Monologue in Current Events

When my mind is racing and keeping me up at night it is rehearsing, on repeat, what I want to say to my roommate. Last night before bed I opened the empty dishwasher, wrapped my arm around all of the dishes that she left on the counter above it, and scooped them into the top rack passive-aggressively. The message was not received because this morning I saw that she left me more and her chip crumbs all over the counter.

The Inner Monologue
When we talked about moving in together you sold yourself as a responsible adult and what I got was an irresponsible adolescent with an addiction problem. You have a history of financial abuse and I need you to know that since November I’ve spent an excess of $900 with the way you arbitrarily restructured our finances. Between working full-time, being in school, and taking care of this apartment with no support, I did not notice that this was going on.

The last time we talked about money was the night when I opened up to you about what my family was going through regarding my grandmother’s health. After the countless evenings of tolerating your alcoholism and being there for you while you talked about Bob endlessly, you didn’t even give me one sentence when I told you that my grandmother was fighting for her life. You immediately turned it around on me and then accused me of not paying my share and demanded that I give you back pay and then you demanded that I give you biweekly payments of rent. You made that moment all about you. You then had me use my time and energy to tabulate how much I owed you. Then when I got those numbers for you, it was you who owed me. For the sake of peace, we decided to wave that.

So when you thought I owed you it was the most heinous thing in the world. Once that story flipped and it was you who owed me, it was just bygones. I can’t let it be bygones this time. You wanted biweekly payments from me for rent but you did not want to support me biweekly with groceries, essentials, and streaming services. You said you would pay your half of that at the end of the month. You’ve only ever sent me money once so I had since just taken it out of what I sent you for rent because it was just selfish to leave me with all the financial weight until the end of the month. I had since then stopped giving you biweekly payments of anything and just sent what I owed you for rent at the end of the month the way everybody else in the world does.

Before we moved in you said you would pay the damage deposit and the first month’s rent. I would just pay for the moving expenses. You had no memory of that. We had next to nothing when we moved in and you said we would split the cost of everything. You wanted me to take it out of what I owed you for rent. You had no memory of that. You wanted us to split the groceries 50/50 and take that out of what I sent you for rent. You had no memory of that. You then decided that you would not share the cost of supplying the apartment with anything. You then decided against splitting the cost of groceries. Just when you were due to send me your share. I did not know you had forgotten any of the financial obligations you went back on until the night you blew up on me. That night I told you what I was going through.

In November, you decided that you will just send the rent in full and I will supply the groceries, essentials and streaming services. This has left me with the bulk of the expenses and now I am paying more than you. What actually gets me is the fact that you don’t respect the time and energy it takes to keep this apartment supplied. I spend hours and hours each week tracking what we need. Getting it, standing in those lines and then coming home to put it all away. To rinse the produce. You will not meet me halfway like a decent person.

It wasn’t a mystery as to why you were all over the place with this at the beginning. You were a raging alcoholic. On top of the financial abuse, you were giving me a lot of attitude. I was walking on eggshells. I dreaded coming home every night because I would see you passed out drunk on the couch with drool on your face. Or sitting in the dark drinking. You would be walking into walls as you stumbled away. I had to clean up the mess. I had to wipe the wine off the counter, floors and walls. It was a hard thing to witness.

Now you’ve quit drinking since we last spoke. It was another night of the Bob saga when I opened you up to gaining some self-awareness and you understood my trepidation with your drinking no contest. Now I need you to look at the living situation you created here. You are the angsty adolescent and I am the parent. I provide everything, supply everything, I do everything, I pay for almost everything and you do nothing. You supply nothing. You provide nothing. You don’t support me in any way. You don’t respect my stuff or my time. You don’t act grateful. You’ve been pushing your boundaries with my car and you can sense my hesitation and that is because you don’t respect anything else of mine. What is hard to witness is watching you fail to respect yourself. You do not take care of yourself.

You haven’t cooked in weeks. I’ve never been able to keep snacks in the apartment because that is what you eat as entire meals. You eat all of the chips, dips, cookies and ice cream, and my homemade granola which I barely get any of for myself. You leave me your mess to clean every single time. You now have two autoimmune diseases and we don’t catch those, we create them. You are not doing anything to make that better for yourself. This time in two years you will be wearing a hat to hide your alopecia and sleeves to hide your psoriasis. It is hard to witness somebody I care about living the way you do. This isn’t easy to say but you are really starting to stink. You smell really bad. I had to air out my car the last time I let you use it.

You told me before that your therapist said you were codependent. I need you to look at our living situation and see what you created for yourself. You said to me before that you still feel like a child like you never grew up. Look at our living situation and see what you created for yourself. You live like you need somebody to come do things for you. You have no self-control. This doesn’t just affect you. You have been selfish, self-centred, and deeply inconsiderate. You take advantage of me and my generosity. It is clear that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. You have an unchecked personality disorder or something and you need help. This is not normal and I shouldn’t have to put up with it. This shouldn’t be my problem. My friendship is a privilege that you are not earning. I need to you figure things out for yourself.
End of Monologue

She is going to come crawling out of her room any minute. She will sigh the moment she sees me. She will use the bathroom and then she will start her coffee. While that is brewing she will go outside with her bong. Then she will take her coffee to the living room where she will put on her Saturday morning cartoons, figuratively speaking. She will turn the TV on or sit on her phone or laptop while I clean everything. I have to go get groceries, actually. Then she will disappear into her room or bathroom and only come out if I cook something. Or if she needs something from me. Maybe she has plans for easter today? I have been waiting for the right time to talk to her but I don’t think there will be a right time. She won’t want to hear it, she will be a narcissist the entire way through. She will be the victim in this situation. I’m dealing with somebody who has the psychology of a child after all. Maybe I should do the lame thing and print my monologue and read it to her. Where she will think it’s stupid and that I’m being dramatic and stupid. She is a cluster B after all.

Anyway, she just came out of her room. I should move on with my day now.