In your life, there will come a time when you’ll feel like you don’t want to share a room or flat with anyone you don’t care about anymore. And maybe, perhaps, you’ll have had that feeling for a few years, but you still find yourself in a situation where you don’t have any other choice, maybe, just maybe, I don’t know, you’re still a university student in a long-distance relationship and you’re moving to a new city where you don’t know anyone and the prices are just so high and you’re happy that you even found a place to live in and you feel so blessed because that place is somehow close to your new uni and after all that time of sharing flats with people your age and getting annoyed, you think that maybe, finally it’ll be different and better, so you enter this new chapter full of hope and yet…
Respect lost
Maybe you’re a perfectionist and a people pleaser and in the beginning, when you get told that you did something differently from the expectations, you immediately apologize. You’ve always had respect for older people. Until one day you get a message from your landlady/flatmate saying that there will be a solar storm that might affect… well, basically everything. From the internet to the card payments, to the voltage, to even running water (I still don’t know how) and that’s why the electricity needs to be turned off for the weekend. You obviously start panicking, this is not any of the worst-case scenarios you prepared in your head. But then you calm down. How come no one has talked about it? Surely, if it’s such a huuuge disaster, people will discuss it, right? You look it up online. English? Nothing. Spanish? Nada. It’s not gonna affect Barcelona only, surely. Right? You ask your flatmate about how they learn about it. “A local newspaper.” Then it must be very local, specific to this flat because not a single soul has heard anything. But when you mention that you get told, as if you’re the dumb one, something along the lines of: if the things are not unplugged, the devices will be destroyed and since you’re not the one to pay for it, you’d better shut your mouth. So you do. But all the respect that might have been there is gone just like that. from now on, any requests from their side will get a beautiful like emoji.
No headphones
Imagine that maybe, possibly, you have many videocalls. Although normal nowadays, your part-time job, family, friends and relationship are all online, so maybe you call a bit more often than a normal mortal. But it’s fine, because you’re in your own room that you pay for every month. You don’t stay up at night blasting music, you do your thing during the day and that’s it. Surely it can’t bother people that much.
Ha. Haha.
Maybe it can. Maybe your flatmate whose “office” that doesn’t have a wall, just a curtain, is right opposite your room. And maybe you don’t hear that well. And perhaps, your mom is not the quietest person on the phone. And maaaybe, your flatmate, the one you have no respect left for, has a great hearing and keeps telling you to use headphones. And what does she get? A like emoji! And do you use headphones? No. is she annoyed? Bery much so, but does she ask you why you don’t use the headphones? Nope! So why do you not use them? Well, maybe you can’t speak when you use headphones. Maybe you hate the feeling of not knowing how loud your talking? Maybe you’d be too loud if you used them. Well, who knows, maybe that’s what your flatmate wants. But you stubbornly decide to ignore her wish. After all, she could use noise-cancelling headphones if the noise you and the people that you hardly hear make are preventing her from focusing on her study. But maybe not. Maybe one time when you forget to turn down the volume on a call with your mum, she’ll come knocking on your door to tell you to “use the fucking headphones”. But probably that won’t help. You can’t talk with headphones on, and calls require you to talk so…
No friends allowed
Luckily, before her anger levels started rising, you already told her that your mom was coming to visit and she didn’t seem to mind. However, this made you too brave. Now you think that maybe people can come to visit you for the weekend. How, you poor naïve baby… you could feel it in your bones, that’s why when your friend told you she was coming to Barcelona and you said she could stay with you, you procrastinated on telling your flatmate. You knew she’d be mad. And you were right.
When your friend finally got a bus ticket, you gathered courage and sent the message: “my friend’s coming xx-xx. We’ll stay out as much as possible”. And all hell broke loose. SHE WAS PISSED!! She told you about how you don’t inform her but you ask, about you being disrespectful (earphone reference?), about you not cleaning the area under her shampoos (fair point, though again, if she had asked why, maybe she’d understand that you thought that touching people’s sponges is disgusting especially when you do it in the gloves that are for toilet cleaning, but either way, you did it the moment she mentioned it) and about any other mistake you might have made in your life just to show you that she’s the more powerful one. And she told you about how things would have to change or you’d have to change the house (very poetic, right).
So… did anything change? Well, yes and no. Nothing in the way you do things changed. But you told yourself you were not going to stay there a second longer than necessary. No one was coming to visit you in that place except your mom. You were going to ignore every fucking thing she throws at you. Whether it was her friend staying in the flat at the exact same weekend as your friend was coming and her not asking you but informing you. Or her telling you to leave the flat when she gives a “therapy session” (how desperate that poor person has to be to have therapy with her!) or you not being able to go to the bathroom while she has her online therapy. Or anything else. You’ll ignore the anxiety it gives you and when you’re worried that you’re doing something “wrong”, your whole body shivers like a frightened puppy. You’ll wait for your moment and once you don’t have a reason to stay there, you’ll be gone.
The lovely people of Barcelona
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be lucky enough to meet some nice people along the way too. Maybe they’ll be someone to say “Salud!” as you sneeze in the street. Maybe when you get ill because of all the stress that your body needs to handle at all times and you try to catch some of the vitamin D on a bench on a sunny day, someone will ask you whether you’re okay. Maybe, you’ll make great friends who will be willing to share their space on the days when you come back to Barcelona for some of your classes. Maybe, one of your teachers will be an amazing human being full of empathy and love for anyone and everyone who’d in need. Maybe, perhaps, who knows, the happy ending to a crazy chapter is here.
