I’m 21 years old and shared a bedroom with my identical twin sister all my life.
Just 2 years back, my parents intended to renovate the house and asked if we would like to move into different rooms since my brother was getting married and moving out. At that point of time, my sister and I were very very close and shared many of our belongings such as clothes, books, collectors’ items. So, we chose to continue our state of sharing room, naively thinking that we will get along very well. The extra room was renovated into a very nice studyroom.
In just 2 years time, I think both of us matured and grew up, until the point when we started quarreling over personal space. I find myself getting more and more intolerant of having to tolerate her lifestyle which, though is still largely similar to mine, still differs ever so slightly. Sharing a room for so many years, I understand that we have to give in to each other at times, but I’m starting to get pissed off for all the efforts I put in which she did not reciprocate.
For example, she tends to sleep in in the morning, while I wake up about 2 hours before her. To not disturb her sleep, I’ll move my notebook out of the room and use it in the living room and try my best not to interrupt her sleep by entering the room before she wakes up. But I still do enter the room to pick up some items sometimes inevitably, and she will blame me for the noise I make entering and leaving the room, completely missing the point that the reason I make all those noise is because I’m trying to not to disturb her.
Example 2: Also related to sleep, is that she tends to be unable to sleep after 12am in the morning, so even when I’m still wide awake and would be happy to stay up even later, we have to off the lights and go to bed. I do have a lamp on my desk but she can’t tolerate even a dim light or typing sounds from the notebook I use.
Example 3: I’m not sure how to phrase it, but she tends to control the music going in the room. She never uses the earphones while listening to music on her desktop, and only reluctantly when I remind her to because I can still hear her over my own earphones.
Example 4: She throws her stuff on my desk. Take in consideration that my desk is already half the size of hers.
I used to not mind any of these things, but recently, it’s just starting to irritate me more and more. It’s impossible to own my own room since there are no more spare rooms, and I’m not really that loaded to get external housing.
I just wish to have a little personal space for myself. Somewhere I can control what I listen to, what time to sleep and relax in it with my notebook computer instead of moving around the house with my notebook like a nomad.