My favorite roommate.
I’m going to skip over the time when I shared a childhood room with my baby sister. I’m also going to skip the time I shared a summer place with another sister. In short, I’m going to skip relatives.
My first non-family roommate was the one I was randomly placed with in my dorm for my first year of college. Nightmare. She was a snob, but not even in the Mean Girls kind of way. It was more like, ‘Why are you even a snob?‘ I couldn’t figure out what was so great about her. I couldn’t even figure out what she thought was so great about her. And she smelled weird. And by weird I mean bad.
In my next year of college, I chose to room with my then best friend, a girl I met while living with the smelly snob. This was a mistake. E, as I shall call her, fucked with my head even though I didn’t realize it was happening at the time. I wrote a two-part post about her [and here is the rest]. It’s a long story. But one you might find interesting if you find me as fascinating as I’m sure you do.
When I studied in London, I had four roommates [two female, two male]. Hey, it’s expensive there. We were all Americans studying abroad so we hooked up [not like that] and found a great place in South Kensington that I’ll never forget. That was a great flat. I loved it there. I wish I’d stayed… never to return to my home country.
Anyway… one of the guys was a little annoying, but not extremely so. And he was hilarious when drunk or otherwise fucked up. The other guy was a total hippie. One of the girls was a whiny brat. The other girl was great. We became good friends, together experiencing all London [and several other European destinations] had to offer. Like everyone in my life, though, I lost touch with her a long time ago. She’s almost the best roommate I ever had.
For the remainder of my time at school, I lived on my own. A good choice on my part. Hung out with Randy a lot. I was in a pretty good place.
During my last year, I met David. We hit it off right away and became close friends. He had a new and not-so-serious girlfriend so I never gave any thought to anything beyond friendship. But he did. He told me he didn’t want her anymore—he wanted me. But he wouldn’t cheat, nor would I be a part of any such thing. The next day he [nicely] dumped his girlfriend and showed up at my door immediately after. Took about thirty seconds for us to jump on each other. Ahem.
I graduated that year, but David didn’t. Yes, he was a younger man. I moved home for the summer to work as much as possible and save enough money to move out. At the end of the summer, I moved to my college town to be near David. He had his dorm room, but he stayed at my apartment often. But he wasn’t really my roommate. Until he was.
After he graduated, we moved in together. We lived in the best apartment I’ve ever had… and he was the best roommate I’ve ever had. God, we had fun. It was probably the happiest time in my life [aside from my wonderful childhood].
Why am I not still with this man? Fuck if I know. I was an idiot. Or we both were. I don’t know. Our paths started to diverge and we just kind of stopped being ‘us‘. We continued living together for over six months after that. We never had any awkwardness. We were still the best of friends.
He was the best roommate I ever had. And I miss him. It’s been a long time… maybe I over-romanticize our time together. But to me, he is ‘the one that got away‘. I beat myself up over that because I feel like I was the one who let him go.
p.s. — Worst roommate I ever had? Smelly snob. And crazy bitch I mentioned in my p.s. in n-for-neighbor whose husband I slept with. [Again, before they were together! I’m not a monster!]
©2021 what sandra thinks
what sandra thinks 
Ah the one that got away *sigh*
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Yeah… definitely *sigh*
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Oh man!
In my last year of university I had to move out of home because my parents were moving out of the city. I was blessed to move into a shared student house with 3 AMAZING people! A 4th arrived but stayed only a month or two. And then a horrible person moved in.
The worst roommate I ever had isn’t just one person. It’s hands down the people I live with now. They are messy disgusting slobs and decide to break covid rules and invite people over and have parties during the week and have no respect for anyone! There’s 4 bedrooms including mine. One is occupied by a nice guy who makes no problems. But the other two rooms have two people each in them and they are all best friends and knew each other in India. So not only do they get to live all 4 together during a pandemic and have friends around all the time, they also have to invite MORE PEOPLE into the house. I can’t wait to leave.
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That sounds awful… the worst roommate situation. I wouldn’t be able to handle that. I think I’d have already left, no matter what it took!
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I couldnt afford it. I had to save up all year to get just enough to make my first/last. So once the summer comes and I get a new job I’m out
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I would probably have run home to my parents. Then again, if they aren’t in the area, that’s kind of a problem!
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Nope they are 2.5 hours of traffic free driving and i will not move in with my mother LOL like I dread a week at Christmas 😂
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Great post Sandra. I have been looking back over all the tie ins to this and you really have a great deal of book worthy material that could be adapted. I noticed lots of names, amongst the comments, that we haven’t seen around for a while. I hope they are all well!
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I was just thinking the other day how much I miss the way the blogging community was during the first couple of years I had this blog. It just seemed so… different. I also miss the way I used to write. I went back and read some of my poetry from 3… 4 years ago and it was good. I couldn’t write a poem to save my life right now!
That was probably totally off topic…
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Life itself seems to have gone off at a tangent in the last few years so going off topic is the new normal!
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Funny how living with someone can be so disruptive – one of my best mates moved into a shared house I was in & everything went rather awry! LOL We were mates again after he moved out, but it took about a year of cooling off! 😀 😀
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Living together can definitely cause problems. I’d probably get along better with my husband if we didn’t live together. 😉 😀
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Sorry to hear he got away!
I’m currently living with my best roommate ever. We were friends, and then we were more. I don’t intend to let him go. 😉 But I had a doozy of a roommate in college. She was drama personified!
Stopping by from A to Z!
– Jayden Vincente
Erotic fiction author
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I don’t think I’m ever going to have any new roommates… until my kids put me in a home, maybe?
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That’s what I thought, too. But then I ended my marriage and moved out, so… here we are! Never know what to expect!
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I am not social or motivated enough to do anything. And it’s not like I have friends. Or even co-workers since I’m unemployed.
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I met him through my writing group, which is where 90% of my friends come from now.
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That’s cool! So he’s a writer, too? I should probably become part of something. Maybe I could make friends. But I’m not much of a writer anymore. That seems to have died for me.🙁
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He is a writer! He’s co-blogging with me currently, and working on his own projects. In fact he’s getting an MFA in popular fiction! Today we spent all day writing together. It’s… wild. And we read together, too. Sometimes I don’t comprehend, haha.
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That’s amazing! I think I want your life.
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I mean… I’m divorcing my husband. It sucks. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows!
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I know. But I envy a lot of what you have. I guess it is wrong for me to feel that way, but I do. And I don’t tend to hold back in saying how I feel! Perhaps the worst/weirdest part is that I kind of envy the divorce part, too! How fucked up is that? I’m just not in love with my husband but I can’t do anything about it.
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I think we’ve hit the end of how many layers deep we could reply, haha.
I don’t think it’s weird that you’re envious of my divorce. It was hard to make the decision, but since I have, I’ve felt SO much better. Relief. Utter, glorious relief.
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Yeah, that’s the thing… I am envious of those exact feelings. But I don’t have the mental capacity to handle a divorce. And I have the job/financial situation. I am well and truly trapped. And at my age, there’s really no point in even imagining anything better is on the way. I can’t even imagine how long it would take me to feel financially able to leave even if I started immediately. Not to mention the fact that I can’t start now because my kids need me for about a billion things so working outside the home is impossible. And working at home is also impossible as I have tried every possible avenue and cannot find any jobs I could do. Pair that with my inability to take action even if I could find something, and I’m just screwed. I guess I kept thinking my fucked up head would get better and I’d be in a better place, but clearly that’s not happening.
Okay, I am crying now. It’s so stupid, but this is a hard topic for me. Literally nothing in my life makes me happy, and I’ve lost hope that anything ever will.
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*lots of hugs* ❤ I'm always here for you. I know it's tough!
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Thank you. I’m sorry… I know I’m a burden. Today has been a really bad day for me.
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I totally get it. We all have bad days. Yesterday was terrible for me. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. Terrible mother. Terrible partner. Just, awful.
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