How I Lost My Room and How It Came Back

That was the last straw. She told me she couldn’t study in her own room, telling me about her day in the library, how she was feeling sleepy and unmotivated to study. Without even asking me first, she said she would be coming over to my room to study. When she left and I closed the door, I was feeling frustrated. Enough is enough! Just because I let you into my room once in a while to listen to your problems doesn’t give you the golden right to enter my room as you like! I threw my pen onto the table in anger.

When she came over to my room and immediately placed her books on my already super messy table, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Can you please not come over my room to study? I need to study alone too.”

With a slightly sheepish and embarrassed look on her face, she quickly left my room. I was feeling so frustrated and guilty at the same time – I cried. So many things are happening in my life, and I don’t need someone give me this type of trouble. Oh yeah, she just texted me saying that she was sorry for the trouble she caused and that she would do fine in her own room. Thank you, finally, for giving me some breathing space in my own room.

I appreciate the fact that she is my housemate. She is an easy-going girl, who shares all her stuff with us, the newbies. She even lends to us her first-year pharmacy stuff. Hey, I appreciate your help very much. And that is exactly why I would lend her my ear when she needed someone to talk to. When she was feeling unmotivated, I would advise her and console her. I don’t mind helping you but there is a certain limit as to what I can do for you.

First sign: She keeps coming over to my room to complain about her studies and to voice out her apprehension over her exams. Hey, I understand that she needs someone to talk to and that she turns to me makes me think I could really help her. But I was so wrong. Once or twice (after she had talked to me in my room), I had seen her complaining the very same thing to MI and other housemates. It made me think: “You just need someone to talk to so desperately that anyone will do. Geez”.

That was the first sign. Second sign was during study week. Everyone was busy studying. I was studying but taking lots of breaks in between. Even though I would be studying or chatting with my brother on MSN, she would still enter my room (just because I open my door) to talk to me. She would stay for an hour or so and then, my own time is gone just like that. She doesn’t understand that I don’t want to let her in. She doesn’t understand that when I open my door just a little to talk to people, it means I don’t want people to enter my room. She doesn’t understand that I would let people enter if I explicitly GIVE them the permission to enter. She comes into my room as she likes, imposing on my personal space and personal time.

Oh yeah, the danger bell started ringing when she told me about her experience last semester. She was so depressed over her finals that she went to her housemate’s room (incidentally, my room’s previous tenant) every single day during study week. I remember being utterly horrified. I was thinking to myself: “How could you disturb people like that? Didn’t your housemate need to study too?” Yeah, I should have realised that earlier - that my situation would be pretty much the same. I was STUPID for not realising the danger. SILLY for being so NAIVE!

My room is my own private space. My place to study, sleep and play. Sorry to say that I am a very private person and I don’t like just anybody stepping into my space without permission. Just because I said I like to study with other people (aka study room environment), she immediately assumed that her presence in my room would help me a lot in my studies. She thought that it was mutualism and that both of us will benefit. Sorry, I don’t think so. I was feeling so uncomfortable in my own room and that is the worst kind of feeling in the world – the feeling that my only private space in this house is gone.

And it doesn’t help the fact that she only seem to target me. Previously it was MI. But she cleverly put up a note on her door to ward off potential disturbance. And that she reads things aloud too. Probably that was the reason why MI wasn’t the target anymore and I becomes her current target.

Sorry to say that I realise that she is selfish in her own way. She thinks her troubles are greater than mine and that alone, gives her the right to impose on my private space and time. She doesn’t care if I was talking to my dad on the phone, or chatting with my friends online. She would think of all these as unimportant. Just because I am using the computer doesn’t mean I am free okay? And even when I have to prepare for exams the next day, she would still come into my room, saying how horrible her test was and how she has no confidence at all.

Thank god I mustered some courage (or should I say I was at my limit) to tell her off (albeit in a meek voice)... I was probably close to tears at that point too...

Finally, I have my own room back.

PS: Thanks Daddy, Ah Boy and Moimoi for hearing me out these past few days about this particular problem.