I don’t really know how to talk about this without maybe sounding unreasonable or selfish but I really have to get it off my chest.
Basically, I’m in my second year, I’m a girl and I live with 2 guys. One of them is on my course and the other is in his final year. The one that is in his final year has aspergers syndrome and suffers from depression. I would say we all get on pretty well and they are nice enough guys. We started discussing what we were going to be doing next year in terms of accommodation and we were discussing the possibility of keeping the flat we have on. But since this guy wont be a student next year it would mean that the flat would be liable to pay council tax (discounted of course) .I mentioned the situation with the council tax but I was made to feel like a heartless cow for making the reason that he couldn’t stay on at the flat money related. But if they really knew what the real reason was I really would be considered a heartless cow.
I feel like I can’t live with this guy for another year. We get on well and he’s a nice guy but I feel he has been burdening me and my other flatmate with his depression. Perhaps my flatmate can deal with that but I can’t. I have problems of my own too and I’m starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. It’s been making me feel quite miserable and homesick. I really want to enjoy my time at university but I feel like I can’t when I’m made to feel like I’m liable for him. And his real problem is that he’ll never probably get over the depression, as he just always seems to mope about all the time feeling sorry for himself and doesn’t seem to take a pro-active stance towards it. It also feels that he is so self -involved that he can’t see that other people have problems and that everyone and everything has to work or function around him.
Maybe I’m just being a bit over sensitive or paranoid but I really can’t help what I feel. I know that probably my flatmate doesn’t feel this way or if he does he is too polite to say anything, but he hasn’t had to deal with the full wrath of his depression since he’s a really active guy and is barely in the flat. About October/November it got really bad. All he would talk about was his depression and neither of us really knew what to say since we couldn’t relate or understand what he was going through. It’s like he seemed to think we had an answer to it that would make it all go away. And the thing is he has support workers that help him out a number of days a week, yet he always has to come to us with all his problems. His support workers are trained and could probably help him out a lot more than we could.
One of the worst things that happened was that he got really frustrated and ended up trashing his room and screaming/shouting around the flat. I was the only person in the flat with him at the time and I was really scared. I had to help sort everything out and call one of his support workers to help calm him down. I haven’t told my parents about this since I know my dad would probably go mad fearing for my safety but luckily it was a one time occurrence and the dosage of his anti-depressants were increased. But now I am starting to worry that it’s going to happen again when this next dosage of anti-depressants stops taking an effect.
I think the best thing for all of us is if he moves out the flat when he graduates and lets us fill the place with another student. I think it really would be a good thing for him. He’s been unhappy for the majority of his time as a student and I feel that he has to move on from that if he wants to get over his depression. He’s never going to be able to move on if he continues to live with students, in fact I could only see his depression get worse.
I know most of you will say that I should talk to my flatmates about this but I’ll probably only sound conceited and selfish. Also I have no idea how the flatmate in question would take to what I have to say especially because of his aspergers syndrome. He usually doesn’t take things like criticism and such very well.
I just really don’t know what to do about the situation and I feel that both of them have been a bit off with me since I mentioned the situation with the council tax, which was really only me stating the truth. If the guy was to live in the flat again after graduating then I really may consider moving out and finding somewhere else, but that’s not what I want. What do you think I should do?