u/frailearth

Background: I got a new roommate about 7 months ago, and we split rent evenly. The apartment has been long furnished with all of my many belongings as I’ve lived here for three years. She is welcome to add some of her belongings in, of course, but I had assumed it would be around and about the stuff I’ve already had here for years— at least, if I was moving into someone’s home where they were already established, that’s what I would do. We have gotten into arguments before where she has told me, essentially, that she has a right to put her stuff wherever she pleases. For context, I know that her last living situation was a disaster because her roommate was always complaining about her having too much of her stuff out + having her boyfriend over too much. As a side note, I also have many house plants, which is an important part of this story. Now that the weather is getting warmer, my roommate made a wine trap in a bowl to help catch gnats that live in some of the plants— this is also important to this story.

so last night, I get home from a long day of of traveling with my boyfriend after a short vacation weekend. I’m exhausted and emotionally burnt out and my boyfriend and I are trying to clean and make food for the work week before going to sleep. My roommate had texted me a couple days ago that she moved one of my plants from a shelf because, when she was grabbing one of her cookbooks off that shelf, that wine trap apparently fell off the shelf onto her. I had put the trap up there a week prior because I noticed a lot of gnats up there next to the plants. The plants and other stuff were already on top of the books, and had been for about 5 or 6 months. Prior to her books being there, the plants had always been on that shelf. When I got home from my vacation, I put the plant back up on that shelf, on top of the cookbooks. In the text my roommate sent me while I was away, she didn’t ask if we could keep the plant off that shelf, so I assumed she had just moved the plant temporarily because she needed to get to her books, and I preferred to keep the plant up there because it’s where it got the best light.

When I did this, my roommate turned around from her position on the couch and said “hey can we keep that plant off the cookbooks?” I was already irritated and exhausted for my own personal reasons, so I definitely could have handled my response better, and I was feeling pretty defensive because of arguments we had about our living space prior to this. I said to her “no, I want my plant up there. I really don’t want to have this conversation right now.” She then proceeded to say my name multiple times and I tried to not engage with her because I didn’t want to have to think about rearranging things while I was busy and tired. I should have told her “can we address this tomorrow?” instead of being so stubborn and curt with her. However, after her saying my name a bunch, I repeated “I don’t want to deal with this right now.” And then she hopped off the couch and darted right beside me and said “fine! I’ll do it myself!” I’m pretty ashamed to admit that I also kinda lost my cool and retorted “why don’t you just take your books then?” And she started screaming at me that it wasn’t fair that she couldn’t have her stuff up there and that the plants being on that shelf was a safety issue because she’s on baby aspirin and that I’m inconsiderate for not remembering that. This is not the first time she has screamed at me. However, it wasn’t even the plant that fell on her— the plant is perfectly visible. It was the bowl that she didn’t see, that isn’t ordinarily up there. I tried to explain this to her but she told me that I didn’t have any respect for her wellbeing. The shouting match about stuff being on that shelf continued for an hour and she threatened to move out. Honestly, I’m at a loss for why things escalated that fast. I wish she had just respected that I didn’t want to address this issues in that moment. I definitely feel like I was also being a bit of an asshole too, and I can see how she felt dismissed— which I made sure to tell her. But I don’t think the whole situation should have erupted like that. Idk fam— what the fuck happened? How would you deal with a situation like this? Am I completely in the wrong? Because I feel like I’m in the wrong, but I also don’t feel like how she reacted was fair or safe.