Friday, February 20
I want to write. I want to write because I'm angry. I want to write because I'm upset. But mostly, I want to write because I want to write.I have yet more Class A drug shenanigans happening in my living room this evening. Joy. Deep motherfucking joy.
This time I said something about it.
Which went down like, well, a not-very-good thing. I can’t think of a witty comment to fit in there right now.
Once again, I got pretty much shouted down by the majority (i.e. EVERYBODY else) as soon as I raised an objection to the snorting of coke (not the drink) taking place in my front room. Apparently I wasn’t able to give a decent enough reason as to why I didn’t want it happening there.
Leigh thought I was complaining about Pete taking drugs as a whole, hence his “It’s his own body, let him do what he wants with it comment.” Phil claimed that I was voicing no actual reasons for not wanting the drugs in here, all the while whilst interrupting and talking over me when I was trying to give these reasons.
It’s not that I think no-one should take drugs. I have chosen not to, but I don’t force these reasons onto anybody else. I don’t preach at them, because by ages 20 and 21 it’s too late to force anybody to change. Get them whilst they’re young, as the paedophiles’ saying goes.
It’s also not that I believe that we will get caught by the police. I don’t. I am absolutely certain that we will not be raided by the police because Pete and Phil are doing less than a gram of coke between them.
My main justification for objecting is that I think it is intrinsically wrong for them to be doing coke in such a place as our communal living room. I may be alone in the household in my anti-drugs stance, and definitely in its vehemence, but I feel that I should at least be asked before the credit cards and rolled-up banknotes are set free from their wallets. If they had asked, I would have told them straight that I didn’t want it to happen. Then again, I probably would have been ignored anyway, as per usual.
After I had been shouted down, I sat around for a couple of minutes, then thought “fuck it” and walked out, into my room (handily placed next to the living room). A few minutes later, Pete came in to try and sort things out.
Firstly, he apologised for upsetting me in that manner, but he also wanted to know why I did get so pissed off and upset with the subject of drugs. See above for my justifications.
It then moved on from there to me explaining just how much most of my housemates piss me off. Tonight just brought things to a head. There’s so many things that piss me off about my housemates that I can’t be arsed to write about them all here. Have a read through the post-Christmas archives if you’re overly interested.
Basically, there’s a hell of a lot of things which piss me off about my fellow housemates. Many of them you could quite possibly regard as trivial or banal. The problem is, they add to each other, and eventually there comes a point where I have had enough. Tonight, for example.
I get fed up that I do so much for this house, more than anybody else, and yet I get neither respect nor any sort of concessions or recognition. So, I ask myself, why should I even bother any more?
Case in point: Rent. Since before we moved in, I ended up with the responsibility of getting everyone’s rent in on time and having it ready in the bank account for when the household rent cheque is drawn. Note that by very definition of the above it has become an active role, not a passive one. Every single month, I have to badger and cajole everyone into writing me a cheque. I can ask 5 times a day, for days on end, and still it won’t get done. Basically, I have to pretty much frogmarch them to their rooms, and stand over them whilst they write each cheque in order to get them on time. I then get it in the neck from our landlord when the cheque we’ve given him bounces.
Oh, and we get charged administration costs each time a cheque bounces, £50 each time. This month was the third since September, and the second in a row. Usually, I just add the charges to the overall “money-owed” amount, so it is divisible by everyone.
This month was different. This month they were already all pissing me off, so I just didn’t bother asking for the rent money. It’s due by the 13th at the latest, and by today I had received, erm, one of the five payments that I should have done. Needless to say our cheque bounced, and I got an irritated phone call from our landlord earlier, asking for a new cheque, and including the admin costs.
Only one of the others were in, so I figured I’d write a note and leave it in the living room for them all to see. I wrote it, and included a quite venomous part in it, explaining why this time I was refusing to contribute to the £50 admin costs, since I no longer took any responsibility for their “laziness, incompetence and being disorganised”. I didn’t care if that came across as particularly nasty, I really didn’t.
Apparently, so Pete says, that offended other people in the house. So fucking what?! They ARE lazy, incompetent and disorganised. I have to chase them up to do even the smallest task, and I have absolutely had enough.
Pete eventually coaxed out of me my long list of reasons why I dislike my housemates so much, but then he tried to turn it round and told me that I should have mentioned these things earlier, rather than letting them build up and then get vented in this big show of anger all at once. That’s true, I could have done, but what also would have been good would have been if someone had just asked.
Had just asked how I was doing, or asked if they could do anything for me. But I got nothing. In fact, I got pretty much the opposite.
I got an expectance of having to do these jobs and these tasks. I got no respect for doing them. I got no ground conceded to me on any matter because of my hard work and effort. I was the one that had to fucking give in, almost every time.
Case in study: Smoking. We originally began with no smoking in the living room, even though the smokers had a 5 to 2 majority over the nons. We let this slip for the one-off event of our first house-party, since it was a special occasion and yadda-yadda-yadda. Then, after the party, they pretty much just carried on smoking anyway, despite vigorous complaints by me and Leigh (the other non). The majority carried the vote.
At Christmas, Phil gave up smoking, and Matt tried to for a while. This gave us a majority, but still we couldn’t make them stop smoking in there. Most mornings it stinks in there, because everyone smokes all evening, and then doesn’t open a window before going to bed because it’s cold or raining or both.
I have now reached the point of “Why even bother”. I still complain, and still moan about them smoking, but it has absolutely no effect. It’s as if I’ve just become background noise to them.
And this is why I get so angry. I do so much for them all, and pretty much the only concession I have ever asked them to make is ignored. It even has health benefits for me, and is justified on that ground. My personal bugbear is the smell, to be honest. I can’t see passive smoking being the biggest threat to my health in the coming years.
What I hate is only being able to wear a t-shirt or sweatshirt for one day before having to wash it. I hate my hair smelling of smoke every morning when I get in the shower. I hate my room smelling of smoke, both because of its proximity to the living room, and because of the inherent stench emanating from my clothes as I take them off each night.
So, why do I bother? At this precise moment in time, I'm not. And I'm not going to, if I can help it. I am absolutely, completely and utterly fed up with them all. If they can’t be arsed to acknowledge me and what I do for them all, then as sure as hell I am not going to play ball with them.
Call me a fucking hermit, call me a loner, call me whatever the fuck you want, I really, really, don’t care at this fucking moment in time. I realise that I sound angry, and I realise that I'm ranting, but I really, really, don’t fucking well care. Fuck it. Fuck them, and fuck me. Fuck.
