A microcosm of a small world

We had 2 potential roommates come over yesterday to drink some keg beer (left over from C's b-day rampage) and hang out on the back porch as the lightning flashed through the drizzle.

Double-Dub was skeptical, still scarred from our last roommate experience: "No girls." Not that we're not scarred in some way, but Cee and I agree that a stable girl would bring balance to the house-force.

The first knew a friend of Dub's, a fact apparently disclosed as I was letting the second one in. A little overlap makes for a little awkwardness, a good test of how borderline-psycho they are.

The second lived over by Doble-Dub's friends, a fact discovered by Sea; he tried to ask if she'd seen them around, describing them as "guys who wear black shirts a lot. Not scary, just like punks."

She was moving because the people she was subletting with skipped town owing the landlord rent, having taken a security deposit from her. Poor lass, she is only in Chicago for a semester at the SAIC before returning to Glasgow to install more site-specific art.

She also describes her current place as rat-infested, as in there are many rats in the yard when she gets home and scares them off. But not all the way off.

Dub comes back out, probably high on something or another, and puts two and two together; she lives on the other side of the house his friends live in.

He knows about the drama with the absconders - apparently one of them took a shit on the stairs, a fact that gets repeated a lot - and offers his sympathy: sounds like a bad-bad situation.

[Apparently the shit incident was induced by heroin?]

So apparently, while I still don't know anyone personally who does heroin, I know people who know people who used to live next to people who do it. Close enough.

Dub even called it a shitshow without realizing how literally true that figure of speech was. And then went on to bring up how crazy it was that she was living there. And that he knew the situation. And how bad the situation was. And how he doesn't blame her for getting out.

Maybe to our place...?

[Sidenote: anyone know where "Shitshow" first appeared?]

Small world.

Unlock the Door

The ex-roommate has been in the hospital all weekend. The whole situation has been a lesson in "just-when-you-think-it's-over-it's-not" and "just-when-you-are-resigned-to-it-going-on-forever-it-may-just-come-to-an-end."

Either way, a total chick-flick-turned-horror-movie.

So after she spent almost 12 hours in her hometown, full of people who would presumably be able to take care of her but didn't, she came back to Chicago, was refused re-entry to the house and wandered the streets. Finally, other roommate picked her up at a neutral meeting place and she acquiesced to being hospitalized.

My mom read the saga and sent two very nice emails of support, the latter describing the ex-roomie's condition and giving it a name: Borderline Personality Disorder.

Really, I think it should be called Borderline Psychosis, and it seems that that's the origin of the label.

According to wikipedia, it involves deep and variable moods, black/white thinking, and the propensity to idealize and demonize (others, etc.).

Something that always bothered me about the former roommate was her black/white thinking. I always attributed it to her living a relatively sheltered life, primarily experiencing life through her Orlando-colored sunglasses.

Maybe living in Chicago shattered her idealized vision of the world.

In the last conversation that I had with her (possibly forever), she admitted, finally, that one of the big reasons why she moved to Chicago was to pursue a relationship with her ex, my co-worker who set us up on this blind-roommate-date in the first place.

She describes them as having a long-distance relationship for the 2 years that he's been her. Unclear how long they'd been together before. She complained that he only called her 22 times in 2 years. I think that was the number; she seemed pretty clear on exactly how many.

He says he clearly broke it off when he left Florida.

Turns out, she had this idealized notion of him and was unwilling/unable to let go of it.

I feel like I did that once, went a little crazy. But only a little.

Yet another proof that reality is determined by what you are able/willing to believe. What you believe is truth. Even if you can *think* something different, you are limited by your ability to *believe*.

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said 'one can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Clearly we are able to believe impossible things, unreal things: that the Earth is flat, that Jesus rose from the dead, and especially love.

rom com / drama / horror

Somehow the last few months have encompassed every genre. And it was all because of one person, admittedly with a flair for the dramatic, an actor.

We were looking for a roommate, so I posted a note on facebook. Within an hour, I was talking to a girl, the friend of a co-worker (really, the ex of a friend) moving to Chicago to pursue improv comedy.

Yes, improv comedians can have a lot of energy; yes, she was only 22; yes, she was from Florida and had never seen snow. And, sight unseen, we approved her. It seemed to work out too well, like the stars had aligned. And when I say "we" approved her, I mean I did - along with the outmoving girl.

The Princess moved in - and I don't mean princess in the entitled way, rather Disney - and we started off in our little romantic comedy.

Not that there was real romance, but there was always the threat lurking under the surface. She's a flirt. She likes people to like her, in need of constant approval. A typical actor. She lies for a living.

She spent her days working retail, her nights gigging or taking improv classes. And somehow still had time to spend with her ex, maybe in an effort to manipulate him back in love with her.

When that fell apart, the wheels started to come off the bus. And yet, finally, with all the wheels off, the bus kept hurtling through space, losing pieces until it was just the driver's seat on fire, sliding down the road, no driver to be seen.

It came out that she had body image issues. I had never really met anyone with an eating disorder, so that was novel for me. And confusing. And I really didn't want to understand what was going through her head. To me, it was so wrong, that I didn't want to understand how someone could do it. It's one of those topics that doesn't get explored too much in literature, leaving us unprepared. We have put ourselves in the minds of the killers, the victims, the lovers, and all the rest. Even suicide victims. But this, this is the silent soul stealer that remains totally incomprehensible.

And she drank. But she didn't have a problem. But it was a problem.

She could go a couple nights without drinking, but it was clearly her method of dealing with whatever was going wrong, and when she hit the sauce, she hit it hard. Sometimes for days.

Like a pendulum filmed in reverse, she oscillated slowly at first but got wilder and wilder. Her mom was bi-polar. I don't know if she, herself, was quite there, but she was definitely bi-curious-polar.

It's amazing what people can get away with if they're attractive and confident.

She started sleeping with people in the house. Another coping mechanism? It's a lot easier for a woman to seduce a man. That statement is so cliché that I'm just going to leave it. Masochism.

At some point, the sex stopped between her and one of the guys. Or rather, he tried to stop it. A few days later, there was a dramatic falling out between them at the bar. And the next day she was preggers.

Or was she?

I'm guessing she was, which would make the visit to Planned Parenthood less than a charade. If there's anyone in this world who should not be bringing a child into this world, it's this girl. Her mom had 6 still-borns; nature was trying to tell this gene pool that breeding is not the best idea.

The oscillations became wilder.

After the supposed abortion, there was a 3-day period where she was so drunk that she didn't even feel drunk any more. Mostly hard stuff, a couple 6-packs of Mothership Wit (per day).

And throughout all this, she kept promising to leave. Kept going back and forth. It felt almost tidal: a rush of hope that this saga would end, a crash of disappointment that it kept dragging on.

All I ever wanted was my rug back. And by rug, I mean stability.

It takes a lot of energy to be around someone who is so volatile. It prevents you from living your own life. And she had collapsed so far into the black hole of a soul that it was getting harder to escape her gravity. She, herself, had no idea how much her actions were affecting those around her. [Then again, do any of us?]

It was getting to the point that we were going to have to ask her to leave. Her preemptive promises to vacate were only prolonging the inevitable. She had a few moments of clarity, during which I was tempted to tell her that she could stay or go, but that she'd have to leave the booze at the door.

On Wednesday, I came home to cops and firefighters in the apartment waiting for her to get her things. She apparently was drunk (er than usual) and was talking about suicide. I thought this would get her the help she needed.

But, like a professional liar, she convinced them she was sane and was back home in 3 hours. [It took her that long to walk home from the hospital. No phone and no money meant that she walked back in the rain.]

The next day, more lucidity. And then, out of nowhere: "help me to go back to Florida." Denial is the hardest hurdle; once over it, we weren't about to waste any time.

Finally, put to rest, left behind us.

She sent some optimistic texts when she got back to Florida. And I closed that door in my head. Closure.

Until the next morning. Roommate got some 3am texts: "Sleeping on the floor in a pile of cat hair." "The haven that I thought I had isn't here." "I'm coming back to Chicago, be there by noon."

We put her on the first flight out of Chicago, and she took the first flight back in.

Or did she?

Was this a hoax? Or, did she ever leave?

Were the texts coming from IN the apartment?!?!?

Our best guess is no. That she really made it to Florida. Panicked. Couldn't find friends willing to put her up (let alone family) and thought she was still welcome in Chicago.

She thought wrong.

We sent her some texts to indicate that this was a bad idea, but she had either turned her phone off or was really on a plane. Got some texts at 9:30. First plane from Orlando to Chicago was at 7:30, landed at 9:20.

Maybe she only lies about the small stuff. The big stuff is really too crazy to make up. No one would ever believe it.

And here we are, wondering what comes next. The doors are locked, and we have her keys.