The first one that comes to mind happened in February 2018. This was the second semester of my freshman year. For some context, in November, my roommate thought she was pregnant after FOUR (yes, I know. I don’t know either) missed periods. This was the freelance waxer roommate. The waxing pot was very quickly replaced with wine and pregnancy tests. There was a brief apartment-wide panic among the three not-pregnant people because alcohol and babies aren’t supposed to mix. When we voiced this, we were met with a roommate conference about the merits of wine and pregnancy. Apparently, this is okay. Personally, I have a hard time believing that fetal alcohol syndrome has an alcohol preference, but whatever. Then, on Thanksgiving morning, she was gifted with her period to confirm the several negative pregnancy tests. Many pee-filled mugs were thrown out in vain, including a really cute one with a built-in cookie holder. Don't know why she peed inside of the mug instead of peeing on the stick, but whatever, Regardless, she was not preggo and I never had to deal with a screaming baby at any point during the school year. Amen. She was pretty scared after that, so for two glorious months, she practiced abstinence. She got bold again at some point because her boyfriend moved into our living room where, unfortunately, sex activities resumed. He had gotten me pretty sick from coughing everywhere (this was when I learned I was allergic to penicillin, which was a key ingredient of amoxicillin, so I was clearly in my prime) and I was also in the midst of being ghosted by my soon-to-be boyfriend. So, I was pissy because he had taken the liberty of moving into our apartment without anyone’s consent. I learned what exhibitionism was that year too, unfortunately. This specific living situation would have been a lot better if I hadn’t been so afraid to vocalize my opinion. If I had told him to cover his mouth after he coughed, or asked both him and my roommate if they could, at the very least, sanitize the apartment after he hacked all over everything in the common areas of the apartment, or had even just said I wasn’t okay with him living with us, none of this would have been an issue. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and had to suffer the consequences of him living with us. I had to miss out on a Lana del Rey concert (I’m still bitter about this years later), miss classes (still managed to get straight A’s that semester though), and frequently saw more of my roommate and her boyfriend than I ever wanted to.

​

*I would like to note that at this point I had been on the planet for 19 years. Never had been kissed. Never dated anyone. Held hands with anyone. You know, all the cool stuff most teenagers seem to do all because I had strict parents who banned me from boys until I moved out. I thought when I moved out, I was going to snatch me a man right away. No such thing happened.*

I had never hooked up with anyone before. Instead, to compensate, the universe decided to bless me and make it so that I frequently and unintentionally got to watch and hear, despite my best efforts, my roommate and her boyfriend get it on on our couch, which I stopped eating on, and in my room one time. I also started locking my door, but that did nothing to stop her maintenance-man-boyfriend from using my bed to do the nasty. So, one February morning, I’m sleeping in my bed. Still very sick because my immune system was recovering from an allergic reaction to penicillin, basking in the glory of not having to go to class, only to be awakened by some muffled sounds coming from the living room. At this point, I was way too groggy to care, and it looked like my door was locked anyways. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Anyways, the ruffling continued. Maybe a minute or so later, my door swings open, followed by my mostly-naked roommate being carried in by her also mostly-naked boyfriend. They were going at it and were gonna go at it on my bed, evidently. Surprise. All three of us were supposed to be in class but were instead in my room. Together. They still hadn’t realized I was in there. Conveniently, I lost my voice and couldn’t say anything, so I sat there for what felt like an eternity, but was probably more like ten seconds, trying to figure out how to get two very busy people to notice me. It occurred to me that I could throw one of my fuzzy, pink slippers at them. It also occurred to me that my aim sucked, so I decided to throw two. Better odds. As expected, I did not pull a Tom Brady and missed the first time. The second time though, I nailed him right in the back of the neck and got him to turn around. There was a brief, awkward moment where he met my eyes before quickly dashing out of my room. So yes, there was an instance where my roommate and her man tried to have sex in my bed. Not even his air mattress in the living room (which was literally right outside my door) or her room, that was equally far away from the couch where things presumably initially got heated. MINE. Unforgettable and unforgivable times. There were multiple instances where I found ginger pubes in my bed (many sheets were thrown out in vain but that's ok because Target had a sale on them anyways) after this happened throughout the rest of the semester. And guess what? I never spoke up. We never talked about what happened. I never reported them to management. A lot of these types of situations were my own fault because I was too afraid to do anything and I was too anxious to do anything. I allowed these kind of things to happen to me because that was the state of mind I was in, and that’s not okay. It’s okay to speak up for yourself and it’s okay to have boundaries. It took me two and a half years to realize this.