December has been a real doozy of a month. November too for that matter. Early last month, a misunderstanding with my roommate quickly escalated into her accusing me of manipulation, questioning my financial standing, and overstepping personal boundaries. I was shocked.
I don’t know this person too well, but we have worked together for almost two and a half years. We share friends. We share an apartment. We share a workplace. At the drop of a hat someone I spent hours decorating the apartment, hosting parties for all our friends, and shooting the shit with at work totally blindsided me. I saw a side of her that I didn’t recognize.
Since then she’s stopped speaking to me, not apologized, decided to move out (without taking any action to fill her spot on the lease), and honestly just threatened my sanity. Now to be completely clear, I am not the victim here. I understand why she is upset.
I didn’t discuss something with her that I would have, had I known it would affect her in the way it did. I won’t share all the details, but it had to do with how we pay our rent. I decided to use a flexible option offered through the apartment complex, but didn’t discuss it with her because I didn’t know it would require her to pay her rent through a different portal than normal until the night it was due.
I mentioned my choice to her when she asked if I’d like her to go ahead and pay my portion of the rent, and asked if I’d send her the money. Long story short, she freaked out about my wanting to use this flexible payment option to split my rent into two payments throughout the month, one on the first and one on the fifteenth.
She claimed that I was manipulating her into “making a major financial decision,” told me I “should work on myself more before coaching anyone else,” and shamed me for having borrowed money from my boyfriend the month before (a personal decision I told her in confidence).
Now let me tell you, I’ve experienced some heavy conflict in my 25 years on this planet. From an abusive and neglectful household growing up, to dating disasters in college, to working for the most manipulative and narcissistic woman I’ve ever met earlier this year. I’ve seen it all. Here’s one thing I know to be true: I cannot take it anymore.
I am 100%, absolutely, positively, super-cali-fragilistic-expialidociously done with it. All of it. The drama galore, the ego showdowns, the “I can’t handle my own emotions so I’ll project them viciously onto you” — the never-ending cycles of unaddressed emotional trauma.
About four years ago I hit rock bottom. Packing up my college apartment, transferring my courses online, and quitting my job, I made the haul 3.5 hours north to post up in my parents’ basement indefinitely. A few months after that I found myself desperately hoping someone would come along and save me. I met a potential love interest — a friend of a friend — and he ended it after 2 dates. I lost my shit.
The disappointment was the cherry on top of the pain sundae that I’d spent the best years of my life trying to keep from toppling over and killing the last of my will to survive on its way down. I just freaking lost it. Any and all illusions of control were long gone. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Next thing I knew I was googling residential mental health treatment centers. I knew my reality had to change for good, and the answer had to be something I’d never done before. I begged my parents to let me go. I had maybe $50 to my name, no job, and zero prospects. So they took out a loan against their retirement fund, tacked a couple grand onto my tab, and drove me up to Tennessee, where I stayed for 21 days.
I won’t get into the details of what it all looked like, but I will tell you that it was lonely, awkward, scary, and I almost fainted when it was my turn to play volleyball in the yard. But the food was good, the staff was kind, and I was in the Appalachian mountains. It was hands down the single biggest investment I had ever made in myself. And It. Paid. Off.
Before I knew it I was swimming in self help books, finding the right therapist (shoutout to Jamie — she’s the best), and moving into my very own studio apartment. The world was officially MY oyster. The rest is history.
So here I am, 25-years-old, having set sturdy boundaries with my family, living in my dream apartment, snuggling my perfect cats every night, enjoying a healthy relationship with my boyfriend of a year, and starting my dream business for real. And in walks this unexpected, unmendable drama from the last person I expected. Who woulda thunk?
But that’s just life innit? Just when you think things are going perfectly, the universe reminds you that nothing ever is. An unknown cosmic force slaps you upside the head and reminds you that you’ll never be done growing. Thank God for that.
If there were an ultimate destination in this life — a highest mountaintop — it wouldn’t be worth living. Nothing would ever be enough until you reached this hypothetical, untouched, distant reality. Peace and struggle could never coexist.
Luckily for us, this final destination is bullshit. It’s simply not real, though loads and loads of people will tell you it totally is and that they’re gonna get there someday. They’re just in denial, convinced that there’s got to be something more to life on earth than waking up every morning, putting up with the mundane, and sitting in traffic. Fortunately for us there isn’t.
Our entire lives will only ever consist of one day at a time. That’s the beauty of human existence. Feelings will rise, feelings will fall. Peace will come and peace will go. But to know that, to feel it all and still love life, that is the ultimate destination. That is the highest mountaintop known to man.
— Jules Rose Shelly
