We watched Legally Blonde yesterday and when she becomes stressed she gets her nails done. I cut my hair and blog. Which I did both of today, cut my hair, (the back! augh! with a mirror though, scary as it sounds it turned out fine,) and anywho, here's the blog.

I have a shadow. Perhaps if this was a continuing chapter of Soap, my longlost novel, it would look like this:

"Shadow Box"

Common advice going off to college is the typical one liner: Be friendly, make friends! The people who still choose to socialize with me back home put emphasis on the "friendly" aspect, since it is common knowledge (rumors! all lies.) that I am anti-social. (Which is so wrong, I'm schizoid, which is the true term for anti-social but whatever.) During orientation though, as I think I blogged about, I was sick, so I didn't have as many chances as I would have liked to talk to others.

I did then blog about meeting Melissa. She's my suitemate (we share a connected bathroom,) and moved in on Sunday. I was sick that day, so when she moved in I was in the dorm all alone because the other orientation kiddies went to a retreat center for a day. Listening to the advice of my elders, I said hi, went to church and dinner with her, and generally hung out with her all Sunday. Later in the week I made other friends, while still inviting Melissa along.

Melissa was very open to telling all about herself - she is twenty, went to community college, has no friends because they all don't like her and abuse her for different reasons. Her parents make beer, her mother wants to take her to a bar when she turns twenty-one, she's never dated and wants to have kids before she's twenty six. She ideally would prefer to be married now, and loves kids. She teaches at a school for the deaf and is amazing at sign language. (catch the sarcasm.) Her mother did her homework assignments for her because she just couldn't do them, she's failed many many classes, her and her friends go to bookstores and look at sex books and the positions that are in them... I think I will stop.

Then - she turns crazy. She flat out said she was dependent, and since I was the first person to say hello she's clung to me like no other. She reapeats everything I say, she tries to finish my sentences so we are saying the last words together always, she stands way to close whenever we are out too. (We went to the bookstore, now I like shopping with an exclusive group in bookstores. You know. She stood on top of me the whole time, commenting on everything I looked at and telling stories about extended family that had no point or meaning other than to distract me.) She's begun dressing like me, my signature outfit of black, jeans, and a belt - stolen. What else? Oh yes, she listens in on what's going on in my room. She will tell me the next day, "Oh I heard you and India talking about guys last night," or when I was relaying a story about the girl across the hall coming into my room when I was in my robe, she cut me off and finished the story. She heard everything that went on. She also never leaves me alone, coming into my room all the time, and never leaving. Even after everyone else has gone to bed, she is still here. I don't think it sounds so bad as it really is. I hate being suffocated like this.

The worst part is that she doesn't shut up. Ever.

Oh and that I can't even talk to anyone on the phone and have a private conversation without her hearing. Invasion of privacy. It would be different if she was respectful and didn't TRY to listen. She's already proven though she does.

I am going to scream.

Heather (across the hall) made a comment about Melissa the other night when we were alone: "She says she has no friends, do you think she ever thought about why she has no friends??"

Come visit. Save me.