Roommates
The joy of never catching up
I got strep throat the first week of class freshman year—origins unknown, although the sticky, shared Solo cups of syrupy mixies would seem a likely culprit. Gross. After unsuccessful attempts to soothe the razor blades in my throat with cough drops and cups of Throat Coat tea, heated up in the common room microwave, I surrendered to the reality that a trip to student health was in order. This misery was not how I had imagined college would begin. Further, to say that my roommate and I had not yet warmed to each other would be an understatement. My overzealous chatter did not seem to be landing at all. I read her quietness as clear-cut confirmation that she had no interest in being my friend. This was a disastrous start.
Feeling particularly sorry for myself, I found the campus map online and set out towards the health center. My roommate was leaving, too, and we got in the elevator together without a word. I didn’t ask where she was going, and neither did she. In silence, we walked in the same direction for ten minutes, a full five paces apart. Staring at her back, I texted my sister: I don’t think my roommate likes me.
I first met Shayla over FaceTime that June. After a series of messages on Instagram, we had agreed to call to get a feel for each other and to see if we might want to live together. I was in South Carolina for the weekend with my best friends from high school. We had flown down to the beach a few days after our graduation. I couldn’t yet appreciate the implications of what lay ahead of us. We were standing on the edge of the next chapter, about to dive into college life—moving to schools across the country from one another, exploring new cities, entering new social circles. I was confident, sure even, that I could not possibly find friends as wonderful as those I had already. I wasn’t interested, frankly.
I was late to the roommate game after being accepted off the waitlist in early summer. Most of my friends had met their matches on admitted students days back in the spring, and we spent the final days of senior year scrolling through their Instagrams, wondering what these future friends might be like come fall. I snuck up to a bedroom to take my call, feeling sad to miss out on any time with my friends downstairs. The FaceTime was brief and friendly. Shayla and I requested each other in the housing portal. That was that.
Shayla brought a mini fridge on move-in day, and an older friend from her high school dropped off a handle of Strawberry Lemonade Svedka to welcome us to campus and prepare us should any new friends stop by. I thought this drive-by was very cool. We had hit the housing jackpot, the girl told us, being sorted into the newest freshman dorm, which was recently renovated. There was a sink in our room, right off the head of my bed. That will be nice for brushing your teeth, both of our moms pointed out before saying their respective goodbyes.
Despite a rocky start, things soon turned around. By the time I had finished my course of antibiotics, Shayla and I were off to the races. They say that you do not need to be best friends with your roommate. It can be better that way even—less drama. All you need is someone normal enough with whom you can be cordial with. This advice may be true. I wouldn’t know.
In Room 111, Shayla and I began our seven years of life together. Our twin beds were set up in a line so our feet practically touched. When we sat up in the morning we directly faced each other. We had a tiny TV positioned above our desks where we watched 49 episodes of Love Island UK in a month. Most mornings, I woke up to find that my pillow had fallen into the sink while I was sleeping. Shayla’s closet door never shut, struggling to contain piles of jeans and shoes and bags that I envied and often borrowed. We decorated the walls with photos of our high school friends and framed prints of wine bottles and strung string lights across the ceiling. I carried my key on a hair tie around my wrist, Zoey 101 style, because I saw someone on our hall do it. The ridges left red impressions and looked decidedly uncool, but came in handy because I never lost it. Shayla, on the other hand, often forgot hers and somehow always had a dead phone. More than once, I returned home to find her sitting on the floor of the hallway waiting for me to let her in.
For the better part of a decade and the entirety of my twenties thus far, I have counted on Shayla to see me through a myriad of changes—new dorms, apartments, cities, jobs, boyfriends. Every idiosyncrasy has been discovered. We share locations and sweaters and laundry detergent. We have matching New York pajamas. She helps me book flights. I make sure we have paper towels. She orders the Nespresso pods, and I walk to the bodega that has the coffee cake flavored creamer we both like best. Shayla and I craft business ideas together, bring in each other’s mail, and split takeout on Sunday’s. We fill a jar on our coffee table with matchbooks. I break down the recycling, and she plans our trips. We flip each other’s laundry. Every break-up and interview and run-in on the subway has been debriefed and rehearsed and replayed. Promotions, birthdays, and marathons have been celebrated—heartbreaks, hangovers, and colds endured together.
Shayla loves to travel and brings me home gifts as if I were the daughter of a businessman or the girlfriend of a pilot—soaps and chocolates and bottles of olive oil and French skincare from the duty-free. We lament the misfortune that we can’t share shoes. Despite a closet full of clothes, I can never seem to find anything to wear, and Shayla never bats an eye when I raid her closet for the perfect jeans, bag, or jacket. I turn on the bathroom vent after she showers. She drops off iced coffees at my hair appointments. She shows me how to use credit card points and tells me where to get a cheap massage and can locate a stylist in any city in America to give a supermodel blow-out at a minute’s notice. We tag each other in Instagram giveaways that we never win and swap books and share a hairdryer. We wait to watch Dancing with the Stars, Summer House, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Love is Blind together, because it is much more fun to cheer or cry or cringe in each other’s company.
Considering Shayla is ingrained in everything I do, this kind of intimacy—the joy of living and loving someone outside of a romantic relationship—is special and finite. When I consider my good fortune, I feel such gratitude for that exchange of messages in 2019. In my adult life, I have no concept of a home in which Shayla is not included.
On Saturday, I toured an apartment to prepare for the looming end of our lease this summer. The leasing agent asked why I was looking to move. My roommate is going to London, I said. We have lived together for seven years, I added for whatever reason. Wow, he said. That’s not even the end of an era. It’s more like the end of a chapter of your life. And because it is not appropriate to start crying in an elevator with a leasing agent, I just said I know, right?
Of all the things that we do together and for each other, there is one for which I am most grateful. With Shayla, there is never any catching up to be done. Our lives are lived in parallel and shared as one continuous story. You do not need to be best friends with your roommate, but thank goodness I am.
Crying 😭
Aww so sweet