shannon replaced The Imp when he broke my heart and moved out in the middle of the year. Ass. But I digress...)

What the house actually looked like
Google maps

Life started off simply enough; everyone had hand-me-down furniture and dishes and the like to furnish the house with; my mom was nice enough to take me shopping for cleaning supplies and neccesities-food, toiletries, etc. Even though I know my mom was not happy about my decision to live in the house, especially with my then-boyfriend, The Imp.  But she went along with it since she wasn't paying my bills and The Imp and I had seperate bedrooms. As you can probably guess, 3 girls living with 3 guys in a  house started to get a little messy.

Now, we've all had a roommate or two in the past who failed to clean up after themselves and it's annoying.  Well multiply that by 4 and that was this house. Brian (the only ex-rommie whom I still actually speak to) made messes just to piss me off.  Literally. He would create a mess and leave it in front of my bedroom door or somewhere else I would definitely find it as a lark.  He was perfectly capable of cleaning and very good at cleaning when he chose to do so, but he thought seeing me angry was more fun. Apparently I'm hilarious when I'm angry.

I'm this intimidating when I'm mad.
Source

The Imp was a poor housekeeper and a stinky boy who never learned useful skills from his crap parents. The Diva had everything handed to her because she was pretty and talented enough, so she never contributed to the cleanliness of the house either. Then, there was Fucking Joe. To call Fucking Joe a slovenly pig would be an insult to piggies everywhere.

Source

I could dedicate an entire blog to the awfulness that was the experience living with Fucking Joe and update it once a day for a year and probably still have stories left over to add.  Fucking Joe's worst offense on top of his inability to be responsible for the simplist of tasks (seriously, I'm suprised his mommy didn't drive him to class every day) was his passive aggressive way of blaming me for all of his problems and unhappiness.  If you were to track down Fucking Joe today and ask him about me, I'm sure he would spout off some evil hateful tripe about me. Now, that dude held a grudge. In fact, it may sound like I hold a grudge after all these years, but I don't. Really. I actually don't even remember Fucking Joe's last name. Maybe if I sat and pondered long enough* I would, but I have better things to do. Short-story-long: he and I didn't mesh well.

So, why was this the "House From Hell" you may ask? Was it the obnoxiousness that was Fucking Joe and his slovenly disregard for anyone else or their belongings? Was it Brian's playfull whimsical personality that made him behave like a 12-year old at times? Was it the Diva's better-than-everyone attitude? Was it Roommate Jessica's passive-aggressive way of handling conflict? Was it The Imp's decision to break up with me but keep living in the house for 2 months afterwards? Was it the fact that I was experiencing severe depression, anxiety, and self-esteem issues and not being properly treated for them?

Yes.

I just listed the ingredients for a miserable year; just mix together, stir, then simmer until explosion.  Now, I will say this about the situation: it helped me learn a lot about myself, and it turned me on to a new obsession: ferrets. Three days before The Imp called it quitsies between us, I bought myself a friend. Her name was Gigit, (like the Sally Field TV show) and she was one of the best pets I've ever had.


Gigit the ferret

I could go on and on with the stories of this house. I could tell about the time Brian spray-painted a tree because he was bored. I could tell about the endless sea of Fucking Joe's Big Gulp cups I waded through daily in our living room. Or about Brian's sugar gliders that kept me awake at night. Or when Roommate Jessica got fed up with dirty dishes and hoarded all of her kitchen-ware in her bedroom. Or the toilet that would clog once a week. Or the time I accidentally put dish soap into the dishwasher and flooded the kitchen. Or how I was stuck scrubbing the Diva's tap shoe scuffs off of the kitchen floor for 3 hours on our move-out day so we could get our security deposit back. I could talk about all that, and I could get mad about it, but I won't.

I choose to look back on all of it and say, "Oh yeah, that sucked a little didn't it?" and then I choose to laugh. I laugh because it's ridiculous.  I laugh because it's the past and it can't hurt me now. I laugh because we also had good times in the "House From Hell." Like, the Slumber Party Diva hosted. Or the time Brian Jerry-rigged the TV and the Gamecube so we could sit outside on the porch swing and play. Or all of the Friends marathons Roommate Jessica and I would have. Or all the stories that Shannon (The Imp's replacement on the lease) regailed us with stories of her trips abroad. Or finally accepting that The Imp being out of my life was for the best, and I could begin to heal. Or all the love I found and fun I had with my three ferrets (shortly after Gigit, I got her two friends.) Or that one time with Fucking Joe when we...um...yeah, sorry, I don't have any pleasent memories of Fucking Joe. Maybe that's why I still call him Fucking Joe.

So, the moral of the story is: there will always be a light in the darkness, but sometimes you have to find it, and sometimes, you have to make it.

I miss you every day, my furbabies.

Addendum:
*Nope. I pondered here and there over the course of a few days and couldn't remember. Then, I stumbled across him on Brian's Facebook page and never in 1,000 years would I have remembered Fucking Joe's real last name. But now I can't forget it. Dammit. Damn my curious eyes!