The Roommate

College has been the first time that I ever had to share a room. I arrived first to our dorm room, and claimed the bed closest to the window. Because the fact that like most liberal arts schools, LU (What I'll refer to Liberal University) is primarily female, I ended up on an entirely girl floor through no fault of my own, but to the join of my mother. While very liberal in most of her ideology, my mother was raised in the Midwest and when it comes to men she is rather old fashioned. She kept saying that it would be easier for me without men on the floor. Really I don't think I would have had a problem with men on the floor, and it actually would have reduced the amount of drama on the floor. Men as a whole have the effect of making women less catty to one another.

As far as friends go in the first year at college I admit that I sort of struck out. I don't really talk to most of the people I met my first year at college. Tara, my first roommate came from a small town in the Northeast where she seemed to have anything but a happy childhood. Part of that came from the fact that she had father problems. I only happened to meet her father once, and he seemed perfectly nice for the short time I knew him, but from what Tara told me, he wasn't the nicest person. She never really let me know that much about him. From what I could understand, it also was the fact that she came from a family that had a lot of illness in it, and either she was guilty about being healthy or her father took out his stress on her about it. I won't pretend I understand her entire family dynamics, she was very private, but from what I heard her mother had been battling breast cancer for years and it was up to her to handle taking care of bother her mother and her younger brother who had had brain surgery years before, while her father was off with his job of being a pilot. Understandably that's a lot of stress to put on a girl. From the stress, and just a bad frame of mind in general I'm thinking, Tara was a bit of an outcast in her small town. Coming from that mindset it's really hard to change, especially when I admit I had no way to empathize with her.

Looking for friends, Tara and I started hanging out together, as more than just roommates. Naturally gregarious I was more comfortable joining in and talking to people I didn't know than Tara, so she would tag along and get to meet people that way. We were seen together so often that people started referring to us as the same person. That stayed the same way until much later in the year. In some ways I think she was jealous of me, though I doubt she would admit it. Mostly just for the fact that I was happy. Add on the fact that I've never been very good at commiserating with people who are mopey all the time, she was constantly trying to find someone who would fulfill her needs more than I would, which also included dealing with her father issues. Tara had not had a boyfriend since the time when she was 13, and that bothered her much more than even I knew. She said the first day that we met that the women in her family had bad taste in men, and that we had to warn her if she was with a guy who was no good. The only reason her mother was still with her father was the fact that her mother had no money and was worried about supporting her younger brother should she divorce, which overall wasn't surprising since the only reason Tara's mother was even with her father was the fact that her mother had gotten pregnant with Tara. Tara's Aunt was in the process of divorcing her husband whom I never met but Tara told me had gone insane after 9/11. I won't pass judgement whether they were all bad men or if the women just had problems with men, but instead of hating men, Tara seemed to think she need a man to take care of her. All the men she went after were older, and would take over her entire life. That was my biggest problem with her dating. I wanted her to be happy, but I can't stand women who give themselves over entirely to men.

The first of her older boyfriends was a Law Student at LU named Bert. That was my first experience of Tara blowing everything off to be with a guy. Even when we had made plans she would just not come back from Rob's apartment , blow everyone else off for the guy. And when he said he didn't want to be with her after a couple weeks of "dating" she got mad at me because I didn't realize how devastated she was. I suppose I should have realized the warning signs right there, because when she got her next and as far as I know current boyfriend, this time a grad student, Ron, the fact that I wanted to actually see her meant that I obviously was against her happiness and wanted her to break up with Ron. She turned me into the bad guy, and thus I gave up trying to fix things and moved out, though she could have saved me the trouble since after her mother passed away from the cancer sadly, she moved in with Ron. Truly I hope their happy together, since Ron broke up with his undergrad girlfriend for Tara, and I don't see it going well for her should he break up with her.
-Lia