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The story of the Batshit Insane Drama Queen, or BIDQ, is one of those which gets told to every new person I meet. It has to do with, well, a batshit insane drama queen who used to work with my old roommate. She really hated him for no apparent reason and hated me by extension. There was also X, a toxic friend I couldn't quite get rid of. I met him online, and we talked regularly, but over time, I decided I didn't really like him that much. I didn't want to talk to him anymore, but I didn't want to be rude. In an attempt to avoid drama, I didn't get rid of him nearly soon enough, which of course exacerbated the later problems that make this story what it is. While I am not especially proud of the way I handled it, I at least learned something from it. I don't think I handled myself that badly, all things considered; I just got caught up in other people's bullshit and didn't extricate myself as gracefully as I might have. So. In the fall of 2007, I met my old roommate online. We hung out a little in person, and then he invited me to stay at his place in Houston since I desperately wanted to move back but couldn't afford to on my own. I thought about it and moved the following March. Inside a week, I noticed that my roommate wasn't talking to me very much. He didn't appear angry with me, but he didn't volunteer conversation. I couldn't figure out what the deal was, and I resolved to ask him about it. The night I had decided to ask him what was up, I went out with the other guy who lived there and two female friends of his. One of them was outgoing, tall, slim, and stylish. She was all right, but regrettably, she doesn't feature in this story at all. The other girl, who worked with my then-roommate, was six inches shorter than I am (at five foot three), two or three times my weight, and with shaved eyebrows, clownish eyeliner, and terrible dress sense. More than anything about her appearance, though, I recall the look in her eyes. Her eyes betrayed instability and hostility toward the world around her, and before she ever opened her mouth, I knew I would dislike her. I have, ever since this incident, referred to her as a "batshit insane drama queen"; hence I'll call her BIDQ for short here. So, this evening in March, my other roommate, BIDQ, and her friend talked among themselves at dinner while I mostly looked on, uncomfortable with people I didn't know well. I was thinking to myself that I should start participating in the conversation when I changed my mind after hearing several of BIDQ's remarks. She dominated the conversation with remarks about her various mental problems and substance abuse problems (alcohol, drugs, and the mixing of the two), and she talked about a fist fight she'd started with her old roommate. She also spoke boastfully about how her current (male) roommate wanted to sleep with her and moved with her everywhere she went, even though the guy himself had already told me that she followed him and he found her extremely unattractive. To top it off, BIDQ made several racist remarks, including "He's pretty good looking for a black guy" about some acquaintance of hers. Horrified, I decided not to talk to her again or hang out with the three of them again. In the car as we left, I remarked to my other roommate that I wanted to have a talk with the roommate who hadn't been saying much to me lately. "Wait, what?" piped up BIDQ. I hesitated. "Oh, she's trying to figure out [our roommate]," my other roommate said. "Oh God, don't bother," BIDQ said. I blinked. BIDQ immediately launched into a vicious diatribe in which she called my roommate every name in the book. She called him evil, the Devil, Satan, a user, and an abuser, among other things. She called him every name in the book except sociopath (probably because that would have been a little too on the mark for her projection). Not once did she provide any basis for any of her name calling, although I did ask. I sat there quietly, fuming. "He's only ever been nice to me," I pointed out. "He's helped me out a lot. He's giving me a place to stay and helping me find a job." "Well, yeah . . . but that has to be the only nice thing he's ever done," BIDQ replied. I rolled my eyes at how ridiculously juvenile she sounded. " . . . I heard he's talking to his ex," she added. "Yeah, I heard," I said. If BIDQ were trying to make me jealous of my roommate's ex, she wasn't succeeding. For a start, my roommate had already told me that his ex was getting married, so I knew they weren't getting back together. Before I could make that point, though, BIDQ added "I didn't even know he'd had a serious relationship." I almost laughed out loud. Was she serious? Again, before I could say anything, BIDQ opened her yap and spewed forth more bile about my roommate, none of it founded in truth. I grew increasingly angry, about ready to kill by the time she'd finished. I passed the point of rage and came out the other side. "Listen," I said slowly and clearly, "He has only ever been kind to me. I will trust him until he gives me a reason not to." Before BIDQ could say anything else, I went into the house. My roommate was already home, and I walked up to him at his computer. "Can I talk to you in a minute?" I asked. "I just want to take a shower first." "Sure," he agreed. When I emerged from the bathroom, my other roommate told me that BIDQ had texted my roommate to "warn" him that I wanted to talk to him. "And?" I asked. "And I asked who it was, and he just rolled his eyes and said [BIDQ]," my other roommate said. About what I expected. After all, it stood to reason that if BIDQ disliked my roommate, he probably wouldn't like her, either. I gently tapped my roommate on the shoulder and asked him to follow me outside. We sat in the back yard, free from eavesdropping, while I brought up my concern with his treatment of me. He explained that he had been busy with work and so on, but he would make a more concerted effort at getting to know me. He added that he typically wasn't very inquisitive, so it wasn't like he'd been deliberately ignoring me. I nodded, satisfied, and we went back inside. The next day, my other roommate asked me if I'd given any thought to the warning—or rather, vicious diatribe—BIDQ had issued the previous night. "Yeah," I replied. "I've decided . . . not to listen to her. I mean, I sat there and listened to her talk about her substance abuse problems and mental problems, and she made all those racist remarks . . . and . . . well . . . that is just not the kind of person I'm willing to take advice from." My other roommate nodded and agreed, though he told me later than he had relayed my words to BIDQ, who was puzzled and angry that I chose to ignore her advice. I rolled my eyes. I lived at my old roommate's for three months, and I did not speak again to BIDQ the whole time I was there. I avoided her carefully, not hanging out with her and not speaking to her when I saw her at my old roommate's work. She sent me evil glares but never once spoke to me. In the meantime, I of course discussed the situation with friends. They all agreed that, whatever my issues with my roommate were, BIDQ had no business interfering, not to mention she sounded like a crazy bitch. One friend, whom I will refer to as X, was supportive yet simultaneously touchy about the topic of my roommate. Presumably he was jealous of the attention I lavished on my roommate. Well, what did he expect? My roommate was kind to me and helpful, and X tended to disparage my roommate due to jealousy. Once he even went so far as to say that I would be paying my rent on my back. I lashed out at him and blocked him until he apologized—half assedly and calling me overly sensitive. I remained surly; he continued making remarks to the detriment of my roommate seemingly out of jealousy, which of course only made me increasingly defensive of him. It was a vicious cycle. I wanted not to talk to him anymore, but I didn't want to be rude. I hated ending friendships. I didn't want the awkwardness and unpleasantness. I moved out at the end of May, not able to stand the other roommate anymore. He was a passive aggressive slob who kept drugs in the house, and I reasoned I was better off living at my dad's in Austin than trying to live like that. Two or three months later, after steadily distancing myself from X, I finally had enough of him. X tended toward the inflammatory in our discussions: He seemed to thrive on controversy, deliberately irritating me. He once told me he had been a bully in elementary school but had grown out of it. I doubted that. I grew increasingly annoyed with him, and the last straw came with a bang. We were talking online one day, and X made a joke at the expense of my old roommate's service in Iraq. Worse, even; he made a joke involving dead babies in Iraq. I snapped. I had very specifically, on the index page of this site no less, stated that I did not want to hear that kind of bullshit. The night BIDQ railed against my old roommate, I had posted the following:
That statement still rings true. It certainly did when X made a joke at the expense of my old roommate's service in Iraq. "Don't fucking touch that. Seriously," I snapped. I immediately blocked him from my friends list. Moments later, I had an email on Facebook from him in which he said I needed to go invisible when pouting (his word, not mine). 1.) I don't think it's pouting if I don't want to continue to listen to bullshit from someone who's created issues in the past and been clearly told that I don't want it to recur. 2.) I'm not going to cater to him by going invisible and thereby missing anyone else who wants to IM me; that's absurd. Thusly, I remained online and blocked his email address. Four days later, I received an email from BIDQ on Facebook. I was stunned. I hadn't spoken to her since the fateful night at my old roommate's four or five months ago, and we had never once communicated online at all. Her email, unsurprisingly, was full of abuse and hate speech directed at me and something I had once said about her in a conversation with X. Oh. Putting two and two together, I realized that X had, in a vindictive fit, messaged BIDQ and relayed something unpleasant I had once said about her. I had complained about her coming over to my old roommate's place and trashing it, and BIDQ had retorted in her email to me that when one was a house guest, one didn't have to clean up the mess. I reflected that someone who lacked the decency not to send such an email couldn't possibly be expected to understand how to behave in other people's houses. Obviously, I didn't reply to make that point. I refused to get involved since that was exactly what BIDQ and X would have wanted. Whether or not X had actually encouraged BIDQ to email me was anybody's guess. I blocked BIDQ on Facebook as well. Naturally, the drama still wasn't at an end. Some weeks later, BIDQ struck again online. She sent me an email through a message board posing as my old roommate, only I caught on straight away that it wasn't his writing style. People's writing styles are as unique as fingerprints, and between being familiar with my old roommate's style and also possessing an innate knack with writing, I guessed immediately that he wasn't the author. I couldn't know it was her, though. I didn't respond to the email, and then, a few days later, I received a second email, still from a stranger posing as him, only this time she forgot to send it from a false email account and sent it from her own email address. I was shocked and disgusted. I tried to call my old roommate and tell him what was up, but he didn't answer the phone. Fine. I drove to Houston to stay with a friend one night, and I met my old roommate at his work to talk to him about it. BIDQ saw me right away. I decided I may as well suck it up and talk to her. I forget how the conversation began, but I remember ending it with "Do not ever communicate with me in any way ever again." I walked away to locate my old roommate and tell him what was going on. BIDQ, of course, leaped up and chased after me. She followed me up the stairs and made a scene, yelling at me in the middle of my roommate's work and in front of a huge crowd of people. I kept my voice down and explained, with my old roommate standing right next to me, that she needed to stop impersonating him online to me, and she needed to stop sending me abusive hate mail online. My old roommate looked severely displeased but said nothing. I left quickly, first arranging to meet my old roommate at his house later to talk more (and without an audience). I sat in a coffee shop while I waited for my old roommate's shift to end, wondering what to say to him. It was all too bizarre. I reasoned that I should start with an apology for being involved in a scene at his work, and I would work backwards from there. At my old roommate's house later, I told him the whole story. He was angry with me for my part in the mishap, but he calmed down as I explained what had been going on that he'd missed. To my horror, I had missed quite a lot, too: He said a different coworker of his, who also happened to be friends with BIDQ, had read my Facebook page and told him that I posted a lot of inappropriate content (I hadn't) and had some "impossible, incurable disease" that I was supposed to have somehow transmitted to him, possibly deliberately. "What!" I roared. "Well, it's a crock of shit!" I never did find out what "impossible, incurable disease" I was supposed to have, but I guessed the rumor was AIDS. As if I wouldn't have mentioned that! Not to mention, diseases like that are quite difficult to hide. I lectured my old roommate on trust issues. I told him that he needed to confront me, not pay attention to rumors and hearsay. Furthermore, I added, "I will trust you until you give me a reason not to. I would appreciate the same from you." We parted friends, believe it or not. I drove back to Austin, my head whirling in incredulity at the bullshit that some people will stir up for no good reason. The next day, BIDQ posted a message online (on the same message board as before), addressing me by name and telling me not to come to her work again or security would be called. She also called me an elfin troll and tried to make fun of me for being short. I laughed. She obviously didn't know what "elfin" meant, and the word definitely lost its impact with the number of times she used it. Besides, she was a good six inches shorter than I am; she really couldn't make fun of me for being short. I flagged her post, and it was quickly deleted. I never saw or heard from her again. I discussed the whole mess thoroughly with several friends. Rather than be truly angered or upset by BIDQ's and X's actions, I just laughed and shrugged it off. I thought they were really pathetic and sad, like little kids in elementary school. Their antics were childish and petty, and rather than hurt me, they just embarrassed themselves. The whole situation showed me not to act that way; I saw what that looked like and how bad I would look doing anything similar. I concluded that one could have dignity or drama, but one could not have both. I bore that in mind when dealing not only with my old roommate in the future, but with everyone. It took time, but I gradually improved in controlling my emotions and my responses to other people's drama. In a way, I'm almost glad the whole mess happened, because it taught me how to avoid such problems in the future. I learned how to avoid drama better, and I learned how to deal (or not deal) with drama as it arose. Regrettably, awkward situations will always occur—usually involving dating, it seems—but one's ability to minimize the drama involved makes a world of difference in one's ultimate happiness. As I tell people nowadays in reference to this story, "I learned a long time ago that you can have drama or you can have dignity, but believe me, you can't have both." |