AITAH For kicking out my roommate who was going through "a mental crisis"?
Hi reddit, this is my first time posting and its gonna be a long one, so I hope I'm doing everything correctly. Also, english is not my native language, so please excuse any spelling errors.
I (26f) met my roommate "Nina" (27f, fake name) through a mutual friend in early 2019. We are both obsessed with tattoos and thats what we basically bonded over, but she was also a pretty fun person to be around in general. In spring of 2022 I moved to my first own appartement, but I didnt wanna live alone, so I asked Nina if she wants to be my roommate, since we live in the same town and she agreed. At first everything seemed fine, but after a few months I noticed that some of my clothes went missing. It wasnt much, a shirt here, a hoodie there. But it still annoyed me. My friends were joking about Nina being the one stealing my clothes, but I thought that she wouldnt do that, since her and my style are completely different. I dress in a lot of black, I guess you could call it almost goth but more casual? And Nina has more of a "clean girl style" and usually wears lots of bright colors. I mean, she can wear black too, but why would she steal my clothes?
But overtime, it got worse. More and more clothes went missing over the next 3 years and some even reappeared eventually. I even talked to Nina a couple times and she said that I probably just misplaced my stuff and to just ignore it. And tbh, like I said, it was only a shirt or two every now and then or a pair of pants etc. and I'm a bit of an airhead, so it made sense. Then halloween 2025 came around and Nina and I went to a halloween Party with a bunch of other friends. Me and my friends were hanging out outside having a smoke and I saw Nina hanging out with a group of girls who I didnt know and I noticed them giving me a nasty look. I just ignored it and thought it was because of my costume (I was wearing a black lady cosplay from sailor moon, but without a wig, so I basically just put my hair in pigtails), but they kept staring at me throughout the night. I later asked Nina who they were and she said they were work friends and when I asked her why they kept staring at me, she said to just ignore it and they were just being weird and probably had too much to drink. I said "Okay..?" And tried to not think about it too much.
A couple days passed and I started to get weird comments on my instagram posts from obvious throwaway or troll accounts, calling me a "poser" and a "copycat" and that my pictures are "not even cute" and I shouldnt "try so hard to be different" amongst other original comments. I ignored it and after a while the comments stopped. Those comments all happened shortly after the halloween party, but stopped after a couple weeks. Every now and then I would still get comments of people calling me "pick me" and "cringe", but I ignored those because people on the Internet can be dumb. Fast forward to March of this year. The comments kept getting worse and more frequent again, until eventually I got a dm. It was, again from a throwaway account. What did the dm say? It was basically the same as the comments, calling me a copycat and that I am pathetic for copying my friend and that I'm a weirdo who has an obssesion with her and a bunch of laughing emojis. Underneath were pictures attached and another message saying to "try harder and dont make it too obvious if you wanna steal someone's identity Lol".
To say I got creeped out when I saw these pictures would be an understatement. The pictures were Screenshots of my and Nina's instagram Page, but its not the ig page of Nina that I know, so I guess she has a 2nd one. In those pictures she was wearing my clothes that went missing and in some pictures she even copied the caption of what I wrote on my ig posts and in some she was in the same location as me, doing the same pose, basically copying my posts. One of the more creppier posts were her with a red hair filter asking if she should dye her hair red (I always dye my hair red, her hair is blonde), another one was getting the same cheshire cat tattoo on her upper leg, which I didnt even notice because she ususally wears long pants and another one getting her nails done the same style as me, which she even joked to me about saying how its a "funny coincidence". Looking back, how did they not realise that my posts are older than hers, making it impossible for me to "copy" her? Maybe they thought Nina's pictures were deleted and re-uploaded by her? Anyways, I went to Nina and approached her and she went pale as a ghost. She said something about it being a "misunderstanding" and, again, told me to not think about it too much. I told her to leave because this is beyond creepy and I need space.
This is already too long, so I'll try to cut it short. Basically she told her friends that I was copying her and had an obsession with her and that I'm sick or whatever, which is why she didnt wanna confront me, but her friends (the girls from the halloween party) didnt agree with that, so they tried to bully me into "stopping to copy her" because apparently she also told them that I stole a boyfriend from her, because I wanted to be like Nina, which meant also wanting to date the same guys. Shortly after all that I kicked her out and she moved in with her sister who told me I'm a selfish prick for not helping her, since she was clearly going through a mental crisis and I should've been more understanding. None of my friends agree with her and neither do I, but I dont know... before all that, we were close friends so I shouldve noticed that something was off.. so, aita for kicking her out? Should I have talked to her and helped her get professional help?
------!!Small Update!!------
No one really asked for it, but in a way this post is a bit of a vent for me because I'm still processing what my ex-roommate "Nina" did... and oh boy, there is so much background Information that I wasnt even aware of.
Basically, I told my friend that I made a reddit post because most of my friends know that I feel kinda guilty for not realising sooner that Nina wasnt doing mentally well and eventhough I know there isnt anything I could do, there is still a small part of me that thinks I could've prevented her obsession from escalating... what I didnt know was what was going on behind the scenes.
Nina kept switching from admiring me and obsessively talking about me, to shit talking me and making fun of me. One second she would talk about how amazing of a friend I am and the next she would say that I am an arrogant pick-me and that I think that I am "better than everyone else".
She would joke about getting a portrait of me as a tattoo and how she would try to convince me to get a portrait of her as a tattoo. On top of that, she would refuse to hang out with friends, unless I was there too, and if I canceled and ended up not hanging out with her and everyone after all, she would get mad and talk about feeling betrayed and that she feels like she "wasted her time".
I remember lots of our friends stopped being friends with her and no one really told me why, like it was an "open secret" that everyone knew about except me.
Also, the "boyfriend" that I mentioned in my post that I "stole" from Nina wasnt even her boyfriend. He was a mutual guy friend that she apparently had a crush on and Nina kept bringing me up in conversations and would send him pictures of herself and me and kept asking him if he thinks I'm hotter than her and he got creeped out and eventually blocked her... apparently Nina saw that as a "sign" that I stole him or that he was attracted to me. I wasnt even that close to him..
So yeah, there has been a lot of stuff happening that I didnt even know about until I cut contact with Nina and my friends assumed that I was aware of it and that her copying my identity was just the "cherry on top". There also has been a lot of other stuff that she did, like catfishing people by using pictures of me for example, but yeah...
I've been living with a literal psycho for three years and somehow and I didnt notice any of it at all... be careful of who you become roommates with guys..