Introduction

I've started this blog for a good reason. The goal of this is to express my personal stories involving horrible roommate issues that occur within a household. Being that this is an anecdotal blog, I'm probably not going to post too many facts regarding what certain combinations of people yield which certain kinds of conflict. This is simply meant to vent my frustrations regarding issues I have with my roommate, and to whomever reads this, to let everyone know why I will never again live with someone who is a friend. First, a little introduction.

In this blog, I will go by the name of Burnout. It's a nickname my roommate knows, but the purpose of giving myself an alias is not to keep this a secret from him since, if he stumbles across this, he'll know based on the stories I write that this is me writing (though I'm not going to outright tell him I have a blog where I tell the world about how much he sucks), but just for the sake on anonymity in the Innernets. I am 22-years-old and I'm a college student. I'll finish up my BA in December. I currently work with children with special needs and I always talk about how much I love my job. I won't talk about that here, but for furture reference, it may be pertinent to know that I do absolutely love my job and there's nothing I'd rather be doing with my life than to serve this population. I am also a single guy. 6 feet tall, and I practice taekwondo, a sport I've grown to love.

My roommate is 23-years-old. He is not currently in school since he works long hours for a local law enforcement agency. I won't say in what capacity, though. He's a huge guy. 6'8" 300+ pounds. I'm pretty sure he really likes his job too, though he probably isn't as passionate about it as I am with mine. In this blog, I will give him the alias: Mikey.

We have been friends since we were kids. We went to the same elementary school, the same high school, and we were in the same church and youth group all throughout our lives (though, now, we are both Atheists). He taught me how to play guitar, we hike together, we played paintball together (when we could afford it) and we always go on Dave Matthews Band road trips to see them live. It's cliche, but it's true when I say, "We've been through a lot together". We are, what you would call, best friends. In fact, we call ourselves "Hetero Life Mates".

That's the brief history of our friendship. Onto the rooming issues:

Up until now, we've both lived with our parents our whole lives. We've actually been talking about moving out for a couple years now, but things keep getting in the way. We were about to in the summer of 2007, then his dad passed away, so that busted that plan. After that subsided, we couldn't find a place that we both wanted that was affordable for us. And the fact was that we were both so comfortable living at home that we didn't put a whole lot of effort into going out and hardcore trying to find a place.

Then, one day, in late February 2009, Mikey calls me and asks if I'm still interested in moving out. I told him yes. He found a couple places in our price range. On a Monday, I went to check them out to see what they looked like on my way to work one day. We both decided on one place we liked (though I would have been cool living in an apartment, he really didn't want to. But that was okay with me since I would rather rent a house anyway. More room. More privacy). On Tuesday we called the landlord and said we were interested. Wednesday we took a tour and signed the lease. Thursday we paid our deposit. That weekend, we moved in. It was that quick.

Now, we had both heard stories of people moving in with their best friends. They go into it totally getting along, but by the end of their lease, they hate each other. And, in fact, when I turned 18 and first wanted to move out, he rejected the idea of us living together for that very reason. It wasn't until 2 years later that we started entertaining the idea. Yes, we had heard of people, even friends of ours, who had been through this sort of thing. But I had actually tried moving in with a group of people last August. A group of people I did not know. And that REALLY didn't work out. After that experience, I knew I wanted to live with someone I know just because of the trust issues. We knew that, no matter what, we wouldn't try to screw each other in one fashion or another. We knew that we'd respect each others' stuff, we knew we were both reliable enough to pay the bills on time, and we knew we wouldn't bail on the other. This is what it boiled down to. Living with someone familiar, that I trusted. This outweighed the prospect of finding someone on craigslist who I did not know.

That's the introduction. That's who we are. And that's the beginning of the end. Since then, it's been, not all downhill, but mostly downhill. I will update again soon.