So, did I tell you that my roommates are dating? (This is the guy who moved in about two months ago, not the chicken salad guy.) They’ve been together since about five minutes after he moved in. Now, I knew they would be before I okayed him to move in, it’s not like I was blindsided or anything. However things are getting more and more annoying around here.

It’s not like they cuddle on the couch in front of me, or make out in the kitchen, or call each other Hunny Bunny or anything. Nothing that bad. However, they WORK TOGETHER TOO (that’s how they met), so they are just always together, and when they’re home they’re always talking about things that happened that day at the restaurant, or whatever. The part of that that really concerns me is when they come home after I’m asleep, because they are sooo loud. Our house is small and all one level, and they both just have loud voices naturally and both walk pretty hard, and when they make food they slam the cabinets and fridge door open and shut.

Now, I am a pretty quiet person when it comes to getting ready or going to bed. If I know someone’s asleep, I don’t consider it a sacrifice at all to open and shut doors carefully, or to keep my voice at a lower-than-normal tone if I have a visitor. It just seems like the natural thing to do. I’ve told Jane before that when they speak to each other from different rooms of the house, I hear it as clearly as if they’re in the room with me, it wakes me up, and I have a really hard time going back to sleep. She seemed to understand. But it just keeps happening.

Saturday was the worst. I had to be at work at 8am on Sunday for a meeting, which is stupid, but anyway I was in bed and when they came in at 2am I could hear their conversation clear as a bell. And the slamming-of-the-cabinets thing was out of control. I basically did not go back to sleep all night, which was, um, annoying.

So Sunday night when I got home and Jane was in bed, I told Chris (that’ll be the guy roommate) that they had been really loud, and I would appreciate it if they could just, you know, not yell from one room to another when both of those rooms are RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD. If he didn’t mind. And he was totally apologetic. Now, I didn’t tell him that I would talk to Jane myself, even though I planned to, which was my mistake. Because when he joined her in her room (right next to mine) later on that night, I heard him tell her what I’d said. Making it look like I was a huge wimp who couldn’t speak to people myself.

When I got home last night, Jane came in my room with me and was basically all, “I’m really annoyed that you went to Chris and were talking about how I’m ’so loud,’ ” “I’m not going to walk on eggshells in my own house,” “you’re just a mouse-quiet person and that’s not how I am,” “Chris and I talked about it and we both feel you’re being really intolerant,” “you’re free to live your life and I don’t get annoyed if you wake me up, I just figure that’s part of living in a small house and I think you knew that when you moved in,” “I’m just going to live my own life and if that involves coming home and making food at not-that-late on a Saturday, then it does,” “why don’t you just move your bed to another part of the room and buy a fan, that way the noise won’t bother you.”

I just felt kind of shellshocked after the whole litany of I’m doing nothing wrong, your expectations are crazy speech. And I really had no response for anything she said. I began to think that maybe I WAS intolerant and having too-high expectations. This is why a) I could never have been a lawyer, and b) I avoid confronting people. Because they always have counter-arguments and I lose all ability to reason and end up getting snowballed by everything they say.

At one point, I did have the presence of mind to say, “Well, if it’s okay for you guys to be normal-volume at 2:00, then when ISN’T it okay? Is there any time, day or night, that we should all just be quiet?” And she was like, “See, I don’t want to have to have Quiet Rules or anything like that. I just don’t want to have the structure that you want.” So that was that.

Argh, it made so much sense in my head! To my mind: they knew I was home and asleep; there’s no reason why you can’t speak quieter and open and shut doors gently; when you live with other people you sometimes CAN’T “live just how you want to live;” the fact that it wouldn’t bother her isn’t really the point because I’m not being loud and waking her up in the first place, blah blah blah.

One thing I am definitely tempted to do is to ask Chris if he and I can switch rooms. Right now Jane and I share a bathroom and our rooms share a wall, and I hear them talking in bed and laughing. Also one will go to the bathroom and the other will stay in their room and they’ll yell to each other that way. But Chris’s room is at the front of the house and he has his own bathroom, so that wouldn’t be an issue. They could just have the whole back half of the house to themselves, which makes much more sense I think.

I don’t know. Am I being ridiculous about all this? I am so mixed-up. Also, why I am such an idiot that I can’t hold my own in an argument?