Work Text:
This post has been locked due to excessive inflammatory language and irrelevant responses.
Edit: Of course I care for my roommate. As a matter of fact, I am mostly likely (at least proven beyond statistical doubt) in love with him. Patterns of behavior that indicate love have existed since I was fifteen. I thought that was made clear in the post.
Edit 2: What do you mean I haven’t made it clear. Where in the post is it not clear? There’s an excess of textual evidence in this post, to the point that it does not bear repeating. I’m inclined to think that only the commenters who have called me “arrogant” and “paranoid about the purity of individual existence” have any reading comprehension at all.
Edit 3: Several people have said that love is not only a feeling, but also be made into loving actions. A quaint piece of wisdom, but I’ve already delineated my actions to oppose my friend’s self-destructive decisions, to pick up research projects purely for his emotional benefit, to lessen his financial burdens, and to accommodate his overwhelming guilt over existing in my house.
Edit 4: To the people who are telling me that my roommate is a toxic leech who is intent on bleeding me dry financially and emotionally and that I should cut him off sooner rather than later: I did not ask for your input, and I will not be taking your advice.
Edit 5: How my roommate lost all his money is none of your business. Those are his private affairs and his troubles are not a spectacle for public entertainment. Read an Inazuman light novel if you’re so bored as to inquire directly into other people’s misfortune. Do not ask me again.
Edit 6: Yes, of course my roommate knows that I care about him. How could he not? He’s a smart man.
Edit 7: Why do you all keep asking me if I have told him that I care about him? Whether or not I have is besides the point.
Edit 8: None of you seem to understand the practicalities of attempting to care for someone who does not want to be cared for. Is it not more meaningful to provide beneficial services to him and to mutually contest and complete each others’ opposing worldviews? Why are you all convinced that I have to be nice to him just to show that I care?
Original post:
As a preface, I will not be reading any of your comments nor taking any of your suggestions.
I don’t think that consensus from the masses nor other people’s opinion on the way you choose to live your life is valuable in the slightest. Allowing other people to dictate the way that you live your life is simply unwise without any verification of that person’s credentials—they could very well be unintelligent, misinformed, overly judgmental, overly sentimental, or simply disagree with the values that you hold on a fundamental level. But one of my coworkers/friends told me that he would uninvite me from game night if I didn’t make this post, so. The moderators are welcome to take this post down; I’ve already done my due diligence.
My current roommate (29M) is a friend I (27M) knew from when I attended the Akademiya, and I have always held him in high regard ever since I was fifteen. He is smart, capable, thoughtful, well-informed in his opinions, strict to his principles to a fault, and wise beyond measure in all things except himself. His singular weakness is that he is kind to a fault, and will not waste an opportunity to help someone if it is at his own expense.
To make a long story short, against my better judgment, I took great pains to continue to include him in my life despite the fact that I knew that he was irrational, sentimental, and placed undue importance on the wellbeing of others over his own. I allowed him to convince me to speak with his friends and I let him convince me to attend my classes. I took interest in research subjects that I wouldn’t have had any interest in usually, all for his sake, since he would seem pleased when our potential topics for conversation broadened into fields more typically associated with Kshahrewar (his darshan) instead of Haravatat (my darshan). By the end, almost half of my research was subjects that I had picked up only because he was interested in them, and he had successfully convinced me to participate in a group research project, which was an endeavor that I had strictly refused to participate in throughout my entire academic career.
The correct response would have been to remove him from my life the moment that I understood how intent he was on allowing others’ needs to take precedent over his own—to the point of self-sacrifice or destruction. While it may seem cruel, removing unnecessary influences on the way that you might live your life is the only way to ensure that you are the sole determining factor on your life’s outcomes. Eventually this was decided for me; I attempted to continue to help him by telling him the truth (that his excessive feelings of guilt was destroying his life), and he reacted poorly and lashed out at me. So I understood this to be for the best; he had no intentions of confronting his own self-sacrificing nature and I would not be able to change him on this matter.
We fell out of contact for some time until recently, when I met up with him again and he revealed to me that he had gone broke—the exact thing that I knew would happen years ago, since I always knew he was inclined to give things to others until he had nothing left. Once again, I made the wrong decision, and I offered to let him stay in my home until he could get financially back on his feet. I am not accepting criticism on this choice at this time.
He refused, as I knew he would, considering that he has always felt guilty when accepting others’ help. At this point I was concerned that he was going to be sleeping in a cardboard box on the side of the road, so I insisted, but he said that he couldn’t take such generosity. I said that if he could not take my generosity, then he could just pay me rent. The “rent” is about one quarter of the going price of apartments in the area (partly because it’s only nominally rent and partly because he can’t pay anything more), and most of the money that he gives me goes immediately to pay off the alcohol that he purchases on my tab. He doesn’t have to pay me rent; it’s purely to clear his conscience about staying in my house until his finances recover. Most months I make a financial loss (the expenses I pay for him are greater than the rent he pays me) and I pay the rest out of my own pocket.
This situation persists to this day. I also suspected before I took him in that his finances would never recover; he spends almost everything that he earns immediately, either by covering costs for the projects that he works on, paying back overdue bills elsewhere, treating friends who have helped him in the past, impulse purchases on anything that catches his sympathy, or just pure donations to causes that tug at his heartstrings. They say that the more you earn, the more you spend, and that very few people manage to receive more income and keep their living costs as it was before the raise. The same is true here: My roommate persist in making the same mistakes as before, and now that he has an extra ten thousand mora to spend every week, he makes sure to do so instead of saving it for himself.
To make matters worse, he is a horrible roommate. He stays up late at night, he works himself to the bone for people who will not pay him enough, and he attempts to repay me for allowing him to live in my house by rearranging all my furniture and books. He’s been gracious enough to adhere to the books’ sorting system, but the furniture has been rearranged at least four times since he’s arrived here, and he’s started to add paintings that he insists are beautiful enough to “bring joy to my bland lifestyle” (somehow), even though I have no interest in art or fitting in another coffee table to the living room.
Nevertheless, I’ve generally held my tongue on these matters, and I have not encouraged him to leave nor have I insisted on him handling his finances better. I’ve allowed him to rearrange my furniture and to hang his weird art pieces. Although I usually have a strict policy against doing anything that benefits someone else at my own expense, I don’t mind continuing to foot the bill for some of his living expenses and I don’t mind losing some sleep. I’ve found myself falling into old habits as well; I recently picked up a research project specifically because I knew that my roommate’s father had been involved in it, and I saw the research through to the end purely because I thought that my roommate would appreciate the findings. I’ve never asked him to leave and the invitation was for him to stay as long as he needed to, even if that is forever. Frankly, the exceptions that I have made for him alone are excessive.
The issue is that my roommate and I have recently joined a TCG group with two of our mutual friends. We meet on weekends. One time, I was not able to go, and evidently the conversation turned to me in my absence. According to my roommate, I critique him endlessly for the way that he organizes the house (I said something about it only eight times. Perhaps nine), I mock him with insincere flattery (I only do this sometimes), I’m arrogant and stubborn in my convictions (I am, but so is he), I buy ugly art installations specifically to annoy him (I do, and I think I should be allowed to find his extreme distress at a mildly unappealing wooden carving entertaining), I purposefully go out of my way to sour his mood (I simply exist in the area; his mood is just especially prone to being soured), I ignore him when he tries to speak with me (he is very loud at all times), I badger him about his spending habits (because his spending habits are awful and show no sign of improvement), and I even take his keys to lock him out of the house (I only do this on accident, and I don’t see why I should apologize for taking his keys when I hadn’t meant to)… on and on and on about a thousand different grievances.
I believe the matter came up because my roommate attempted to buy drinks for the table, only to realize that he had no money on him at all, and when he explained it was because he’d had to pay rent, our mutual friends were appalled to hear that I was charging a friend rent to stay at my house. My roommate expressed near the end of the night that he thinks sometimes that I’m playing a sick, malicious game on him by allowing him to stay in my house only so that I can critique every one of his life decisions. Apparently, he referred to my ugly art installations as “psychological warfare” and then was almost in tears by the end of the conversation, which I assume must have been a side-effect of how much he’d drank at that point, because they’re hardly that and the entire notion is overly-sensitive of him, as my roommate tends to be.
As a reminder, I will not be reading nor responding to any of your comments. Do not expect a response. I’m only posting this because I told our mutual friends that I was not in the wrong, and they disagreed, and after a week of deliberation they have requested that I ask for a third opinion here. Regardless, I have been a gracious roommate in acquiescing to his needs (within reason), and I have no evidence that I am in the wrong in any way.