Delusional Ex Roomie

Welcome to my venty, “dear diary”-ass account of a delusional and problematic ex roommate.

A Heads Up

What this is. This is an easy link my friend and roommate and also any would-be character assassins. This is as much as a personal convenience as it is a ‘defense’. Rather than convince you, dear reader, that another is a lamentably shit person — it is more to have you hesitate before believing their bullshit and letting it damage how you see those they might speak about.

What this is not. Twitterable cancel document on Google Docs with witness accounts.

What this entails. This will cover a few different flavors of problematic that my ex roommate demonstrated.

Who’s here. Names have been anonymized because, again, this isn’t a cancel post, but:

The Length

Honestly, this is a LONG read. It jumps around the timeline:

Trigger Warnings

This brings up abuse, alcoholism, and emotionally manipulative behavior.

How Things Started: The Brothers’ Move and Some Bad Signs

June of 2023 I moved into a new place that some friends of mine were moving out of — one of three rooms was occupied by their 🐕 dog friend, and I was to take the second. The 🐕 dog looked around, didn’t get much luck. A few months in, 🐉 I thought I’d try my hand at finding a roommate to take up the third room and help divide our rent.

I asked the 🦊 fox friend if he knew anyone that was looking for roommates. Also it was a moment of me realizing I had missed reading a longer, more personal message of his. OOPS. But soon he mentioned he might be interested in the room, himself. Fast forward, he and his brother are moving in.

Sometime after, in exchanges with the 🦩 brother, and with my 🦊 friend about his brother, there were some behaviors I was a little sussed out by.

Were these things about someone's partner, I'd suspect an abusive relationship. In ways, it still very much was.

The First Bad Sign

I didn’t know it at the time, but the 🦊 wasn’t interested in offering up a shared bedroom experience with his 🦩 brother. The 🦩 flamingo had taken to immediately persuading my friend (his brother) that they should move out and into the new place together, sharing the room. From the start, he was guilting his 🦊 fox brother saying things like, "You're throwing me to the wolves."

That seemed a bit emotionally manipulative, but I didn’t dwell on that or immediately share my concerns with my 🦊 friend. I’ve grown up in a household with an abusive parent, someone who was a great deal of an emotional manipulator to my mom, the family, and oru community. I held my worries back, fearing, maybe I’m just more sensitive to this stuff?

It was at least a month away from the end of their lease current lease when their move here came up (if not further out), and a day or two after the 🦊 fox brother told the landlord they’ll renew. The 🦊 fox brother had no trouble cancelling that renewal; he was on good terms with their landlord. He’s a polite lad, and the two had already spoken a bit, as 🦊 he needed the landlord’s intervention repeatedly on the not-so-great property, in their not-so-great part of down, with some of their not-so-great neighbors.

The manipulative part of the 🦩 flamingo’s pleas were unnoticed at the time, and so 🦊 fox would bring his brother along and into the soon-to-be-shared bedroom in my then soon-to-be-crowded home.

The Second Bad Sign

Sometime a few weeks after, after both had moved in, I'm out to grab coffee with the 🦊 fox friend, and he's venting to me about his brother — about how the 🦩 flamingo tried picking a fight the previous night.

The 🦩 flamingo wanted to set a room curfew — he set a time and told his brother to keep it.

This wasn't a conversation and a question. His 🦊 brother was not asked.

It wasn't, "Hey bro I'm a lil worried about you,” or "I waited up on you and wasn't sure if I should sleep yet.”

It was unnervingly controlling, and it reminded me again of the shit my abusive stepfather would pull with my mom.

A Third Bad Sign

Over the course of the 🦩 flamingo’s being here, and a ways before the brothers' move in also, the 🦩 flamingo kept threatening to cut contact with his 🦊 fox brother. If the 🦊 fox talked to his (🦊’s) ex, if the 🦊 he talked to some of their family, or if the 🦊 he tried finding a place without him again.

So, 🐉 me being a close friend of 🦊 my roommate, and being a survivor of a household of domestic violence, needless to say I was very much not feeling comfortable with this guy in my house.

Boundary Issues

Before these smaller instances began painting a big picture, though, there were smaller things. The 🦩 flamingo began to try and set odd “boundaries” around the house.

About a month after moving in, he sent out a text in our household group chat — mentioning his new work schedule and a hard reservation on the kitchen such that we'd need to let him know if we needed to use the kitchen then.

🐉 I tried to reasonably confront in the group chat before our other 🐕 roommate got back home and had to deal with it.

I got the context from his 🦊 brother, that the 🦩 his message was sent right after 🦩he started an argument in the kitchen. His 🦊 brother was in the kitchen making his own food before starting his own job a bit later that day, when the 🦩 flamingo came in (with a sense of entitlement and a touch of hostility), planning to similarly prepare his own food before working later in the day.

I soon found, too, that my response in the group chat triggered some hostile-sounding venting from 🦩 him to his 🦊 brother, but I was more interested in seeing this dealt with before our other 🐕 roommate would get home. This was also around the same time 🐕 he would got home from work everyday and make lunch. I don’t know how this didn’t come to 🦩 flamingo’s mind either, when he was trying to state his “boundaries”.

Boundaries, and A Glimpse Ahead

The word would come up again and again — a wall to bring communication to a stand still whenever things didn’t go his way or before a serious discussion could be had around what he felt entitled to at home.

He used the word again when the 🐕 dog roomie and 🐉 I tried having a 5-10 min chat with him about the end of the lease some months before it ended. He said he's only willing to communicate in email, because of his boundaries, and left the house for the rest of the day.

This was right after I came back from a work trip in NYC toward the end of April and start of May. Right after, as in maybe even within the hour I dropped my bags off in my room upstairs.

It was as if the 🦩 flamingo was waiting until I left to start unloading on his 🦊 brother.

This part here is one of his messages to me on Discord. While in NY, I’d been getting a few messages here and there from the 🦊 fox friend roomie about some of the hostility his 🦩 brother was starting to show (of more of the absolute bullshit that was coming out). This message I’d gotten while I was being wined and dined with a bunch of German colleagues at a bougie penthouse Korean barbecue place.

The messages were concerning enough that they even distracted me from some of the best meat I’ve eaten in my life (and by some incredibly cute waitstaff).

So, I start small, but dang if my braincells weren’t starting to catch fire, fast.

At this point, I was fed up. And rightly so.

I was fed up with him being such a shit to his 🦊 brother, who’d only been trying to keep the peace until the lease was up. I was fed up with him leaving dirty dishes in and around the sink and all over their shared room. I was fed up with the downstairs smelling like cat shit and the constant messy state of our laundry room that housed his cat’s litter box.

I was fed up with the bullshit.

💅 This was the reply he sent before leaving the groupchat.

Do you remember earlier when I mentioned the 🦊 was threatened with his 🦩 brother cutting contact if 🦊 he talked to family? That family was their sister. One that here is referenced as an abuser from his past.

I don’t mean to undermine any real trauma that was had; I wasn’t there. But all accounts I’ve heard are that she sold a couple of 🦩 his video games. That’s it.

Can you feel the sense of unease and discomfort I’d had then? Me, reading this line about an abuser.

I grew up with — not only a brother that would sell my games and consoles for drug money — but a house in which I would worry about my safety, and more importantly, the safety of my sister and mother. Safety jeopardized by a loud, gun-pointing alcoholic of a man that still shows up in my nightmares.

(Sorry, I can feel my BS intolerance creeping back in 🙃 I really do have zero tolerance for it and especially so when someone’s throwing around the word abuser.)

Meanwhile, in his absence from the household group chat, he was taking to Twitter to vent.

My 🦊 friend would check Twitter after anything like this happened. While living with his brother, it was a good way to gauge the impact of the mess — or even if he’d been blocked or not. But this time, things like, “Coming to beat them the fuck up,” gave him a good bit of anxiety. For me, exhaustion.

This 🦩 guy was making a mess of my home, my 🦊 friend’s mental health, and also talking shit behind our backs? Hah.

His 🦊 brother checking on these tweets was later brought up as an accusation of stalking too.

A Novice Roommate

All of that was in early May, just a month and a half before the lease was up. Let me rewind, to before the conversation about his role in the next lease even came up.

I’ve assumed that a lot of these issues is just because 🦩 he doesn't know how to communicate or be a roommate with non-family.

An Example

For example, I’m counting 8 of the house’s glasses (some of them mine!), one of my bowls, and one of my pyrex leftovers containers.

🙃 Before I’d seen and heard of this being a recurring issue in the room, I’d brought up that he’d been leaving dishes with food in them for days in and around the sink, and requested as politely as I could that he’d maybe at least leave them mostly food free and clean up within a couple days.

I was hoping not seeing the dishes pile up in the kitchen was a great sign, buuuut they seemed to just find themselves elsewhere.

It wasn’t just their shared bedroom, though. It was like this in their bathroom. The one he shares with 🦊 his brother. With food/drink in them, for long enough they start growing funky stuff. (It had, it was gross.)

And 🦩 his cat's litter box overflowing such that guests complain of shit smell.

So, in case you were unfamiliar, worms in cats are always transmitted from another creature. It can be vermin or cat or whatever, or even folks if you happen to step barefoot into a sandbox a cat’s used the bathroom in.

Before knowing that, though, when I found my own cat, the one that so tenderly and motheringly groomed his cat, had thrown up worms. Was it that his cat’s overflowing litterbox had his cat with no choice but to use my cat’s litterbox? Was it that my cat groomed his cat? My protective parent urges, reader, let me tell you…

The Cat

Some context. 🦩 He adopted a 10-month old kitten without fully knowing what that meant of him. I didn't want to backseat parent, and I also mostly raw-dogged pet ownership with kittens myself, expensive plastic-in-ass-extraction vet bills and all.

Also, side note, the CAT’S SO CUTE. And the adoption itself was a NON issue. The cat got along well with mine, and he adopted when I was already thinking to adopt again so my cat would have a friend once more after her brother passed away.

The overflowing cat box quickly became a thing, and the laundry room that housed it was almost always covered with litter until I bought a litter trapping mat for them.

As for their food, we started off with more spontaneous shared mealtimes. My cat, growing up with a pretty gluttonous goober of a brother, would always go for any unattended wet food. And he’d let my cat eat his cat's food (his cat would leave his food alone and AFK) and 🦩 he just blamed my cat until he just hid his cat’s share of food 🙃 and let it go bad in odd places around the house.

After that, every morning now, I’d feed both cats. I’d sit with his cat, my now breakfast buddy, until he'd finished his breakfast — goal-keeping so my cat doesn't steal the food, but also because he'd happily eat his food in one sitting as long as he had company keeping him entertained.

The feeding itself was minor, though. The 🦩 guy was a dick, I got a cool breakfast buddy, and the goofy kitten grew more comfortable with me that way.

Kitten Energy?

It was more that the cat would be left unattended and un-entertained with all of his abundant 10-month-old cat energy. And, unfortunately for 🦊 him, uncle fox was caring. He would put up with months of this cat shutting off his computer mid-work, chewing up cables, ruining a keyboard, and waking him up throughout the night, etc.

This little cat wasn’t getting nearly enough attention and he still had boundless kitten energy. 🦩 He would sit on the other side of the room on his phone, shrugging it off as “he’s just a kitten!”

It was bad enough his 🦊 brother tried a large bed-tent that he’d keep covering his bed so he wouldn’t be waken up on work days… It didn’t work, sadly. The keet would hop on top of the tent instead.

Connecting Back to Before

If you scroll up and recall the part where 🦩 flamingo had claimed he wasn’t being accommodated, that 🐉 🦊 🐕 we were making him sleep on the couch.

Nobody made him. He volunteered at first both because 🦊 his brother was sick, but moreso because he didn’t want to have to keep his cat out at night while his brother slept.

🦩 He made his own decision to sleep on the couch, without discussing it with anyone else. He began occupying the living room. Attempts were made later on to see if he could work out sleeping arrangements with his brother to share the room again, so we could have our living room back, but he was uncooperative, and we wanted to keep the peace before he moved out.

Ultimately, the 🦊 brother moved into my room so the 🦩 could have their room to himself. I got a futon for the 🦊 brother and we shared the room and bathroom until the lease was over.

The Dishonesty

Like the claims 🦩 flamingo made about being forced to sleep on the couch (and about his roommates being so unaccommodating 🙃) there was a lot of dishonesty coming from this 🦩 flamingo.

I don't know if he was intentionally bullshitting, if it's trauma induced survival mechanisms, or if he's just shit. No idea.

Minor Bullshittery

There were some small instances here and there.

When The Worms Incident™ happened, it was either between jobs for the flamingo or just after he’d been hired onto one of them. I had to loan him the money for the vet bill and get the cats some replacement litter, and he volunteered to clean the cats' boxes. He left the broom in the garage. It wasn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t the first time he’d finally get the energy to clean and then leave the broom or whatever around where he cleaned.

So I asked if 🦩 he or his 🦊 brother had seen it. 🦩 He had to have moved it off of the bin it was leaning against the last night when he took the bins out. 🦩 He lied through his teeth, no idea where, but I could see and hear it. Wasn’t a brainfart, just a lie.

Theft and More Lies

There are honestly more instances of 🦩 his dishonesty than I can list or recall. He's stolen his 🦊 brother's food, and our fourth 🐕 roommate's pretty sure he's stolen some of his too. The 🦊 brother confronted after multiple instances and only then did the truth come out about it.

Most of the lies were to his brother. Some of it was stretching the truth to play the victim, other times (like the broom and the food) it was to cover his own ass.

Since before the move, his 🦊 brother had been dealing with a chronic pain condition. His drink and more loving brother, 🦩 the flamingo would take the edibles his 🦊 brother used to help manage. Without asking, as it was with the food, and while denying it.

One night he had taken one of mine, and I noticed. (😎 I don’t have a chronic pain condition, I’m just too cheap to drink.)

I twice-counted what I had left, marked a tally on the fridge in plain sight 🙃, and let them be. Sure enough, a night or two later, I notice another missing. In the kitchen, I confront 🦩 him about it and, surprise surprise, he said he hadn’t taken any. I point out the tally marks, say I’ve been keeping count, point out that it wouldn’t be the 🐕 roommate that abstains from drinking and the devil’s lettuce, and that it wouldn’t be the 🦊 roommate who has his own supply. And he finally fesses up.

But he doesn’t just fess up.

Not a single “sorry” came out of his mouth. Instead, it was how we’ve been so unaccommodating and noisy, and how he’s been barely able to sleep and it was for his wellbeing, especially when he’d had work the next day.

You know, barely able to sleep on the couch in our living room he decided to occupy.

Work…

About that work.

There’s a pattern of behavior here that comes out more when you consider his bouts with employment.

The dishonesty came out at work for sure. The lack of responsibility like there’d been as a roommate, too. But also the manipulation and his victim complex.

In the time he lived here, he’d lost two jobs, lazed about unemployment, and found a third job so far out it was at least a 10-15 minute drive when I’d drive him to work.

The First Firing and the Free Ride

The first job — it wasn’t great. Callcenter work is emotionally demanding work, remote or not. He would take days off, almost a week at a time. I’d heard secondhand that he was pretty disrespectful of his management, but the sudden days and weeks off were seen and heard firsthand. Or, not heard, as he would work from their shared room with the door open while he took calls on speaker phone.

When he was ultimately fired from the job he had moving in, his management didn’t leave the best trail of reasons, and he was able to file successfully for unemployment. Which he rode out for almost its entire duration. “It’s hard to find a job in this economy.”

He later admitted to that line being a bit bullshit when I’d taken him on a coffee run. I get it, nobody wants to work for a living. He was still paying rent, and he’s not my family, so I didn’t push it with him.

The Second Firing and Job Thereafter

His second job was treated much the same.

Internet went down for a minute? He’d take the whole day off. Feeling eh? Another day off.

Ultimately he was fired from this job, too, but not before he referred other coworkers from his previous job. He’d gotten ahold of a performance list, and used it to recommend people he knew might net him a bonus. Had he not flaked so much, maybe he would have gotten it, but in his recurring absence, tardiness, and lack of an impactful work effort, he was only finding his own replacements.

I felt like I should have said something sooner. But, imagine me seeing his work ethic first hand and hearing things like he’s sleeping in and taking things easy because he “wants to start small” so he can “show how he’s grown and improved.”

(I apologize, too, if your nostrils are as adverse to my own to the smell of bullshit.)

His third job was at a grocer a decent 10-15 minute drive away. This was toward the end of a lease, after a few contact-breaking tantrums. We’d made another temporary peace, and I’d drive him to work some days. I even offered to bring the uniform he forgot one day, but then used as an excuse to miss another day of work. The pattern of little concern followed him.

Why mention the work?

It’s hard to gauge a person’s character over the internet, especially from accounts from a stranger.

You’d do well not to believe everything you read from friends and stranger alike, but if you ask 🦩 him directly about his work history, and you bear in mind his integrity otherwise, it paints a clearer picture about who he of his relationships with his 🦊 brother and 🐉 myself, and give you a better picture of how trustworthy any character claims of his own may be.

The Household

The rest of us. 🐉 🦊 🐕. We’re not bad people.

I’d drive him to work a few times. I loaned him money ($300+?) for his months-overdue phone bill after he’d lost his job. I loaned him money ($250 or more?) to get his cat treated for worms. His brother’s loaned him plenty too, and we’ve both bought him groceries. And dinner when he’s had and hadn’t had a job.

We do our best to do right by people, even ones that dirty our kitchens and bedrooms, and even ones that take advantage of his while holding hostage our living rooms and other family members (in the 🦊 fox’s case).

We all accommodated him and were more considerate than anyone should be. We wouldn’t cook and go into the kitchen after hours while he was in the living room. We stopped running the dishwasher and laundry machines overnight. We would even tidy up his messes and clean up the plates and glasses he left around in the living room.

In general, we were respectful, and we tried to communicate issues beforehand (or at least as best as two guys with hella anxiety around confrontation can). We had chatted and messaged civilly on any number of roommate things like cleanliness of shared spaces.

We don’t bully, though. As much as I’d love to send a clear message of, “Please. Please. Just shut the fuck up,” we haven’t been bullies.

Okay, I bullied once.

After he moved out, I was a bit of a bully. If you count the kind of message I said a moment ago…

It was around the money I loaned him for his cat’s vet bill, the only real debt I pursued with him. And by “pursue”, it wasn’t harassment, but considerate communication and offers to work out partial payments over however long we needed to. It was only after he cut contact and moved out that I sent a more formal letter one might sent before taking someone to small claims court.

His last reply, after sending the money. More noteworthy, too, my last reply, before blocking his entitled-victim ass.

The last half of what he owed me from the vet bill — I responded to his angry email (one of many) finally vocalizing my feelings just a bit before I would block him out forever, and on every platform.

I mostly just wanted to send him the receipt for my donation, though. The last $112ish he owed, I’d sent to the National MS Society, a nonprofit that works toward studying and combatting an illness that’s plagued my mother for decades now.

It was a more demonstrative “fuck you” than any words I could sign off in an email.

It wasn’t about the money, as you could guess. I’d heard his stories about borrowing thousands(?) from a friend of his, and him smugly not paying a dime back because his friend wouldn’t ask or push. I wasn’t about to let him take advantage of me at the end of it. On principle, if anything.

That, and honestly too, I was getting fed up with the emails from him about how I was such a shit person and he was such a victim of it all.

Including remarks about me being an alcoholic.

For those of you at home looking to avoid alcoholism, it’s easy. 🙃 Don’t drink. Alcoholism, as it turns out, is leaving a half-full small bottle of jack on top of the fridge, and an unopened bottle of wine in the fridge for months and months.

But, man if it didn’t feel really good to tell him STFU before finally hitting that block button.

Lease of Four into a Renewal for Three

So, circling back to before the lease ended and before he was out.

It wasn’t an all-at-once decision. It was a process with communication and consideration from the start.

A First Conversation

So, maybe 3-6 months after the two brothers moved in, after hearing about some of his manipulative behavior and seeing first hand how terrible of a roommate he was to me and moreso to his brother, I talked with 🦊 fox friend roomie about not including his problematic brother on the next lease.

His 🦊 brother was in tears. He wasn’t sad about his brother not living in the same place, no, or at least it wasn’t why he cried.

He knew already that it wasn’t a good fit. Two grown men, and two brothers at that, sharing a bedroom was not the best call.

In the near-privacy of that McDonald’s parking lot, 🦊 he cried because he was scared of his 🦩 brother cutting contact with him. I reassured him that this wasn’t coming from a place of hostility, nor to spite 🦩 his brother for being a bad roommate. It’s just unhealthy, overall, to have the two sharing a room in this house. I reassured him that 🦊 he had real history with the former inhabitants, was my good friend, and was the one contacted about the room — he would be the one kept on the lease.

It was right then and there that I transferred some money to a savings account, and his brother would soon do the same. We started a small fund to help cover his 🦩 brother’s moving expenses, right in that parking lot, because we know it wasn’t that long since the previous move and he’d had trouble with keeping a job.

The fund was later drawn from for his phone bill and the vet bill. Before the latter was ever paid back, I paid 🦊 my friend back what he put into the fund, after things had fallen out with his 🦩 brother and seemed to end up staying that way.

Later On

Later on, and after talks with our 🐕 other roommate, we brought up the lease plans with his brother more directly. That it wasn’t a good idea to keep both in the same room.

He went to tears, the threats to cut contact came up immediately.

I was, admittedly, having a hard time — who likes making anyone cry? So I offered, “Maybe it doesn’t have to be you that moves out. Give me some time to think about it and talk with the rest and we can sort it out.” (Paraphrased, as this is about 11 months-ish later.)

That day, the two brothers talked and mended things some more. I talked with 🦩 flamingo too. Conversations were had all around, and reassurances were given that we would talk about things and try to all communicate better, so that whoever moved out, it would be a smooth process and no feelings would need to be hurt.

A Realization: Don’t Negotiate with Terrorists 🙃

I thought about it all day and chatted a bit about it with our other 🐕 roommate. I told him what the rest of us had talked about, but then also, the realization as it hit me.

It hit me that, as much as I don’t want anyone feeling hurt, what 🦩 the problematic brother was doing was just not okay.

Sad then or not, attempts at communicating then or not, he and time had made it more than clear that it was not a good fit for the two to share a room or for him to share the house with the rest of us.

I confirmed it with his 🦊 brother and with our other 🐕 roommate. All three of us were on the same page — we’re not going to renew the lease with this 🦩 guy on it.

That Evening

I jotted down some notes of what to cover and say. You can peek, if you want, bunt mind you they’re unaltered (censorship blurs aside), so please ignore typos and parts where my train of thought derails 🙃

The plan was to be reasonable and considerate. The conversation kept right around what’s noted above.

We gave him 3 or 4+ months to find a new place and roommates. We’d been saving up for his moving costs (thought didn’t admit it so he wouldn’t rely only on it). We’ve known he has a (wealthy) support system of friends who have been and will continue to help him out. We offered to help him find a place, budget, etc.

The 🦩 flamingo went out that night. The next day, he returned with a script, and the four of us all sat back down in the kitchen.

This one I recorded, because I didn’t know if he would return our civil intentions or if he came back ready to play victim and shit on things.

I listened through it all again. It’s still rattling.

To this day, I think some of the tears were genuine? But I also think some of this was aimed at trying to paint his brother and I as bad people to our 🐕 other roommate, who’d been blessed so far to stay away from the drama of it. The script he read from was full of some real feelings, I think, but also some wild assumptions we’d gone out of our way to correct just the previous day.

Some highlights:

So, lots of conflict there. Not in the conversation, but between different points. Him manipulating his brother into sharing the room vs. knowing it was a bad idea from the start. His having 4+ months of notice to find a place or friends to stay with, but assuming the role of the victim being threatened with homelessness. His false assumptions about why he and his brother were in the room in the first place vs. assurances the previous day and beyond that that was very much not the case. His weaponizing his own abusive behavior.

Also, the coffee thing.

The Coffee Thing

The conversation the day before came up not because his brother and I and our other roommate planned to have the conversation that day. It came up because of a coffee run.

That morning, I’d gone with his brother to get coffee. I saw the dishes in the kitchen piled up, again, and the 🦩 flamingo sleeping in on the couch in the living room he’d taken up, sleeping in during his unemployment ride, not far off of where his brother would be working that same day. I felt frustrated, seeing the dishes, and the shit reality of it, and I decided not to offer to pick him up anything, instead of offering like his brother and I typically had.

I sat down with him after he’d woken up, struggling to get the words out.

I apologized. I told him that, while he didn’t know it, I meaningfully didn’t offer him coffee.

He was rightfully confused, LMFAO.

I explained to him, I’d seen the dishes and I was feeling slighted by it all. I apologized again, and gave him some of my lore™. That, I didn’t have the best situation growing up and I have a really, really hard being direct with folks sometimes. I told him that I promise I would do my best to communicate with him, and that I don’t want to treat him or anyone in bitterness like I had.

Admittedly, I genuinely don’t remember how it got to the rest from there, as that conversation and that level of directness was pretty damn hard.

But, that coffee conversation. The admission and apology, and that promise to make a good effort. In his reading of that script, he brought up my coffee tale, omitting the humanity and heart of the apology and the whole point for my having brought it up. He took that moment and weaponized it then — making it into a knife, putting it in my hand, and highlighting how he, as always, was the real victim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fXVx1lwAg4

The Last Two Months

The NY trip and his tantrum round 2 or 3 or 4, came sometime 2-3 months after those conversations, toward the end of April.

As I mentioned somewhere above, his 🦊 brother moved into my room and we vibed as more-literal roommates until the lease ended.

I sent out three emails (emails only, as he insisted as per his boundaries) in the first week of May — to the 🦩 flamingo, CCing our roommates 🦊 🐕 and also the landlord.

An effort of due diligence. The first included the remaining duration of the lease, an outline of what bills will arrive and when so that he would be aware of which he would be responsible for paying partial amounts on. This email included an offer that, if he wanted and had a place to go to, he could move out sooner as long as he gives us notice (and we would pay his remaining share of rent and all for the last month and a half of the lease). The other two emails contained reasonable expectations about shared space, his property, etc. and reassurances that he could keep his social distance if he wanted.

In the middle of June, the lease ended. With his friends, he took his belongings and moved out.

In the month or few that followed, I kept up with him only to cover things like bills, what to do with any mail received, etc. and to follow up on the vet debt that would end up donated.

Beyond & Voting Season

After that debt was paid up, I’ve kept him blocked.

Since then, however, 🦩 and his 🦊 brother had been keeping in touch. Over the course of a couple of post-move-out emails, the 🦩 flamingo seemed to manage to put all or most of the blame onto me and off of his brother. (And honestly, that’s fine by me. Better to keep family cut it off.)

His interactions with his brother, though, have still come with a lot of “you and your friend tried to make me homeless” and a number of other “woe is me, the greatest of victims”. I’ve been unsurprised and moisturized and unbothered.

Recently, though, I think the two have put some distance between themselves after the 🦩 flamingo looked up his 🦊 brother’s voting information, harassed him about his voter participation, and encouraged his family to harass 🦊 him as well. I’ve heard he’s taken to ranting on Twitter spreading some more bullshit.

This page of accounts and of minor receipts is the product of me hearing that, yet again, my friend is being made into an emotional doormat and is being shit talked about. Should it come up again, with this, hopefully, he’s got a link to send and some receipts.

A Conclusion…? A Personal Take

So, part of why I’ve brought up the above lease-specific exchanges and this account of actions around his character…

He was in tears the whole time he read that script.

So, consider his demonstrated lack of character: one would think he’s just manipulative right? Well, maybe. Maybe not, if he really believes himself to be the victim, to the point of tears as he was.

He either has a gargantuan victim complex (and a fuckload of trauma baggage) or, and I don’t mean it lightly, he has a personality disorder.

I’m not a therapist, mind you. In undergrad, I just spent wayyy too long with friends in the school of social work, and I often drew on the DSM-V in various papers in my own literary studies courses to write speculatively on the mental health of various characters and authors. I’m familiar and I have access, sure, but I’m not a professional or psychiatrist.

The former, a victim complex — coupled with absolute realities of his being a poor roommate, a terrible brother, and a man of verifiably shit integrity — it sucks, he’s a monster, do with these receipts what you will and guard your heart and home.

The latter, a personality disorder — being willfully manipulative and unempathetic toward his family, housemates, and work — is fucking terrifying. There’s no reasoning with that.

In either case, I don’t imagine he’s close to coming to terms with any of it all. In one of his recent tantrums to Twitter I was sent a screenshot of:

What a mess. Thoughts and prayers?