I need to move out of this house ASAP

“Hey — Not sorry about asking for boundaries, but I am very sorry about how I requested them. Sincere apologies.” 

I’m still reeling from the shock of yet another instance of my housemate flying off the handle, being unable to check her control issues, and leash out at me. 

One could argue that her “boundaries” are actually very unhealthy and/or unresolved control issues she has. 

One could also argue that even her apology note is messed up. Just turning around the order of the sentences in her note would have made such a huge difference — “Hey, I’m sorry about the way I requested my boundaries/needs. I still need to discuss my boundaries but I realize that wasn’t the appropriate way of doing it.” A note along those lines might actually have healed some of the damage she did last night. The above note doesn’t. Especially not after the awful things she said. 

When I moved in, the agreement was that I’d use the common space (that she now calls her own space, her house) with no limitations when she’s gone and just for meal needs when she’s at home. She stated, “I don’t entertain at home” back then and in fact has a pretty active social life. My social life has been stunted over the past couple months, first by my COVID illness with complications & a long recovery and then by my gender-affirming surgery. From which I’m less than a week out and still recovering, not only physically but also mentally and emotionally. In general, the agreement was that we’d have visitors when the other one of us isn’t at home. 

This past week, I’ve been having many more visitors than usual and almost constantly when she’s away (and only when she’s away): these wonderful people in my support network have been helping me with meals, groceries, movements I still cannot do, as well as providing emotional support for the major procedure and life-changing surgery I recently had. I’m not “entertaining”: I’m having friends over because I need it, I cannot do without it now. 

So the new issue that set my housemate off last night is that she cannot stand the idea of having my friends, whom she doesn’t know, in her living-room. There are many practical reasons why my visitors & I are sitting in the living-room upstairs rather than one of the tiny rooms in my basement space downstairs, including proximity to the kitchen to help with my meals, seating, and more natural light. All things that seem not only reasonable but also perfectly necessary during recovery. My housemate last night literally said things like, “I don’t want them sitting on my couch” and “Your friends can be uncomfortable since they’re coming to visit you and they can even just sit on the floor in your space downstairs”. These sentences in themselves would be sufficiently shocking and appalling. But then she went even further, bringing up COVID and accusing me of getting her sick in November with a certainty that has no foundations and was extremely aggressive and also misgendered me, again, using “she/her” pronouns referring to me. 

Of course, she has the right to these feelings and thoughts, but she had no right to lash out at me and throw them at me unfiltered and aggressive like she did last night. Thoughts and feelings of that sort would probably require being processed with a counselor or venting with a friend or letting the steam out on a walk. And then, one can come back and have a civil, respectful, adult conversation. And at that, it would have been sufficient to say simply, “I don’t feel comfortable having your friends, who are strangers for me, sitting in my space. Could you please see your visitors downstairs?”.  

I personally find her needs incomprehensible if one decides to rent out one’s house, incompatible with the idea of renting out one’s house (and several of my friends agree with me on this point). But as long as I’m living here, I’d simply accept that request, especially given the temporary nature of the whole situation. The way she lashes out, though, is becoming a huge problem for me: it makes me feel not simply uncomfortable and extremely limited/restricted but even unsafe in my own living space. This is not OK. 

I am extremely vulnerable and delicate in this moment, both physically and emotionally. More than ever now I need a comfortable, welcoming, safe space to live and recover.

Should I wait until June to move out, when my lease is up, or should I try to find a temporary accommodation before then, as soon as I’ve recovered enough from my surgery to be able to actually move?