Once upon a time during my junior year of college, I met an outgoing, seemingly kindhearted girl about my age with whom I was to share an apartment. For argument’s sake, we’ll refer to her as “Jane”. Now, several people had warned me about Jane. But as per usual, I completely ignored logic and reason and chose to go forward with living with this girl because I was too lazy to change plans. She seemed lovely- she was as bubbly as anyone I’ve ever met. The first week of living together was fine and dandy. She showed up at my bedroom door with coffee, baked pies every night (she even sang while she was baking- she was like freaking June Cleaver), and wanted to do everything with me. Then, it started to happen.

First, it was just your everyday, run-of-the-mill, annoying roommate stuff. You know, she tampered with my food, never paid me back when I gave her loans (which I quickly learned to stop doing), her laugh/cry/general voice was excruciating to listen to (partly because she was always whining about something completely senseless and partly because she chose to do it as loudly as possible 24/7), and she totally destroyed our apartment. All of this I managed to deal with, but then came the other things about her that were truly unsettling.

Alas came the day when I woke up and realized that I was living with a full-blown sociopath. She was a pathological liar who made up outlandish stories about other people, and constantly created disasters just because she wanted to watch the world burn. She made herself look like the victim so that she could take advantage of others’ hard work for her own selfish gain. She was racist, irreverent, insensitive, and unrelenting. She enjoyed making fun of others for things they had no control over, and seemed to get sick pleasure out of seeing people suffer. I’m talking about a complete lack of conscience or remorse. And the worst part was that she was such a skilled liar that she had everyone convinced she was a good person, despite the fact that she possessed more hatred than anyone I had ever met.

And this is what I learned from her.

I learned that there are far more important things in life than the petty drama that comes with being in conflict with one person. During the year that I lived with Jane, I became completely consumed by her world- her “problems”, her tantrums, and her negativity- to the point that I began to forget who I was. When I traveled back home for holidays, most of my time was wasted on endless “roommate rants” to my friends and family. On days I could have been spreading good vibes or contributing to society in some way, I holed myself up in my room plotting my hypothetical revenge like a total freak. My thoughts became shallow and only focused on her, instead of innovative and positive. Forgetting who I am in exchange for someone else’s baggage is something I will never do again.

I learned that I’m far from perfect, and at some point, I’ve probably been someone else’s Jane. While I would never intentionally hurt someone, I know that there have been times when I’ve made others feel insecure, attacked, or excluded. I know that I have my own neurotic habits that have made my friends and family want to strangle me (for all I know, she could be writing an article right now about that weird girl she lived with who played '70s glam rock music all the time and nearly set the apartment on fire every time she tried to cook- You could say I’m heinous in my own way). We’re all our own type of crazy. And having survived someone else’s, I am now much more conscious of how my behavior affects others.

I learned that like many people, Jane had never been properly loved. She wasn’t a monster, she was a human, who, like everyone else, is carrying some kind of pain and insecurity. Some people turn that pain into cruelty. But it’s there, nonetheless, and because it is, everyone deserves compassion. This is not to say that any of her actions were excusable. But when I realized that Jane had been bullied horribly in the past and that circumstances in her life had caused her to grow up too quickly, I started to understand that she had been taught to hate. And more importantly, that if I chose to retaliate and fuel the fire, I would only contribute to a vicious cycle of resentment and malice. Overall, I learned to fight anger with kindness, fight pettiness with thoughtfulness, and fight the temptation to retaliate with empathy. I failed miserably at these things most of the time and was in NO way the ideal roommate. But I’m learning to try a whole lot harder. And most importantly, I learned that background checks are 100 percent necessary before moving into a confined space with someone for a year (halfway kidding).

Thanks, Jane. I guess you weren’t so bad after all.

On a side note, I have to admit that she was a killer good cook.