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Last night my roommate’s finance asked me if I could be “not be around” for a few days while she had her wedding shower. I agreed, since I’m not home that much anyway and I figure it’d be nice to give her time to do whatever happens at those things. Until I realize she’s asking me to leave the house entirely. She wants me to give up my bedroom so her friends can stay in my bed, while I sleep on the floor at some to-be-determined house. And not just over the weekend, but from Thursday night until Sunday night.

Being the person I am, start looking for a solution instead of what doing what I should have done.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna work out,” fingering my calendar, “but my mom might have one of those inflatable beds. I might be able to pick that up. We could move the dining room table on put people in there ….”

We reach a tentative agreement that I’ll keep my ear out for places to crash. I know I won’t. A line has been crossed, and I need to confront her about it.

I don’t want sleep somewhere else. This is one of the benefits of owning a house. I (should) always have a bed if I want one. I (should) always have a parking spot. I (should) always have whatever I want within the bounds of my 50% ownership of my own god-damn-fucking piece of property. The only person I have to ask for permission to do anything is my roommate, who owns the other 50%. She owns precisely shit of the house. She has no fiscal responsibility; she doesn’t have a $250,000 loan like he and I each have.

On the way to work this morning, I think about what’s happened when I’ve had people in town. It’s always come down to: (a) they sleep on whatever they can find downstairs, (b) they sleep in my room and I sleep on the couch, (c) they sleep with me, or (d) they sleep somewhere else. Like these buildings they have for such purposes. I think they’re called ‘hotels.’

Some of you know this isn’t the beginning of her encroachment, but now I’ve yielded to much. I was hoping to let things slide until we sell the house and prevent a bunch of unnecessary drama, but I don’t know that I can if requests like this are going to snowball. For those unfamiliar, let me summarize:

It started with small passive-aggressive behaviors: first she’d move a few of my books from the downstairs bookshelves into my room, and replace them with a few of hers. She’d pull photos of my friends’ newborns off the fridge after a few weeks, and replace them with her pictures that would last indefinitely. She’d move my laptop bag from the dining room table to my room, but leave her gear splayed out for weeks. I’d let her know in discrete ways that I noticed, “Hey, where’s my book on [whatever], I could have sworn I left it down here.” I figured she’d get the hint. I was wrong.

Soon after, she made an office of the dining room, without asking me. Moved in a desk and everything. When I had come home one day in the middle of her painted the downstairs bathroom, I remarked, “It looks good, but in the future, you need to ask first.” Of course, this was followed by shortly there after when she repainted the dining room, to which I responded similarly but more sternly, “You really need to ask me first.” After another month or so she took some of my art off the walls in the living room “because [she] was just tired of it.” I hung it back up.

She then re-painted the downstairs bookshelf (“Oh, sorry, I didn’t think it was yours, since you didn’t have anything on it.” I wonder why?) She’s completely taken over the kitchen – even the portion that used to be mine before the remodel – which I let slide because I don’t use it nearly as much, although I do throw out the occasional, “you really need to leave me some space, I do go shopping every once in a while.”

Now she’s asking me to move out?

She and I need to have a little talk.