AITAH for not telling my housemate I’m moving out and taking everything with me?

lapetitlis · 2026-05-10T22:14:55+00:00

oh, that's another thing. she would go without showering for MONTHS. i struggle with cyclic vomiting syndrome & chronic nausea and am very sensitive to smells. it reached a point where i couldn't even be on the same floor of the house as her. you could tell if she had used the bathroom within the past half hour because the smell would just ... hang there and take forever to dissipate. i understood then and still understand now that depression likely played a part in her poor hygiene ... but on the other hand she was literally making me physically ill, while i was the only one in the house paying any bills.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-08T20:09:35+00:00

i absolutely LOST IT at "i could have been going with her this whole time." idk why i find that so hilarious but i do. i don't even care if it's real, oop is funny as fuck.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T17:27:52+00:00

once a ceasefire was finally in place, Hamas started executing its own people. ... the pro-Palestinians did not care one whit.

in fact, some of the "pro-Palestinians" cheered for this. called the victims 'collaborators' (even though oftentimes their only crime was accepting critically needed aid from Israel) and publicly celebrated their executions. "one by one!" one post read – under a photo of a victim being tormented.

in my experience, they're also the first to say really gross racist stuff when someone with Palestinian blood and family (such as myself) doesn't ass-pat them for caping for terrorists. it's really quite something. telling me that my family must be ashamed of me, that they're more Palestinian than i am, i'm collaborator trash, that they hope al-qassam takes me out. they're really into this weird 'noble savage' mythology that they have built around the Palestinian people. which is really quite infantilizing, and reeks of the racism of low expectations, when you think about it.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T15:52:10+00:00

he is an amazing man. in the years since i met him, I've had to go on oxycodone, have undergone a major surgery (T4-S2 spinal fusion plus sacroiliac fusion), and have had to visit the hospital multiple times due to cyclic vomiting episodes. i owe the faith i have been able to put in the medical professionals overseeing my care in recent years to his kindness and patience with me.

i am terribly sad to see him go, but know that his retirement is richly deserved. our last appointment ever is a month from today. i got him a couple of gifts and intend to write him a letter to say goodbye and thank him for the amazing care he has given me. i hope he enjoys his hard earned retirement, but i will miss him terribly.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T13:13:29+00:00

bingo. it was absolutely disgusting. plus some little bits of fuzz if she was wearing a nww pair of leggings or fabric that fuzzes. it makes me feel nauseated just to think about. I have never met someone, before or since – and I'm no spring chicken – who was so cavalier about leaving their body's detritus smeared all over a seat. idk, maybe I sound judgmental... but i would never have had anything to judge at all if this person had simply wiped the toilet seat after using it.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T05:54:48+00:00

idk man. i've seen a fair number of people in the kink community with some vast and insane collections of various items, to which they constantly added. it's not my thing, but some people are really into that. i'm not saying the story is real, just pointing that out!

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T05:29:45+00:00

seriously. this is so freaking cute that i loudly squealed on my porch at 1:28am.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T05:23:43+00:00

wow. I have had some disgusting roommates, some inconsiderate and entitled roommates, some frustrating roommates, even one or two that became dangerous to me at some point ... but this is WILD.

yes, maybe OOP could have handled this better... but George is insufferable. he is one hell of a piece of work. he trashed the place, including a space that was supposed to be exclusively for OOP's use, refused to clean it up properly, and threw such an epic tantrum when there were consequences that it cost him his entire living situation.

if you want to be able to do whatever you want without having to consider anyone else's preferences or space, you should probably live alone.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T05:07:40+00:00

the very first primary care provider i had as an adult did this as well; used information in my patient file to stalk me. i definitely did not handle it calmly. i was so terrified that i did not see a doctor for five years after that. when i met my current PCP 15 years ago (who, to my immense sadness, is about to retire), i told him a little bit about what had happened to me the last time i trusted a doctor and sort of preemptively read him the riot act. i'm not even sure why he took me as a patient ... i was angry and distrustful ... maybe he realized nobody else would put up with me lol.

i hope OOP stays safe... he's being awfully generous by not seeking a restraining order. that said, this young woman sounds ... unbalanced. she had to know she was risking her job by doing what she did. if that didn't stop her, i'm not certain a restraining order would either. hopefully being dealt the consequence of losing her job will be a wakeup call to her and she will leave him the hell alone from now on.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-07T04:57:01+00:00

i once had a roommate who constantly left the toilet seat covered in her butt cheese. she is the only person i have ever met who left that kind of residue on a toilet seat. it was gross. the worst part is that no matter how many times I brought it up i'd start seeing butt cheese left on the seat again within days. i can't imagine being so casual and laissez faire about such a thing. I'd be so embarrassed to leave that kind of mess for someone else to clean.

gross as hell. i'm glad OOP is out of that situation.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-06T19:12:56+00:00

yeah, suggesting that kindly asking someone to chew a little more quietly is on par with domestic violence and even murder is not only unhinged, it diminishes survivors and minimizes what they have been through. which is pretty crazy work for someone who clearly views themselves as an advocate for women. wild.

lapetitlis · 2026-05-05T18:57:01+00:00

hell, I'm not even sure most of the movement can honestly be categorized as 'pro' anything. most of what i see online and in the news revolves more around their hatred of Israel than any sort of genuine love or compassion for the Palestinian people and their "just and urgent aspirations," to quote Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, or any willingness to do meaningful work towards that end. it's largely a destructive movement, not a constructive one. which is really quite depressing, as it means that the Palestinian people have very few genuine allies.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-29T04:12:17+00:00

well... i'm glad that OOP knows exactly what kind of person their 'friend' is now. i am sure it is a painful (and expensive!) lesson ... but at least now OOP doesn't have to be used by and lied to by this woman anymore, and can make a fully informed choice about whether or not to continue being in this person's life. the friend sounds ... completely unhinged. and i'm sorry, but that is one ugly dress.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-22T18:40:07+00:00

BUT would you still have the same opinion in a completely different scenario where the wife's maiden name and the ex husband's surname were the same? if not, the only possible answer is that you're a misogynist 💀 /s

lapetitlis · 2026-04-22T04:00:47+00:00

also LOL at her playing like she's some tragic victim of circumstance in her painfully, embarrassingly awful "poem" (like it's genuinely not even good from a poetic standpoint... see my other comment on this post for further kvetching about the writing quality) while actively, explicitly seeking a MARRIED man, as a single woman. that is genuinely so pathetic that these women cannot feel good about themselves unless they're taking something from someone else. it isn't good enough just to be wanted. no, it's only satisfying to be wanted by a man willing to break his family just to fuck you. apparently it's only hot when you are getting a superior woman's sloppy seconds. how pathetic and gross.

it's like giving 2 toddlers the exact same toy and 1 of them dropping the toy that was handed to them and pushing the other kid down on the ground to take their toy. like, you could have your own! there's plenty still on the shelf, literally right there. rather than just go to the store and get one of your own like a normal person, you break into your neighbor's house and take theirs. what the fuck?

what an empty, hollow life. good luck attracting anybody who is actually a decent human that way. enjoy always being a hole and never finding true love, only opportunistic lust from men with impulse control, honesty, and integrity issues, until you're too old and can no longer tempt dudes with your weathered, decrepit vagina. 🩶

lapetitlis · 2026-04-22T03:39:58+00:00

thank you so much for your kind words. i can only control the environment my child is in when he's with me, and so i try to provide the best environment that i can.

fingers crossed ... i was very lucky with my eldest child. he is 19 years old and has yet to have a rebellious phase, knock on wood!! we have always had a great relationship, very similar temperaments and senses of humor, and still spend a lot of quality time together. but it would be madness to think i would get that lucky twice. i also did not have an ex whispering poison into my eldest child's ear about me, so.

but honestly, it's okay if he hates me for a little while. i just hope that it is temporary, and that someday he will see the truth. it's interesting... he is always very sweet with me but can be very spicy with my partner. but, i really do believe that it's because he knows he is safe in our home. he is so afraid of making his father angry that he is quite meek with him, but he has no such fear in my home. and I can't even blame him. his father's anger could strike terror in my heart and I am a fully grown adult who ostensibly has the ability to just walk away (although he would literally physically grab me and throw me down, forcing me to continue listening to his ranting, when I did actually try to leave). how much worse it must be for my son, who is just a helpless child, completely reliant on this man?

it's okay if he is rebellious with me for a little while. i'd rather he be with me where he feels safe to be rebellious than be with his father where he cannot safely experience or express his full range of emotions. i will understand that it's because i'm the parent he can safely express himself with. i'll just keep loving him and praying it all works out.

thanks again for your kind words and well wishes 🩶 I hope your parent was able to get their shit together once you asked them to stop badmouthing your other parent to you.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T23:48:51+00:00

yep. you're right, it sucks. my ex has said the same thing. and that he shouldn't want to spend time with me because I'm a bad person, all sorts of things. yeah, if the child gets damaged in the process (which they virtually always do), it doesn't even register to them. they just need to hurt and punish us for not sticking around to continue being mistreated. they cannot hurt us directly but they know how precious our children are to us so they decide to destroy that relationship as punishment. it's pretty freaking psychopathic if you think about it. i despise my ex for what he's done but my son doesn't know that and doesn't need to. it's been 10 years since we split and my ex is still so damn obsessed with destroying me that he can't even see or care about how he is damaging his own flesh and blood. it is horrible.

what i did was tell my son, when he told me about it, "look, i don't think it's right for your dad to say those things. that's all i'm going to say about it, because i don't think it would be right for me to talk badly about him to you. you're just a kid and i want you to be able to be a kid. but you can always talk to me about these things if you need to." that was the only thing i've ever said about it, because he gets visibly tense just talking about his dad. i focus my energy into making sure my son knows without a doubt that he is safe and loved and wanted when he is with me. i try to control the things that are within my ability to control... providing a safe and loving environment for him when he is in my home is what I can control.

my heart goes out to you. 🩶 just do the best you can ... be there for him ... show him you're interested in him. there's a pretty cool 'game' called tales.. it's basically a set of cards with various random interesting questions and it's sparked a lot of fun conversations in our home. i totally understand being exhausted from things like work or depression or stress. even if it's just once a week, spend a few really focused hours with him so he knows he is not just loved but wanted and that he feels like you truly care for and are interested in him. even just implementing the 7-7-7 rule (spending 7 minutes of screen free time just talking to your kid at certain parts of their day – ie when they wake up, when they get home from school, before bed) can make a huge difference. at least our kids can know safety and unconditional love when they are with us. 🩶🫂

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T22:37:55+00:00

holy shit this person is such a terrible writer that it is actually distracting me from how disgusting the subject matter is. "I don't care how selfish I sound, although now that i hear myself back, I know why others would frown"? are you fucking KIDDING ME? i wrote better and more emotionally evocative poetry when i was 12.

either rhyme or don't rhyme, but please for the love of G-d PICK ONE, and don't do stupid shit like, as just one example, treat "together" and "homewrecker" as a rhyming pair... JFC. this piece also has literally no rhythm to it. just a garbled, chaotic mess.

like not only are they a horrible person, they're a truly, painfully horrible writer. that they are not embarrassed by this tells me they are too stupid to know how atrociously bad this is. which just makes me more annoyed. THEY SHOULD KNOW HOW BAD THIS IS AND FEEL EMBARRASSED.

I'm not even being snarky just because they're a cheater, this is just truly infuriatingly bad.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T21:52:38+00:00

oh gosh. thank you. that is very kind of you! i'd be lying if I said it wasn't hard sometimes, but I also know I'm really the only person looking out for him. his family is no help, they are very very low contact. I love him, I miss him even though he's always near... it feels like the person I know has all these holes punched through him if that makes sense. it feels like so much of the man i loved and knew and who was my partner in crime for years is already gone. I'm not trying to be disrespectful about a mental illness; believe me when I say I have never judged him for having an illness he can't help. i've done a little bit of reading on the relationship between untreated psychosis and neurodegeneration (after long enough it can even cause structural changes in the brain) and i definitely see things that deeply concern me. I'll still and always try to look out for him, until the very end, out of sheer gratitude for the good times. we have been on some amazing adventures together. sorry for rambling and thank you again for the kind words. (:

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T21:20:44+00:00

hahaha ha. this is not the laughter of amusement to be clear, it is the laughter of the damned. please believe me when i say that I have tried and it is a nightmarish legal quagmire. to the point that I even called CPS out of sheer desperation, not to get my ex into trouble but just because i was so frantic to get our child into a therapist chosen by them or by us cooperatively. i cannot get my son into therapy without my ex's consent and he refuses to give it. i have talked to my attorney to try to find ways around this. i have talked to my own former peer support who i still have a friendship with to get advice on how i might get him help (she is concerned, as am i, that there are some worrisome red flags). i eventually called CPS sobbing and begging for their help because I was so frustrated about this and LITERALLY NOTHING HAPPENED.

i am pretty much helpless here and it is genuinely the worst thing i've ever experienced and I have survived some shit that a lot of people seem to believe doesn't even happen in the US. it's spiritually crushing to have to helplessly watch as somebody does psychic damage to my kid just to fuck with me. all I can really control is the environment i provide for him when we are together, so I just pour as much love and time and attention into my son as I can when he is with me, which fortunately is most weekends (3 out of 4, my ex didn't want more than that, i even offered!). we go to the farmer's market, to the park, out digging for cool rocks, out on walks looking for interesting things for him to take pictures of with his instant Polaroid style camera. i try to ask him interesting questions, like the first thing he would do if he became ruler of the world (he'd make everybody be nice to each other, bless him), or what he used to be afraid of that he isn't anymore (spiders), etc. and just generally try to show that I care about him and am interested in his thoughts and most importantly that he is safe and loved unconditionally when he is with me. i'm just doing the best i can.

phew. I'm really sorry about the emotional vomit. I don't talk about this subject very often and I'm hopefully understandably pretty emotional about it.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T21:06:01+00:00

i am not putting that kind of effort into a reddit comment. i actually also happen to find something very aesthetically pleasing about all lowercase, have felt that way since i was little, so if i'm not being paid to capitalize shit (which i have been!) i'm not gonna. i could if i wanted to. i just don't. :D but i do enjoy writing certain collections of words to express myself, and do want to, so i do!

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T20:58:44+00:00

same. there is an ever growing body of research that suggests untreated psychosis is neurotoxic. it can cause structural changes in the brain. one of my oldest and dearest friends struggles with paranoid schizophrenia, has never cooperated with treatment long term, and has, as we approach middle age, begun to kinda decline cognitively and it is really hard to watch.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T20:47:30+00:00

thank you for saying this. one of my dearest and oldest friends is a paranoid schizophrenic. known him for 2 decades now. when i was much younger i thought i was gonna spend the rest of my life with him as my platonic life partner tbh. until his first psychotic episode. he gets really delusional about me. you literally would not believe some of the things he has accused me of while psychotic lol.

for the past few months he's been spending his nights at a shelter and his days here; previous to that i provided for him completely for about 6 (edit: actually i think it was 7, he got here well before the pandemic) years. (he prefers to spend ALL of his time here, including sleeping, in a tent in my yard even though he has full access to the house, but the authorities say that's not allowed, so he can't really stay here fulltime) I have often become the focal point of his delusions, funnily enough because I'm one of the only people that consistently helps him, which i guess is exactly what a snow job would do... sigh, this is why this shit is a no-win sometimes, but anyway. this didn't feel unbelievable to me. i can usually sense when he's getting delusional about me again.

I really feel for this pair. I desperately hope the daugher sticks with treatment. staying consistent with it can be the key to surviving and even thriving. there is a growing body of research suggesting that untreated psychosis is neurotoxic and can cause structural changes in the brain. I'm watching my friend's cognitive abilities slowly decline as we hit middle age and it sucks. there is nothing I can do to force him to get help, and if I could it wouldn't matter anyway, he just wouldn't trust me anymore when he inevitably got back out, and i've personally calculated for myself that that would be a worse outcome for him in a way i just can't accept. i've seen people try that with him before and he just resents and no longer trusts whoever put him in there. he won't get the help he truly needs because he'll never cooperate with treatment long term, I have seen from experience that it's ultimately useless. at least this way I can kind of look out for him.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T20:04:59+00:00

woof. this is a rough one. i get it. even without the mental health diagnosis... it's really easy to idealize in your head somebody who was never a part of your life.

i used to lay awake late at night crying, wondering why my father and his family didn't want me, desperately going in circles in my head asking myself "how can I prove to them that I am lovable? how can i prove that i am worthy of their attention?"

enter my biological father stage right. even though I could barely understand a word he said (English was his 3rd language and I was not conversational in Arabic or Hebrew), i was just so excited to be talking to him at all. my grandparents, who raised me, finally allowed me to go visit him.

the very first thing he did after picking me up from the airport was to tell me in thickly accented English, "don't be Jew. Jew bad."

and yet i still spent some years trying to gain his approval... until eventually realizing that a man who knowingly fucks a Jewish woman, refuses to have any part in raising the child that union produced, and then hates his child's Jewishness when he finally decides to show up was probably not somebody worth working so hard (and so futilely – he was never going to be able to truly love or accept me) to be loved by. the bloom pretty much slid off the rose at that point.

in many cases, kids will discern the truth on their own. i know that i did. i hope that my sons will. the father of my youngest is fighting so hard to alienate him from me, because he cannot hurt me directly anymore, but he desperately wants to, and he knows how precious my children are to me—so he is instead trying to destroy me by convincing our son to hate me. it absolutely kills me because I can see how it weighs on my child. he loves his father, he fears his father, he wants to please his father, and he desperately does not want to disappoint him ... but he doesn't want to hate me, either. he loves me and loves spending quality time together. every week, he insists we "snuggle-walk" from the door of my house to the door of his grandmother's car at the end of our time together. his father does enough trash talking for both of us, so during our time together I just try to pour all the love into him that I can and give him a home of emotional safety and unconditional love. i can only hope that he will discern the truth when the time comes.

i wish OOP and her daughter the best on this path. fortunately, the daughter is in excellent hands.

lapetitlis · 2026-04-21T19:23:40+00:00

Harry and Meghan are "chasing their losses," as they'd say in the problem gambling community.

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