Like most people I hated high school. A college 200 miles away from my hometown promised great change. Yet one thing would keep me tied to high school: my roommate. We were polar opposites. She was the peppy popular girl and I was the alternative introvert. But the strange thing was that it worked. She brought me up and I pulled her back down to Earth. When we started as freshmen we were friendless, thrown into a foreign environment where neither of us had a place yet. Our relationship grew out of necessity. Ashley was the only person around, that one girl I vaguely knew from high school. But we made do with it. It started with breakfast every day, and then movie nights on the weekends. As we adjusted we found our drastically different niches, but this didn’t change the terms of our relationship.Tough days always had a happy ending. We learned how to talk about everything, making our own mini therapy sessions. And then just like that the year ended. We went home and locked the door tight on that fourteen by fifteen room.
Being home was kind of mind blowing after living in a room comparable to a coffin. The most different thing was, of course, the lack of a roommate. Summer remained quiet as living in different towns, jobs, and travel made seeing each other quite difficult. We were unsure about the upcoming year, joking that since we were sleeping in different rooms next year we would have to pull our beds into the common room. Three very grueling months later we managed to fill two SUVs and make the three hour trip to our wonderful Wofford home.
A new year meant a new dorm layout. We made up for our separate bedrooms by basically living on the couch. Whenever we’re home at the same time we’re crowded together doing homework, or taking a break to watch “Dateline”.
It’s well into our sophomore year now and I wouldn’t want to live with anyone else. Movie nights have evolved into afternoon marathons of “Say Yes to the Dress” and “Four Weddings”. And now get breakfast a little later in the day, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I know I wouldn’t be able to function as a normal human being without living with my best friend and roommate. The next two years will bring about great change, but no matter what happens I know I can always count on my steadfast roomie.
