Competing

I never really thought of myself as the competing type. During most competitions, athletic or scholarly, my intent was never to win-- it was to do my very best, hope for the best, but anticipate losing. This same mentality has carried itself over into my social life and how I cope with 'real life' competition. Recently a friend told me that the reason relationships get so hard is because we let our ego get in the way, whether we intend to or not, and that jealousy works in the same way. She said we project our insecurities onto other people. I'm used to feeling insecure, but I'm not used to being a victim of jealousy. There's a tendency I have, and maybe it's rather picky of me, but I try not to surround myself with jealous or negative people. I'm not good at reading emotions.
So when one of my best friends and roommate dropped out of college my sophomore year I was a little nervous about getting a random roommate. This girl we knew wanted to move out of her single, so I asked if she wanted to move in with me thinking that it would be better than living with a stranger. Little did I know that I was living with a stranger.
We got along real well for a short while, and she was pretty fun to just chill with. I'm not really sure where things went wrong, but one day it was as if she had turned into someone else. She wasn't mean or hostile-- actually quite the opposite-- she was unresponsive. I'd ask her to do certain things like pick up her clothes when it got real bad, or just ask her not leave the door unlocked. It was so petty at first so I let it slide.
Again and again, I would continue to just let her behavior and habits slide under the radar. She would say things like, "you can get any guy you want" or "I know I'm not as together as you are"; it were as if she wanted me to think she was jealous by putting herself down. There's one weekend in particular that really sticks out to me. I had cleaned and tidied up my side of the room because I had been planning to leave for fall break. So before I left I told my roommate that I would really appreciate if my side of the room stayed the way I was leaving it, and like a good friend and roommate she reassured me that "yeah of course, I probably won't even be in here much anyways".
After five hours of driving and a fun but draining fall break I came back to my dorm anticipating the warmth of my bed. I was anything but amused to find my room completely destroyed from corner to corner. There was sugar and food spilled all over my desk, my futon was broken and the wood broken and splintered beyond repair, garbage and left over food scattered the room, and the list could go on and on. Several of my things went missing, so I spent to rest of the night to track them down. It didn't take long. My belongings were in the room of the boy she had been seeing. When I asked his roommate about it, since the boy wasn't there, he said that my roommate had brought them over as a gift.
I'll never really know why she did this, or if it was even rooted in jealousy or competition. But after that our relationship was never the same. She continued to steal my things, lie, and disrespect my friends and me after that. Personally, I think she was jealous by how close we all already were, and it didn't help that she was taking the place of one of my best friends. I guess when the pressure gets high and the jealousy grows, some people just can't control their need to compete for attention.