That's Not What I Meant, Post #4

At the beginning of the year my roommate and I did not get along at all. There was constant conflict and I lived in a state of constant turmoil and stress and frustration. It was not a good way to live. I was miserable whenever I was in my room and I was so afraid my roommate would come back to the room when I was in there. A lot of our conflict was genuine, but there was several occasions when my old roommate misinterpreted what I was saying and I misinterpreted what she was saying. This only lead to more conflict between us.
For example at one point she assumed I was gossiping about her behind her back. I knowing she had a habit of standing at the bathroom door to our neighbors room (we live in a jack-n-jill style) and listening in, my friends and I were very cautious about what we said. So never once would she have heard us saying bad things about her, but one afternoon while my friend was on the phone with her mom she stormed into the room and started yelling at me saying I was talking bad about her and I wasn't seeing how my friend had been on the phone with her mom, not talking to me, for 10 minutes already. This was also in my friends room that was connected through the bathroom, seeing as how I never went into my room any ways, but she began yelling at me and I didn't know what she was talking about and she kept telling me I was a liar and would not listen to anything I was saying, so I started to yell back at her instead of just talking to her, and she immediately began to yell at me about how I was not allowed to yell at her and how she didn't appreciate my tone, but to me I am wondering how it's ok for her to yell at me but not for me to yell at her. So she began to be offended and I began to say look I do not mean to offend you, but you're offending me by yelling and it's not fair for you to be allowed to behave like this but I can't return the attitude. That's not how the world works.
Either way our life together was absolutely miserable and we were able to move rooms, she has had 4 other roommates since me and I have been happy to stay with my second roommate. But we never really resolved any of our issues because we could not get passed not understanding each other and not understanding "that's not what I meant" whenever we spoke to each other she constantly misinterpreted what I was saying and I did the same to her.