Shirotatsu's Absence and Return Options

[Shirotatsu]

I am here, currently alone, and with an explanation for my absence over the summer. I wouldn't exactly say there are always good reasons for absences, but surely there are reasons nonetheless. What follows is a rather brief, but somewhat thorough journal of my life for the past month and a half.

To be honest, I've forgotten about a lot of my board life on any message board that I was a regular member of in the last couple months because of some occurrences in my college life that, for the past couple months, have made living comfortably and free from worry or anxiety or something quite difficult.

To put it briefly, the last couple of months have consisted of trying to resolve a conflict between myself and my roommates which was amazingly hard because of our unwillingness to communicate and what seems to be their lack of the knowhow to solve problems in a calm, timely, adult manner. To further add to the strangeness of this problem is the common and down-to-earthness of the conflict between us, whose solution was simply to sit down, talk a little, come to a consensus about who does what, gets what, what can be used and what can be used, and all that sort of thing. Were it for something of a greater magnitude, I probably would have understood the length of time it took to solve the problem, but it wasn't. The problem grew because they either thought that they were being nice by NOT pointing out what they didn't like or simply because they were waiting for that tipping point in which they stopped being "annoyed" or "frustrated" and instead became flat out "angry."

By the time they finally decided to tell me what was going on, they just literally exploded on me, out of nowhere, in front of one of my friends, and furthermore at an inconvenient time (that is to say, that they chose a time to explode on me when there wasn't time to have a good discussion - our friends were coming over within five minutes).

Well, that made me really depressed and I ended up avoiding them for a month and a half. During the first week of my avoidance, I really tried to discover what it was about me that was annoying them ("annoying" is one of the descriptions they used for me) and went and read up on ways to maintain good roommate relations, how to solve problems, and a lot of things. I was really trying to rectify the situation and by wonderful chance, my school library had a book which approached the problem briefly, but in an effective, thorough, witty, and just plain inspirational manner. After reading that, I was really pumped to go solve our problem...

But, being me, and how I like to type up giant e-mails to send to those concerned about urgent issues, I went and created a rather lengthy e-mail with everything that I wanted to say in it, mostly for fear of screwing up in an actual second confrontation. Some talks with some friends later, I decided to scrap the idea and directly ask (though still through e-mail) with no detail other than my free times to meet up and talk. I get a response a couple of days later with perhaps the rudest and most thoughtless e-mail I have received in my life. This messes with my mind some more, pushing me further into this depression, and actually actively seeking to move out, rather than just avoiding my roommates.

Then comes a month of staying at home (commuting to school) and out-right avoidance. Towards the end of this month's period, I get my formerly 80% dysfunctional computer to work 99% properly and as my offline and online social life continued to deteriorate from avoidance of the apartment, I turned to Ragnarok Online where I rejoin members of a guild I was in that disbanded and proceeded to build myself up again there. And obviously, this led to becoming inactive (or much more inactive) in things I used to do, and spending most of my time there.

We meet sometime later under resident assistant supervision, conclude that the only way we can live together is by staying out of each other's ways, and on goes life. This takes me to the present day, in which I'm living in my apartment again, staying out of their ways, and trying to build myself back to myself.

This conflict of my life has now been concluded for two weeks. I present here more than a gist of what happened, but I would like for it to remain simply a presentation. I am over this conflict and would like not to talk much about it anymore. I have learned a few things from this though...the first and most important probably being that if I choose to room with someone I know from somewhere, I should spend more time with him, get to know him, and judge whether or not he is a good person to share an apartment or dorm with for an entire year. Conflicts like this should not have to happen, so one more thing I have to do is talk with my future roommates and together lay out our general duties and rules and whatnot so that we can live peacefully, enjoyably, and overall without conflict for a great year.

If anyone wants to know how I'm doing now, I'm fine. I'm seeking a better group of people to hang out with on campus so that I can find truly good friends, joining communities where I think I would fit in, and am back in my martial class.

Thus ends my reason. Greetings again, Magic Knight Rayearth Forum and its members, I hope to see you all again in the near future.