If it offends you as much as you say, maybe you could offer to let the roommate live with you.
I think scared is valid and will be valid for a long time to come. You are scared you’ll come home to a dead body. You are scared her anger/depression might take you along. You are scared she will screw up her life and then you’ll have to pay rent for a dead weight. You are scared next time she will be successful and leave message to let you know IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT and that you’ll take on some of the guilt.
And its hard to live scared with someone you have a strong emotional tie to. In this case, you don’t even have that.
This is spot on.
Find a new apartment ASAP. As soon as that is secured, arrange for the brother to come over and tell her in front of him that you care for her but her actions have frightened you badly and you are afraid that you will be told you are to blame if anything else happens. Then give her a hug and move out.
She shouldn’t be allowed back in your home. She made the choice and should deal with the consequences, which, in this case, should be being dumped back with her family. She isn’t your responsibility. I can’t understand why you are even picking her up, under the circumstances.
Did you intentionally single out that line and completely ignore the rest of my post? Because I have a feeling you’re just angling for a fight. Nowhere have I said she has to stay with the roommate for the rest of their natural lives; I have simply advocated for the OP to decide what is best for HER. Indeed I pointed out, in clear language, that “you ‘owe’ yourself far more. Do not sacrifice your safety/well-being for hers.”
Perhaps in your world everyone has access to enough liquid assets to cover breaking a lease (which, depending on when the lease expires, can cost upwards of thousands of dollars) plus the costs of moving into a new place, setting up utilities, etc., but not everyone has that luxury. And the law is simply NOT on her side if she packs up the roomie’s stuff and tells her brother to come get her. That’s effective eviction, and she can be sued for it.
This JUST HAPPENED two nights ago… why the rush? Why can’t the OP take the time to sit down with the roommate, say “I don’t feel comfortable in this situation, let’s figure out what we’re going to do about it without putting either/both of us into dire financial straits”? Isn’t it possible that they can behave like adults, and come to a decision that is beneficial for both of them? Whether that decision is someone moves or they continue to live together, they have to talk to each other, if for no other reason that to figure out who stays/goes, who pays the final utility bills, etc.
Quite frankly, you are coming across as someone who is woefully ignorant regarding issues of mental health and basic friendship. Just because someone made an attempt on their life doesn’t mean they need to be treated as a pariah.
Can you show me ANY case law that supports this? Can you find ONE jurisdiction where an adult can be evicted from their home in this type of situation? I’m not talking about someone who went bug-fucking nuts, threatened to kill anyone who came near them, and tried to take out their roommates while taking themselves out. I’m talking about someone who does not have an apparent history of instability/mental illness who makes an attempt on their own life, then willingly goes to the hospital for medical treatment.
The OP has made it clear (remember them?) that living on her own is not financially feasible. They also say they don’t want to make the situation worse for the roommate. Admirable, IMO. Now that the family is involved, they may make the choice to have the roommate live with them while she gets treatment, in which case the OP is off the hook, so to speak (though she’ll need to find another roommate if the family doesn’t cover the bills in the meantime). But it is not in anyone’s best interest to kick the roommate out, or for the OP to move. There is no reason to think the OP is in danger, and acting out of fear is not going to benefit anyone.
Because the OP has been a doormat, my primary worry is that she will be too timorous, not that she will be too bold. She couldn’t even tell her roommate’s boss, “Look, I’ve told you all that I’m going to tell. You do what you have to; stop calling me.” She’s invented reasons for not telling the family. She’s making a multi-hour drive for someone who is a minor acquaintance; they live together for reasons of economy. My worry is that your talk of “owing” will be seized on by someone who errs–to her detriment–on the side of being too accommodating.
Breaking a lease isn’t that expensive. The landlord has to make genuine efforts to re-let the place. Usually you can come to an agreement where you pay them 1-1.5 times the monthly rent in exchange for letting you out of the lease. And if roomie doesn’t move out, the practical landlord will just collect from her.
It sure beats living in a shitshow.
I agree that there is time to resolve this situation, and that there is no need to go to either extreme of kicking the roommate out or assuming responsibility for her.
The OP has said that she doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea of suddenly, hastily dissolving this relationship, and I completely get where she’s coming from. I mean, honestly guys, wouldn’t it be more trouble, practically speaking, to attempt to bar her from the house at this point?
I like the OP’s idea of speaking to the landlord and finding out where she stands, then making some informed decisions. I have a feeling that moving out is almost inevitable at this point, but there’s no need to pack up belongings in the middle of the night and rush out the door. As long as the OP feels safe being around the roommate, that is.
Time Stranger, good on you for contacting the family and starting to separate yourself from this! Continue pursuing other options besides you coming and picking up your roommate. You have stated pretty clearly how uncomfortable having to do so makes you, and, as many people pointed out in this thread, you have no obligation or responsibility to do so. See if the brother is able to come get her, and ask the institute what they do when a patient who is released is unable to get a ride home. Surely this has come up before…
Edited once I saw Kimmy’s post: Kimmy is absolutely right about the lease breaking, which is why I’m glad the OP is going to talk to the landlord about her options. I wouldn’t say the OP is a doormat, because this is about an extreme of a situation as you can get, and people often act out of character in them. I will say that I agree it’s clear that if the OP is making a mistake, it’s on the side of doing too much for the roommate and not enough for herself. I’d like her to take away from this thread that she’s still a good person even if she does not want to live with the roommate or pick her up.
Upon re-reading your OP I see another reason the family has to be involved. You say the doctors haven’t told you anything. Well of course they haven’t - you’re not family. So the family has to be notified - you’ll never be allowed any of the details (unless she tells you).
I understand you can’t ditch your roomate but I’m sure you can’t do this by yourself.
Hah, well, I think timorous is a pretty apt adjective for my general personality, but I am working on that. I am trying to be firm here though, because as others have pointed out it would be best for her and myself for me to not be the only person dealing with this. I now understand that I shouldn’t really be calling the shots here at all even if I was the one to find her, so I don’t feel bad about telling her family. I just hope they actually do something about it.
And about the lease issue, I do have a few months living expenses saved up, so moving costs wouldn’t be an issue - I could probably even pay the entire rent for at least two months if I really had to do so if she moved out suddenly. I just meant that long-term I wouldn’t be able to live by myself (either in this house or in a 1-bedroom somewhere) and I definitely wouldn’t be able to pay off the entire lease since we are signed through fall 2010. I will talk to the landlord and her about it.
Anyway, I just wanted to reiterate my thanks about all of the advice and viewpoints I’m getting. I am running on little sleep and am still a little freaked out, so it’s nice to have some direction from neutral parties.
Devils advocate, she committed a crime in the apartment and she’s proven herself mentally unstable.
Directed at the “get the hell out as fast as you can” contingent
The poor thing isn’t even home from hospital yet. You do not know her diagnosis. You sure as hell cannot see into the future as to any of her future actions. I know a number of people who have tried suicide once, go the help they needed gone on to have perfectly happy lives?
Surprisingly some people do not try suicide because they want to mess with you and make your life difficult - they do it because they are sick.** It is **just like appendicitis - only longer recovery (sometimes fatal sadly - hell my cousin died from appendicitis) harder to treat sometimes and prone to make you feel embarrassed because it is often still considered shameful to be mentally ill and doncha know they may up and ax murder you in you sleep (that was sarcasm folks)
My advice on having a roommate come home after a suicide attempt:
How would you be acting if this was a physical problem (accident appendicitis whatever) think about it and do that!
If she nicked some of your pills you may need to deal with that before she comes home - maybe write to the place she is getting treatment - you never know they may have some advice. She needs to know that it was not OK from your perspective
Send her a get well card. Open some lines of communication
Get rid of the alcohol. No point having temptation around.
See what happens and educate yourself in the meantime http://www.beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx? (yeah I know it’s Aussie info but it is trustworthy) See if you can find a mental health information hot-line/advocacy service/support group (perhaps you could find something like this group http://www.arafmi.org/)
Don’t do this on your own if at all possible.
(I am talking from personal experience and you are most welcome to pm me)
Jeeeez, that’s pretty harsh and probably illegal, don’t you think? Why would you take such a hard stand against a sick person? Are you completely lacking in both compassion and reasoning skills? Is this really how you’d handle the situation?
I have not read this entire thread, so I apologize if this has been covered.
Wherever you live, there should be a crisis intervention hotline that you should call. You. This is your problem right now, and you’re the one asking for help. Talk to them. Tell them the same things that you have told us. Their job is to listen to you and help you decide the best course of action. They are highly trained to deal with exactly this sort of situation. I used to be a crisis intervention counselor, and believe me, they can help more than untrained people on a message board.
Note - I am a/have been a crisis counselor, but I am not her counselor or your counselor.
You’ve asked how to treat her, so I am working from the assumption that you feel some responsibility or desire to help.
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If she is determined to kill herself, you will not be able to stop her. This is not your fault, it may not even be her fault, it just is. However, many people who try to commit suicide do want
help not to do it again. -
Try to “contract” with her - get her to commit to a time period (however long or short she will agree to. 1 hour, 2 hours, half a day) when she will be safe. Get her to agree to tell you if she feels compelled to break the contract or hurt herself. If she will not contract, she is at very high risk. Call 911 or your local equivalent, explain that she is suicidal and will not contract, and insist that they take her back to hospital.
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Reassure her that you care, and that you are there for her. Listen to her talk if she wants to talk, and show her that you are actively listening. Don’t give advice or relate your own similar stories if you have them.
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Try to arrange so that she is not alone. Explain to her that you are doing this, and that it is because you are concerned for her safety. If she is going to be alone, get her to make a contract to be safe (see above).
Feel free to message or email me if I can help further. You’re in a difficult position, but it’s great that you care about her and want to help her.
However, don’t commit to being there if you can’t be there. Which includes “I don’t want to be here” and “I’m scared to be here.”
People who are suicidal and depressed blow things out of proportion. If you make a commitment to be there for her and you can’t be, she may feel that is proof she is worthless.
The try and arrange it so she is not alone - that’s going to be hard. Making a commitment to her mental health at that level is going to involve giving up large amounts of your time - unless she is the rare suicidal person who has a large circle of close friends willing to give up their time. That’s something I’d do for a close friend. It wouldn’t be something I’d do for someone who I split rent with.
Personally, while I wouldn’t kick her out nor would I leave, I would make it clear that to her, to her counselor, and to her family that you are not her babysitter. That you will behave decently, but that you intend to establish healthy boundaries for your own sake - which include not talking to her boss other than to say “she isn’t here, can I take a message.”
My own disclaimer. I have no personal expertise in any field of human activity that qualifies me to offer informed advice to you. My comments are just about how I personally would try to manage this situation.
I’m in the “duck and cover” contingent. Do whatever you need to do get yourself quietly and safely out of the picture without precipitating any more crises.
Talk to your landlord. You have no obligation to maintain confidentiality for this woman, and though you shouldn’t be blabbing her issues all over the place, you should be frank with the landlord. Just say that you don’t plan to run out, but you want to discuss whether he is amenable to some kind of arrangements that will allow you an early out. You don’t need to have a solid plan in hand, you just want to test the water and see if you have any wiggle room.
Make certain not to mix yourself up financially with her in any way. If one of you pays the other, who then pays the rent in full, stop that. You should pay your half of the rent directly to the landlord, and let her make her own arrangements to pay her half. The utilities are maybe not so important, if they’re not too pricey. I would be pretty concerned that she might lose her job, and you need to start thinking about plans for what happens if she can’t pay her share of the rent.
If you don’t already have one, get a cell phone, or have your own phone line installed in your room. You may want to be holding conversations – like with new prospective roommates – that you don’t want her to hear. Once you have secure communications, put out some ads to try to find a new roommate.
You should spend as much time as possible in your room rather than in the common space, especially as some of your routine activities seem to get under her skin.
That’s all that come immediately to mind.
In many states, that still wouldn’t give the roommate the right to kick her out with little or no warning.
There is absolutely no reason why the housemate should be guilt-tripped into doing ANY of these things. This is stuff that the roommate’s friends and family should be doing for her.
Things are getting kind of weird. Originally my roommate had briefly called me on Tuesday night, told me her location and contact info, and told me I should pick her up on Thursday morning and that she would call with pick up details. But I never got a return call to tell me when or how to go about doing this, and I’ve called the case manager twice with the number that the institute itself left me on my VM with no answer. None of my calls have been returned. Obviously I didn’t leave to go get her this morning.
And just now at work, my roommate’s mom calls me and starts trying to explain my roommate’s disappearance as if I don’t know the attempt has even happened or where she’s gone. She didn’t seem to hear me saying that I knew all this already, and she kept telling me the roommate wanted to talk to me as if she hadn’t yet. It was a weird one-sided conversation (she was really nonchalant about everything), but I am going to chalk this up to her being shocked and/or ill. I guess at least she has talked to her daughter.
So now I’m just going to assume that I’m out of this unless the case manager calls me back. My roommate and her mom gave me different stories about what was going on/when she was being released, which makes me think the roommate is either misreporting or doesn’t truly know. So I think I am going to choose to ignore everything that doesn’t come from an official source.
At any rate, I finally got a decent night’s sleep and am much calmer today. I obtained the number of a local suicide-information line and am going to call it after work for more guidance, but I do really appreciate everyone’s advice here.