Most people will live with a roommate at some point in their lives, and despite how hopeful we all are at the beginning of things, the truth is that it’s almost always tricky.

And sometimes, it’s downright terrible.

A sad story.

I was in a motorcycle accident and spent a month in the hospital. My roommate took my rent money and spent it on cocaine. I came home barely able to walk to find an eviction notice on the door.

He OD’d a couple years later. His 10yo son found him on their kitchen floor

It wasn’t his fault.

I let my boss crash at my second apartment about 15 years ago. It was a s*%tty timeshare call-center where everyone did drugs and were pretty everyman types, so he and I were more friends than coworkers. Anyway he loses his apartment and asks to stay with me for a couple months while he gets back on his feet and I agree.

He’s a great dude. Kind, smart, funny, confident, and a solid ~350 lb. I only mention the weight because it’s relevant to the negative experience.

So around a month into staying with us, he decides to get clean from his crippling opioid addiction. He’s decided to cold-turkey from a 20 a day 10mg hydrocodone habit, which (for the uninitiated) is pretty intense.

I advised rehab, but he elected to lie on the couch in my living room for weeks (costing him his job), sweating his ass off and shaking under a blanket.

The reason why his size was relevant: he sweat a lot already, and had to take pains to mitigate his body odor on normal days (with varying degrees of success), but with the withdrawals and being mostly sedentary on that textile couch for weeks, the apartment started to smell like a hot ass-forest.

It was a party-house with a revolving door, and people just kinda stopped coming during his tenure there. Even with my bedroom down the hall’s door closed, the stench was pervasive.

It wasn’t his fault, I liked the man, and he was trying to better himself and his life, so I put up with it. And he succeeded. Got himself a new place in the agreed time frame, stayed clean and everything was hunky-dory.

After he moved out, my actual roommate and I carried the couch to the parking lot dumpster and it took several days to air out the smell. We even did a thermal fog with an oil-based cherry-scented counterfactant, and it still didn’t help.

Kinda irrelevant, but just an addendum; we stayed in touch for a while back when I still had Facebook, and he got his life together. Got a good job as a realtor, lost a lot of weight, had a baby girl, found religion or whatever.

Then after a few years of being off Facebook and radio silence, I get a call from my old roommate saying that he’d relapsed and died from a heroin overdose. Pretty f**ked.

RIP Don.

29 rats.

I had one that would just straight up steal my stuff.

One that brought home 2 rats as pets, and we ended up with 29 rats in what felt like no time at all.

Definitely a hazard.

Dude kept falling asleep while smoking cigarettes. I got mad every time and woke him up. He bought me a fire extinguisher at a yard sale one day. He thought it was best joke ever.

He fell asleep on night on the couch. Cigarettes rolled off on to the carpet. Carpet caught fire, couch caught fire, his shirt catches fire. He never woke up. I woke up, having smelled it. Grabbed his gag gift and put it all out.

His shirt and hair were GONE. He was okay. Never even went to the hospital, but he absolutely would have died of I hadn’t been there and had that fire extinguisher beside my bed.

I moved immediately.

Like a child.

He played Leage of Legends all night. If the game didn’t go his way he would scream in frustration and beat his fists on his desk, no matter what time of the night it was. It was difficult to get a full night’s sleep with him roaring and pounding every few hours.

He would also eat at his desk and broke several of the dishes I had bought for the apartment during his little tantrums.

It gets worse though! Eventually he decided that he needed to be more alert during his marathon gaming sessions. Most people would invest in coffee or energy drinks, but no, he decided he needed to buy meth.

He told us he was “too smart to get addicted”, but at that point I decided I’d had enough and noped on out. I took what remained of my dishes with me.

Fine in the beginning.

Shared a quad in college with a girl named Monica.

She was fine in the beginning but then began doing things like hiding the toilet paper, trying to limit how much time we spent in the shared living room, allowed a homeless man to sleep on the sofa and hoarded cutlery.

She decided she wanted to be a vampire and had her teeth filed into points.. at the end of the year we started referring to her as “Demonica “.

He had to protect himself.

You know Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory ? Exactly like that guy but no where near as smart, but condescending, insulting, with boundary issues.

Was there for two months and had to get out, or would have ended up with assault charges.

Some friend.

I lived in a house with a guy who let his friend hide from the cops in our basement.

The friend had shot and killed 2 people in a robbery.

Not one but two.

Lived in a house share for 7 years so have a few stories.

2 that are tied for the worst.

First was a guy who had skin issues, refused to get help, shed flakes everywhere, shower, sink, toilet. Ended up in the washing machine too when he did his washing, which ultimately ended up in everyone else’s clothes when they did washing.

I felt sorry for the dude, super intelligent, kind, happy and friendly. Just didn’t look after himself.

Second was a guy who lied about his job, never went to whatever it was, and regularly got up during the early hours to randomly scream at the top of his lungs and bang all the walls, the floor and ceiling in his room to ensure it woke everyone up.

Hated the dude for this, and hated the fact he used my car as a bench when he went out to smoke. Would roll his eyes at me when I politely asked him to not sit on my car.

Peace.

I called to ask if he had his half of the rent and he informed me that he was on I95, headed back to his hometown of Virginia.

Dude cleared his s*%t out of the apartment and dipped with no warning.

Just really dirty.

He was just really dirty. His clothes were everywhere, there were old cereal bowls just crusted and stuck, it was disgusting. But here’s the real kicker…

My other roommate and I had to “play mom” and tell him that if he didn’t pick his s**t up, we’d throw it all away. He didn’t pick it up. So we went in there with a trash bag and started tossing everything in. When we lifted the mattress, one of those fake vagina sex toy things rolled out. Then, some fluid dripped out of it…

Whatever the hell came out of that thing was so rotted that it made the entire apartment smell like something had died and the corpse was left for a few months. Clean roommate and myself had to open everything and leave for the rest of the day. The smell lingered for a few days after that.

Last I heard of this dude, he was smoking a mixture of crack and heroin. Then stole some oil from the back of a truck. He’s been MIA since…

A nightmare.

First night in the new shared apartment I was renting, my landlord slept on the floor in my living room on a rug. I thought that was weird but I was not in a position to argue, as I really needed a place to live.

Then, over the next couple of months, my landlord moved in and brought over 8 family members from Turkmenistan, including a newborn baby, and they all lived in 2 bedrooms (and by bedrooms I mean one was the living room!!).

When I complained, they locked me out of the apartment. I called the police who let me in and scolded the family. It was a nightmare. I finally got out of there and never looked back.

What a weirdo.

Dude told me my majesty palm tree was fine in the apartment common area after I asked him if it was cool.

I was rinsing my dishes in the sink later that same night, and he barreled out of his room in full, unhinged temper tantrum mode, screaming I WANT ALL YOUR PLANTS OUT OF HERE TOMORROW YOU NASTY B*%CH, started kicking/hitting my plants and threatening to throw them off the balcony.

I was legit worried he’d try to throw me off the balcony next. This was a grown ass man in his thirties. Yeah I was outta there after that night.

I live alone in peace with my plants now where they don’t get kicked.

It worked out in the end.

A roommate tried to murder my cat in front of me while I was f**ked up on shrooms. I broke an unopened 1.75L bottle of vodka over his head, hospitalized him.

Not sure that was the right courage of action and oh boy was it a s*%t storm in my life. Worked out in the end. Do I wish I could of done something less brutal?

Yeah, but he was 300 lbs and I was 115 or so, was gonked and my kitty was crying for help, so I went full parent mode.

Might of been wrong, I wish it could of been dealt with better, though I’m not sure there was another option. Do I feel guilty though? My beloved kitty is still with me over a decade later, so no.

I hope they pressed charges.

She poisoned my food. She started out with “harmless” pranks like putting salt in my jello before it set.

Then she put bleach in my pasta water like I wouldn’t f**king smell bleach noodles.

She would steal my underwear, wear them during that time of the month, and put them back in my underwear drawer unwashed.

I spent YEARS f**ked up. Being afraid of food and people. I already had a bad relationship with food because of my mom.

This made it so I wouldn’t eat at restaurants, or my friends’ food they cooked to share, or eat anything that wasn’t in a tightly sealed package.

Parental intervention.

Freshman year of college- she came back drunk night 5 and pissed on our carpet and some of my clothes. Then in the morning she denied all of it despite the room smelling like piss.

She would have random guys over constantly and f**k them with me in the room (even though she had a bf). She ended up getting arrested twice during the first semester (she had painkillers that were not hers and she got a marijuana charge lmao).

She was pure chaos and ended up in academic poor standing since she literally never went to class. The second semester her parents required her to come home every single weekend so it made things much nicer lol.

An aggressive hippie.

F**king Em (not her real name). The most aggressive “zen” hippy you ever met. She was all sunshine and flowers until you dared to, I dunno, asked her to do her goddamn dishes or pay rent on time. Then she would be screaming in your face.

And it was never her fault, oh no; her energy was too good, it was your negative energy making her act this way, how dare you do this to her.

We were all relieved when she lost her job and announced she was moving back home…but apparently she didn’t understand how a lease works until the landlord let her know she was still on the hook for rent if we couldn’t find a replacement.

So she started inviting creepy random guys into our home without letting the rest of us (all twenty-something girls), know what was going on or who they were (at the same time were actively searching for a replacement). She was apoplectic when we put a stop to that plan.

You were the f**king worst, Em.

Wow, I suddenly feel lucky.

I guess things could always be worse.