Tag: boundary girl

Things are happening

So, Boundary Girl moved out a few days ago.  We have a new roommate who I think I’ll call Story Girl.  She is younger than me, which I only mention because she seems really young.  It sort of weirds me out that she has a boyfriend and has sex, because she acts so innocent and cute and excitable.  But she’s 20 years old, so there’s no absolute reason why it should be weird. 

She also plays Improbable Island, but she’s really into the roleplay aspect of it (thus “Story Girl”.)  So far I’ve avoided interacting with her in the game, which I’m glad about for several reasons.  Most of the roleplay I’ve done before has involved lots of Feelings, for one.  And Improbable Island is such a silly game that it’s hard for me to figure out a coherent personality for a character in it.  But the heart of it is, I have anxiety about not knowing what to say/not saying the right thing.  I don’t want to be put on the spot to say things with someone I don’t know well, when I don’t have a well-established character to play. 

Her normal speaking volume is kind of loud (or maybe I’m just going through a period of being really sensitive to sound, since a lot of other things have been bothering me lately too.)  But I’m dealing with that, and we seem to be getting along okay otherwise.  She was a little… clingy? when she first moved in– “Let’s do ALL THE THINGS as a group!  Let’s go do things together!  But whatever you want to do, however you want to do it, is fine with me!”  which was awkward.  But she’s calmed down about that.  I think things will be okay.

I’m trying to write something but I have

I’m trying to write something but I have too many prepositions and I don’t know what to do with them, and everybody keeps talking and Boundary Girl keeps LOOKING OVER AT ME TO SEE IF I APPRECIATE HER PUNS even though I am staring fixedly at my computer with a blank expression on my face and typing angrily.  No Boundary Girl I am not paying attention to you.

I should just go in my room, but now I’m done typing the thing so the noise level should be okay.

In retrospect, the piece of really dark fiction that I wrote… exactly three months ago, as it turns out… goes to show how much stress I was under at the time.  Because it is so scary, and so completely out of character.

And actually, what’s out of character about it is a formerly trusted and completely harmless-seeming person doing something really threatening and scary, which is sort of relevant to the thing with Boundary Girl that was going on about then.  Isn’t it nice when things make sense?

When you fucking pay me to do something, you get to have expectations! Stop being so goddamn unpreposessing and “well, what works for you?” I was supposed to pick you up and I forgot it was 5 today instead of 6 and that is a mistake on my part and you get to fucking say so. Stop it. (P.S. No amount of acting cute and deferential will make me forget how you treated Sparkly.)

(Later)

I guess the moral of the story is, it really weirds me out when someone acts as if the situation is different from what I think it is.  I was expecting “Where are you?” and I got “Are you still planning to stop by campus this afternoon?” as if I wasn’t already late.  Also, it’s awkward to have to say, “I am unemployed and boring, you know perfectly well I don’t have any plans more important than giving you a ride.”

In which I don’t like gossip.

So, Sparkly, Reference Desk Girl and Boundary Girl all go/went to the same women-only university.  And I just cannot comprehend the level of gossip that goes on between them and their friends about other people.  One of them can say “This really annoying girl is in one of my classes…” and everyone else will know who it is, by name!  There are two or three people who I will presumably never meet, but I now know all about how they are annoying and talk too much, according to Sparkly and her friends in her department.  I swear my school was not like this.

This bothers me for a couple of reasons.

1.  Last time there was one person who was clearly “that annoying girl who asks too many questions” to the rest of the class, I spent all my time thinking, “Oh, God, I would be her if I talked more,” and wishing I could hit the guy in front of me (who kept calling her stupid, semi-out-loud, to his friends) on the head with my graphing calculator.  So I feel a little bit guilty and threatened when people do this, even when it’s in private about someone I’ve never met.

2.  When I’ve been on the other end of this– when I’ve been irritated with someone in one of my classes– I tended to assume that it was at least partly my problem, not theirs.  I’m very sensitive to background noise and distractions.  Sometimes I’ve complained to other people about things like this that bothered me, but I didn’t really expect anyone else to feel the same way.  So the fact that everyone here seems to have a consesus about what’s annoying feels foreign to me.  Actually, this is part of a pattern– I don’t think that I’m normal, and every so often I come across a situation where it’s made obvious to me that other people do, and that’s confusing to me.

Living with a devout Catholic is confusingly similar to living with a pagan.

Boundary Girl came home with a box of blessed candles to light for her aunt who’s ill, and told us she got her throat blessed to prevent sore throats and choking.  There’s so much actual, physical practicing of religion going on here I just don’t know what to do with it. 

Boundary Girl will be moving back home at the end of the semester.

Apparently she decided that having her own (well, our shared-between-four-people) apartment is too stressful.  She’s been at her parents’ house for her winter break, and she said she felt like it was a big weight off her shoulders not to have to cook, etc. 

I guess this is a good thing? 

The irritable, petty part of me says, you’re about to graduate from college.  You don’t get to run away from chores.  And also, you cooked maybe once every two weeks here, and that’s being generous.  And I did 90% of the shopping.  I don’t mind, because I’m much less busy than everyone else, but I also don’t see how that’s such a burden. 

Another part of me is saying that this must be her trying to fix things– like, maybe she’s realized that she really needs to change how she’s been acting, and this is her trying to do it. 

But mostly I just can’t believe that she’ll actually stop unless she’s forced to.  The speech she gave me about how she “wants to work on it” was, in retrospect, clearly a crock of bullshit.  I just can’t quite believe that she’s actually changed.

I sort of don’t think I should post the message she sent that really demonstrates why it was bullshit, but maybe I can tell you about it anyway.  I wrote a big rant in a text document– well, first I wrote a calm, giving-her-the-benefit-of-the-doubt essay with everything I didn’t end up saying to her in person, and then Sparkly showed me the message, and then I wrote a rant. 

I am going to put this here and then I am going to stop feeling angry about it.  Sending a Facebook message that says:

MAKE SURE YOU TALK TO ME TODAY!

is not among the appropriate things to do after being told that you need to start taking “no, I don’t want to spend time with you tonight” for an answer.

This should have been fairly obvious to you.