End of Freshman year, I entered the random housing roulette and paired up with three other girls, who we'll call Batman, Sunshine, and Doll House. I met with them for lunch shortly after we agreed to house together. Doll House and I were the first two there and from the moment I sat down with her, I could feel in the pit of my stomach that something was off about her. Batman and Sunshine arrived shortly after and they didn't seem suspicious or wary of her at all, so I just dismissed the feeling as nerves of making new friends.
Fall semester rolls around and I'm sharing a room with Doll House. We were in a suite style dorm, which meant that Doll House and I had a room together, Sunshine and Batman shared a room, then we had a common area and a shared bathroom for the four of us. At first, things were fine. Doll House and I had similar sleep schedules, staying up until 2 or 3 AM most nights either working on homework or watching things on Netflix/Youtube. But, as the semester went on, things got weird. Out of the four of us in the suite, I was the only non-Art/Architecture student. As a political science spanish double major, that meant unlike them, I didn't have a studio space to work in. My dorm was my studio space. And because I'm a double major, I had a lot more reading that the average student, and definitely more reading than Doll House since most of her art classes were figure drawing and the like, ie more hands on stuff and less reading intensive. So I began to stay up later to finish my readings. On any given night I'd have 200 to 400 pages of reading from all my classes, all of which I had to take notes on to be prepared for the next class since most of my professors like giving pop quizzes. Instead of being in bed by 2 or 3 AM, I was staying up later, like 4 or 5 AM. But I was respectful. I'd let Doll House turn off the overhead light, and I'd just use my desk lamp, which wasn't all that bright. But after about a week of this, Doll House didn't like this system. She began to demand I stop at 3 AM. I refused. I needed to get my homework done and given how easily I get distracted, as well as how late I stay up usually, going to a more public location like the library wasn't really an option. So Doll House resorted to throwing things at me. First it was pillows. Then it was empty juice boxes and other trash. Then it was uncapped pens and pencils. The day she brought home scissors from studio I moved out to one of the study rooms into the dorm. My grades started to slip because of this. People would barge into the room to say hi to me, bang on the doors to disturb me, and other things occurred that ultimately meant I couldn't be focused. Still, I managed to get through the rest of the semester using this system. But the troubles didn't end there.
On top of demanding a "curfew" for my studies, she also would not permit me to turn on the lights before she woke up. Now, normally this is a pretty reasonable request. I'd just use my study lamp. But if I woke her up in the morning from making noise while studying (she was a very light sleeper. Even me typing on my computer would wake her up supposedly), Doll House would start the throwing things routine again. Now again, normally a pretty reasonable request. So why was this so bad? She was sleep for fourteen hours every day. Go to bed at 2 or 3 AM, and on weekends she wouldn't be up until 5 PM usually. During the day, she'd get up for classes, come back to the dorm, and then go back to sleep. Turn off the lights even if I was working. This essentially meant I could only study for less than ten hours a day. I tried to talk to her about it, but she would not listen. She'd make comments like, "you should just listen to me, I know what's good for you" or "If you don't listen, I'll make you listen". I essentially started spending all my time in the study rooms unless I needed something from my room.
Then there was the problem with boys. We signed a contract at the beginning of the year that said she had to give me some form of notice if a guy was going to be coming home. Preferably at least a few hours. Sunshine and Batman never had trouble with this. They both had boyfriends or guy friends at the time, and even if they didn't give me heads up, they would also ask the guys to wait outside the room while they cleared it with everyone inside that it was okay for them to come in. I never brought friends over so it wasn't a problem. Doll House, however, could not seem to wrap her head around this rule. Enter, Tuba Guy. Tuba Guy is a math major who was tutoring Batman. Doll House found him very attractive and started to invite him over more. Now, I liked Tuba Guy. He and I are still friends and hang out a lot to this day. He even helped me campaign for re-election to Student Government. And he has a solid taste in anime. So him coming to visit? Not a problem... if I'm given due notice. Which she never gave. And this wasn't a once or twice thing. This became a multiple times a week thing. And it wasn't just with Tuba Guy either. When Doll House decided she was interested in another guy, she'd bring them over too. Without heads up. She wouldn't even ask if they could enter the room first. This meant I was often caught mid-changing. Most of the guys were courteous about this (good on them) and would duck out of the room once they either saw me or heard me yell "I'M CHANGING". We did have once instance though where a guy made very sexual remarks and Doll House encouraged him on a later date while he was drunk to try and assault me.
So this was my life, from August until October. I was miserable. It was especially bad because my student senate had to hold an impeachment trial for our VP (another story for another time), and because of the circumstances of it, many of the senators (myself included) were getting physically and verbally harassed around campus. And Doll House didn't help because she was one of the ones harassing me about the trial, saying that the VP was innocent and that she knows because blah blah blah. She even made subtle threats that if I didn't vote that he was innocent she'd "make me pay". I didn't want to talk to Sunshine or Batman about it, since as far as I knew at the time, they had been buddies with Doll House long before we roomed together. I feared they'd turn against me. But that changed early November. I don't remember exactly what happened, but Sunshine and I were coming back into the dorm about the same time, and Sunshine I guess could tell something was up. While I can't remember exactly what she said, whatever Sunshine said to me gave me the indication that there was some friction between she and Doll House as well. So I opened up to her about everything. Then Sunshine opened up to me.
As it turns out, Sunshine, Batman, and Doll House had not been long time friends. After Doll House got kicked out of her old roommate group, she came to Batman and Sunshine asking to pair up with them since they were all in the same major type. Then they got me from the roulette. As part of a bonding experience, the three of them spent several weeks of the summer together. Doll House was apparently so emotionally abusive to Sunshine that she had to be put on anxiety medication (which she still has to take today because if she even sees Doll House on campus she'll start to have an attack). Doll House apparently had also been stalking Batman since the beginning of the year. We've never been able to figure out why. Was it a crush? Was that what she perceived friendship should be? We don't know. But whatever the reason, she was obsessed with Batman. She'd chase away potential boyfriends, follow Batman just about everywhere to the point that she was late for her own classes just so she could watch Batman go to her own, she'd watch Batman while she slept for hours, and even talk about how they'd live in a house together and their kids would play together and she'd teach them swear words, etc. Prior to being told this, I had never noticed any of the bullying or stalking. But after Sunshine informed me of all of this, I began to notice it too.
Sunshine got Batman to come home sometime later and we had a pow wow to catch everyone up to speed. As it turns out, just as I had been afraid to mention anything to them, they had been afraid to say anything to me. They thought I was blissfully ignorant and didn't want to pop my bubble. They also were worried that if I let it slip that I had heard bad things about her, that Doll House might attack me or Sunshine. But since we were all on the same page now, it didn't matter. We began to band together. Sunshine and Batman would help me not get distracted by staying in the study room with me when they weren't in studio and chasing people away if they were trying to distract me. We'd bring each other food and in the end, they're still my roommates this year because of this bonding experience.
Unfortunately, our troubles with Doll House did not vanish once we bonded together. She didn't like our newfound friendship. As Batman put it, Doll House viewed Sunshine and myself as too nice. She hated our mere existence, as she put it in texts to Batman. We joked that I needed to be schrodinger's roommate, both not be in the room and in the room at the same time, because Doll House would complain if I was there, and she'd complain when I wasn't there. Still, we did our best to ignore her. The three of us would sneak off to movies and other fun campus activities and make sure to leave at different times just so she wouldn't know where we were. She picked up it eventually though and started locking me in the room and interrogating me over my whereabouts. Lucky for us, I know a lot of people around campus, so it wasn't uncommon for us to run into someone I knew at these events and I could just play it off like I was hanging with them, since it wasn't a total lie. Winter break comes and goes, and while I wasn't looking forward to January, I felt the situation was better than it had been.
I was wrong.
January rolls around. Doll House arrives back in the dorms before I do. I come into the dorms to find a case with a large collection of knives in it on her desk. Technically allowed in our dorms by some stupid loophole, but that didn't mean I wasn't unnerved by the sight of them. I already knew it was going to be another semester in the study room. When she got back, she made sure to show me each and every knife, and even boast about how she had two concealable knives, though she wouldn't tell me what they looked like (this is important later).
It didn't take long for the boys problem to start again, this time with New Guy who lived down the hall. Again, nice guy. He's still friends with me to this day. But he was a bit dense. He believed everything Doll House told him about Sunshine and I, claiming that we were toxic lazy roommates who tried to destroy her self esteem with mean comments, etc. There were further insults, but New Guy didn't feel comfortable sharing them. Either way, as a point to impress him, Doll House would try to pick fights with me when all three of us were in the room together. Anything from Logan Paul to chocolate to more serious topics like abortion. I wouldn't engage with her, or if I did it was quick short responses that undermined her argument since she never did her own research beyond gossip blogs. Doll House took this as a sign of weakness and it prompted her to do it more and more. This came to a head one snow day when I was really sick for mother nature related reasons. I don't remember the specific exchange, but she was talking about Sunshine's "lack of worth ethic" because Sunshine had changed majors a couple times before settling on art. She called Sunshine lazy amongst other things. I was trying to study in my head, since I had a test later that week, and was quickly getting fed up with this distraction, especially since I had already asked Doll House and New Guy to please go into the common room. So I snapped a little and said something to the effect of "You're one to talk, you sleep more than half the day." I swear Doll House's head turned 180 degrees. I was terrified. She said something in response like "Look who's been laying in bed all day." And I snapped back "Yeah doing homework because I'm bleeding and would rather not move around too much." New Guy took the hint and suggested they leave after that, which they did. I slept on the futon in Sunshine and Batman's room (they locked the door) the next two days until this next event occurred.
Around this same time though, I started a new workout routine with a friend that'd be skype call every Thursday and do. Doll House caught me the first time around and immediately made fun of my weight. It was to the point that I had to cut our workout short because I was on the verge of tears. I managed to hold it together until midway through the next day. Batman could tell I was really upset about something, and as soon as I told her, she went to the RA. We reported everything with evidence. She was taken out of the dorm the next day and moved across campus. She was found to have more than twenty knives in the room, two of which were classified as concealed weapons (disguised as a key and a credit card), which was a violation of the housing contract. They were confiscated from her. She's no longer permitted to carry any weapons on campus of any kind and cannot come within fifteen feet of us because of a university instituted restraining order. She also can't talk to us or have friends come talk to us for her.
It's still not totally wrapped up, since she still tries to antagonize us on campus, and she tried to run a smear campaign against when the past two years when I've run for re-election to Student Government. Since Doll House and Sunshine share classes since they're both Art majors, it's a lot harder on Sunshine, but we're helping her work through it. All in all, the worst of it is over. But looking back, I remember that gut feeling I had, and I realize, ho boy. I knew it wasn't me being paranoid.
