"My roommate got pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere." - Stephen Wright
My sister and I both have very strong personalities, growing up she was my best friend, my partner in brother torture, the cool chick who let me in on all her sleepovers, the one who taught me how to be bad. I love my sister to death, but life is not always sunshine and daisies. We could go from building pillow forts to chucking shoes in the blink of an eye depending on our moods, and having two teenage girls in the same place, moods changed like lightning, and that was always interesting. After she moved out, we became best friends, when she moved to a different state we would talk to each other at least twice a week.
In college I had a roommate that didn't believe in paying bills, and well... actually a lot of things about that whole situation were fucked up, on both sides, and I really don't feel like thinking back on all that because somehow, amazingly we have managed to become friends again.
When I first moved into my current house, my brother in law lived with us, that was a weird situation because he was still in high school and I felt like a parent, but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel like telling him to get your shit together I'm not your fucking mother. I had to feed the kid and cook and clean after him, and often he didn't like what I had cooked. We had to rip out the carpet in the bathroom because he couldn't find the toilet. He only stayed with us for about a year, eventually moving on to another friends house where he clung to them like parents, until about a year ago when he got his own apartment, and started becoming an adult... I'm still proud of him, and I'm glad that he learned some manners, even though I'm sure they are not all courtesy of me, as much as I would like to think so.
My current roommate moved in shortly after he left, she was in a bad situation and needed somewhere to stay for a couple months, she is someone my husband knew from his hobby club, and I had known in high school... it wasn't a big deal to me a couple months would be no problem... I feel like with here there were two roommates roommate #1 always at the house, always up to hang out and have a good time, then once she got her new boyfriend... roommate #2 who really doesn't stay in the house often, and somehow manages to make me feel like a stranger in my own home. Its been two years now and I am ready to say Auf Wiedersehen, but I don't know how to bring it up. There's no real reason I should want her gone aside from I want to turn her bedroom into a studio. This makes me feel like kind of an awful person, but really... I want my space.
My advice to anyone who does not have a roommate is if you can afford it, stay that way.. because as John Cheese said at the end of the day "you'll come home from a hard day's work and throw your pants on the floor because they're your pants. It's your floor. Your rules. And as you spend the rest of your pants less day, relaxing on your self-made pantscarpet, there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it."
