Update to my depressed roommate situation.

In my account history, you can read my stressed induced roommate situation, play by play.

But recap, My school’s Res life gave me an 19 year old Japanese international roommate. Im a senior in college. This was done randomly due to my housing got messed up last minute.

My roommate did not speak very good english, to the point where she could not converse outside of yes or no answers. I tried to be friendly and she declined just about anything you would ask her. Do you want to come to get dinner? etc.

Overtime, she developed serious depression. She was most likely an introvert to begin with (I am too) but her behavior got worse as time went on. She made hardly any to no friends. There were two other Japanese girls internationals who were more outgoing and would talk to her but no get her to hang out with them. One of these girls were the roommate of a friend of mine who would ask her stuff about my roommate.

My roommate was seriously possessive of our shared room. She would spend most of her time abroad in bed, weekends not getting out of bed unless to eat or use bathroom. She got that she did not want me in the room, and did everything she could to kick me out. She would sleep all day outside of class time then when i would go to bed she would be up all night typing or doing homework. There were many sleepless nights over her doing this. She would not leave that room at all.

She never left campus to explore the area around our school. There is a lot to do in our area and we are not far from a bigger city which had even more stuff to do. She spent every break in bed while other internationals were traveling to different cities exploring America.

I caught her brushing her teeth in her bed, sitting cross legged. She would spit in her garbage can instead of using the bathroom. I had to report her to Res life over this, who simply wanted to mediate the situation. There cannot be any medation when the person cannot speak the language and is leaving for good in 3 weeks. Res life understood this wasnt a good situation and told me to hang in there till then. Most likely i am getting the room as a single so i get a semester now of peace as a reward.

If i called my mom on the phone she would either listen in on the conversation or go in and out of the room making noise so my mom would ask whats the noise. She slammed the door so often that the screws on the door knob were coming lose and i had to fix it with a screw driver.

We did not speak to one another from early October till i moved out yesterday. She would go out of her way to ignore me. This drove me absolutly crazy. I in turn spent most of my time outside of work or class with friends hanging out in their rooms. So i never had any privacy or any time to myself.

She would not dress for the cold weather and would have the heat on. Since i was around a lot she couldnt touch my side of the room’s heater but if i was gone she would turn it onto full blast and turn my lamp off when she was sleeping. If i was trying to sleep she would have every light on and would keep me up typing. If i said anything she wouldnt say anything and ignore me.

During finals week, she turned something in at 8am Friday and was asleep till around 2am on Saturday. I spent most of the day in the room finishing a paper for a class and literally witnessed her not getting out of bed even to eat or pee except once. I now question if she didnt have a bit of an eating disorder, due to her off sleeping times and not seeing her leaving to eat as much. During finals week, if it wasnt for the fact she was rolling around i would think she was dead.

When i moved out she used a lint roller to clean my carpet on her side of the room. I had a vacuum and she didnt want to ask me to borrow it. She left to go downstairs when i left for the semester so i didnt even say goodbye. This shows you how immature she was to begin with.

She obviously did not want to spend a semester abroad and was forced by someone. She wasnt ready mature wise or language wise to enjoy herself so she was miserable the whole time. I tried to stay out of her hair but there were times i needed to be there, i paid for that room too. Res life obviously did not help this girl as she never had a chance due to the problems and then depression. There was every sign of that going on. I will never see or hear from that girl again. I knew nothing about her as she did not want to talk about herself. But i feel soo bad about how this semester went. At the same time i was working on my capstone so i was extremely busy and stressed due to that. I know it wasnt my fault and i should have pushed for a another room elsewhere but i did not have time dealing with the stress of moving out of my room. I just really regret what happened with the girl.

That sounds horrible!! You are very strong to have hung in there.

What do you regret?

Maybe its me thinking to my previous roommate, she let me meet all the other international kids. I had friends from other countries. I got to go on a couple day trips with previous roommate. This girl, was the polar opposite experience. She never left the room, never had the experiences like previous internationals did. Yeah it was her choice but still so radically different.

I wanted to move out in early October, after i got over my disease. I got sick in Sept for 3 weeks. My parents thought i be better to stay as, then the compaint was she wasnt leaving the room. All this crazy behavior happened post fall break. When it got really bad with this girl, it was too late to move out. Res life, realized too late the issues with her and pretty much told me to deal with it. I admit is was horrible. I regret of moving out. Yet i thought most internationals wanted to learn about american culture so its the potential of losing a friend which this girl obviously did not want

You sometimes have to accept that you can’t want something for someone more than they want it for themselves. I can tell that you were stressed out by the fact that she didn’t take advantage of her time in the states, but that was her choice. Will you be assigned a new roommate for the spring semester?

Not sure yet i told res life point blank i will not have another international roommate. So basically its either a transfer or single. Most likely its a single

Yep, its official after my nightmare last semester, i am getting the room as a single as too many open rooms and no that many transfers. I am mainly over the weird Japanese girl but some of the stuff she did i still think was nuts. Such as slam doors and such. Well girl have a nice life.

So now its on to my last semester of college and graduating in May. Thank God.

Enjoy your single and the last semester of colllege!

OP’s roommate sounds a lot like one of my D’s roommate’s last year. A lot of sleeping/not getting out of bed/keeping weird hours/etc. All I can think in both cases is major depression. Unfortunately, with Res Life stepping in to get her some help, YMMV.

My college truely dropped the ball with this girl. I reported it to my RA early on in October and she blew me off and nothing came of it. But according to other friends, in Asian cultures depression is very much frowned upon so she most likely lied to the school even though that is what she had. Basically she probably wanted to make it out like it was a problem with me.