Let me preface this column with the darling passive-aggressive bite I’ve gathered since living in Ridgecrest West as a freshman. For the safety and protection of myself from my ex-roommate and definitely — let me repeat, DEFINITELY—not because she deserves this level of respect, rather than change her name in this article, I simply won’t mention it at all.
It started with a dirty dish. Then another one. Then another and another and another one until finally, barely three weeks into spring semester, our sink overflowed with dishes and utensils that should have lain dry in their proper kitchen cubbies. Who knew this would happen? Oh, wait. I did.
This was the story of my freshman year, rising but never falling in hysteria as my roommate jammed on a guitar she clearly could not play and experimented with her vocal range in the shower — all at hours normally reserved for sleep and, mind you, silence. Sure, I might have been a little too thankful for the lock on my door to publicly complain about her antics a year later, but freshman or not, it doesn’t take old age to understand the importance of being considerate. However, what it does take is enough introspection and observance of the failures that skip hand-in-hand with thoughtlessness.
Far removed from my west-coast home and forced to spend a year living with people I didn’t know, I had no choice but to accept the mystery of my living conditions until I found out what, or rather whom, I had signed up for. No problem there; none at all. I’m generally quiet and mindful enough to sneak past potentially sticky situations; though, I quickly found out my first run with a roomie would turn just as rotten as the dying banana I found in her lavish cupboard after our month-long winter break.
It could have been worse — or could it? Alcoholics and hopeless romantics exhibit attributes extreme enough for obvious and definite solutions to exist, but roommates like mine simply carry out life the way they always have without ever realizing their gross inability to be polite.
So, how do you counter someone who doesn’t realize they need to be countered? How do you deal with a person blind to her absurdity? I’ll tell you exactly what not to do. Don’t turn your room inside out trying to find a Sharpie. Don’t mercilessly rip open a pack of Post-Its and don’t write so many versions of passive-aggressive notes that you can’t pick which one to stick above your roommate’s monster pile of dishes in the kitchen sink.
That was my strategy. It was also the cruelest, guiltiest and most entitled I’ve ever felt in my life. Some call it an easy way out, which isn’t completely untrue, but to be honest, I’m simply too much of a people-pleaser to express discontent straight to someone’s face.
Hence this column.
Passive and Aggressive — surely a married couple if I’ve even known one and better yet, the kind whose friends all think should be divorced. Both rejected by Assertiveness, they drunkenly tied the knot in Vegas, and now, 19 years later, they still haven’t found enough sense to reverse that dreadfully awful idea. They stuck it out for the kid, and folks, I’m that poor kid. Keep me in mind as I disown the traits that raised me.
Submission spells disaster, and belligerence certainly wouldn’t improve a tussle like mine, so why on earth does a combination of the two even exist as a battle option? Does it work? I suppose, although I don’t know how successful it was that I only got my roommate to finally wash her dishes mere hours before Tuscaloosa issued its “boil water alert” that fated day last April.
In retrospect, I owe my roommate as much of an apology as she owes me. For every problem she (somehow) unknowingly sparked in my life, I did us no favors by refusing to address her directly. All those notes and catty attempts to communicate without actually speaking to each other (I’ll let you imagine the vicious comments we left one another towards the end of the year) accomplished absolutely nothing. If anything, my passive-aggressive tendencies further damaged the relationship the minute I figured out how much she enjoyed the sight of soap scum.
Is there a lesson to be learned? I suppose if your behavior ever falls under a category defined by two opposites chained with a dash, don’t further regress and do something like write a newspaper article epitomizing that very definition. I’m clearly still learning, but I do know this: If there’s one thing as ridiculous as oblivious disregard, it’s the idea of passive-aggression as a suitable response.
Cheyenne Paiva is a sophomore majoring in biology.
