I haven’t written here for a while, what with work, the pandemic, and everything else, I’m busy but not interesting.

Earlier today, going for my government sactioned daily walk to a local coffee shop, I was listening to Josh Earl’s ‘Dont You Know Who I am?’ podcast and they were walking about crappy housemate stories.

I have several but one I thought I’d share was the time I came home from an overseas trip to find a stranger sleeping in my bed.

Let’s back up a little. I had given notice I was moving out; six weeks as I was going on a trip I’d already planned and paid for to India, and didn’t want to have to rush to move out in the days after I got back.

I did some packing before I left, but had a lot still do to. I let my housemates know I was happy for them to show my room while I was away, and when I’d be back.

During my trip, I didn’t hear anything from any of them. There were three; an Australian, a German, and a Chilean (plus the Australian’s Italian boyfriend who stayed over a lot).

I arrived home, get lagged, at nine on a Sunday morning. My flight had been delayed by 24 hours because of a missed connection, and I’d eaten something which didn’t agree with me in the hotel I stayed in while waiting for the flight home. I was in a foul mood and just wanted to shower and relax at home.

When I walked into my bedroom to find a person sleeping in my bed I was livid. I told her she needed to collect her stuff and leave immediately. The poor young woman in my room was deeply shocked. I can’t blame her, my housemates had told her I wasn’t coming back and now she was homeless.

My mum had picked me up from the airport and brought me home, because she’s a legend. Mum was more rational than me, having not just been on a long haul flight, and suggested we give her half an hour to collect herself and we go for coffee down the road.

I felt violated. All my stuff was still in my room, some of it in boxes. I was also still paying rent. I moved out of there as quickly as possible and into the new place but I was so angry.

The thing is, of the three housemates (plus one pseudohousemate) only the Chilean seemed to want to speak to me about the situation. His story was they had believed I’d already moved out and had left all my stuff there.

They have phone service and internet in India, so they could easily have called or texted or emailed or Facebooked me to ask what was happening to all my belongings and furniture. They did not. They also were not charging this unsuspecting back packer to stay in my room while I was paying rent, which makes me believe they knew I was coming back and thought they could get away with it.

After I moved out, I worked out how much they owed me for the share of the rent when the backpacker was staying in my room, along with some miscelaneous other expenses, and made the decision not to pay any further bills until I had recouped my expenses.

I felt this way fair. The housemates apparently did not. The Chilean tried to call me 27 times over the space of half an hour once to try to get me to speak to him about it. I wasn’t able to answer the phone at the time and given he hadn’t left a message I didn’t call back.

The whole thing left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. Everyone I’ve told has been on my side, agreeing my housemates were in the wrong for having someone stay in my room without my knowledge or consent. I’m sure everyone who hears the story from their side will believe I was in the wrong.

It has led me to conclude human beings don’t like to be the bad person in a situation. No one wants to be the asshole. I wrote a whole novel based on this idea later that year. I might rewrite it as my NaNoWriMo project this year, that’s still TBC.

Despite the subjectivity of ‘being in the right’ I don’t think I was the asshole in this particular situation.