Meditation on Roommates, New and Old

It was a lonely walk home with the realization that Leah wouldn’t be there to greet me. Leah was busy setting up in her new home, one street over while I was left with her vacancy to deal with. Sadly, it’s a vacancy that can’t be filled with my new roomate Craig’s behemoth, super-plush couch—though I’ve had worse things enter my life. With the flux of one roommate moving out and another moving in, I know that it will be a hard couple of days to come. But that’s life, and anyone that feels the desire to paraphrase this scenario with a tidal metaphor risks a punch in the nose.

If changing roommates has taught me anything it’s the financial cost of doing so. Dishes, pots, odds and end all find their way back to their original owner and I’m getting a sense of what it will cost to replace all those items that I’ve until now enjoyed free of charge, including the box of Raisin Bran that I contest was mine (even if I had eaten Leah’s entire box of Raisin Bran the week before). I’m almost scared to do anything in my apartment for fear I will discover yet-another-needing-to-be-replaced-item, but it’s not all loss. Craig has a super-nice TV with picture-in-picture, which really means that I can ignore two programs at the same time. He also has an X-Box so I wonder if there will be marathon sessions of Halo 2 in my future. The changing of the guard here at my humble Lawrence Street apartment also means bringing some closure to my relationship with Leah. We broke up weeks ago and yet, because we continued to live together there continued to exist a relationship, albeit from separate rooms. Leah leaving the apartment marks the first time in almost six years we’ve lived apart, and frankly, the prospect of separate lives is little scary. The loss of the individual is a fact of long-term relationships, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. We make personal sacrifices for the good of the relationship, for the betterment of the unit and those that don’t, risk finding themselves as characters in episodes of The Peoples’ Court, Dr. Phil, or Jerry Springer depending on the severity of their lack-of-compromise. Becoming an individual again will be an interesting, nerve-wracking prospect. In past I’ve been my own worst enemy; I hope in hurtling towards thirty, I can turn into my own best friend.

There is a melancholy in change and the loss of the known; I’m unconvinced whether the inherent joy in my morning grapefruit, coffee, and the aforementioned Raising Bran (which I have re-appropriated from Leah’s place) will be enough to assuage the fear of the unfamiliar. But, in time the unfamiliar will inevitably become the familiar—like growing a plant from seed, it just takes time. Of course, Craig will have idiosyncrasies that I’ll need to get used to, and I hope he doesn’t come to some quiet-yet-horrific realization that he’s just moved in with a complete freak, though that might not be far from the truth. Ironically, my new roommate and his girlfriend of four years are also recently broken-up, though they are feeling out their current relationship status from the comfort of separate dwellings. Whatever I’m going through I guess I can take comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one, and in the bedroom next to mine is someone in a similar scenario. No one likes to be by themselves in these kinds of boats; we just hope any company we gain doesn’t constitute a ship of fools.

We’ll be off to the mall today to pick up some furnishings for Leah’s new place—a bachelor apartment of such economy that the finish work and the near-perfect layout only slightly make up for a space where one can watch TV, stir the soup on the stove, and make one’s bed all while sitting on the toilet. Mon petit endroit is palatial in comparison, and has even grown marginally since Craig in his naïve, new-roommate generosity has given me exclusive use of the large, main closet.

If anything, my co-habitation with Leah—though it may have lacked perfection—has meant consistency: a prized commodity given my past luck in finding exceptionally bad roommates. I have lived with those that insisted on urinating in 4-litre jugs to save them a trip to the bathroom in the “wee” hours of the morning, and then refused to throw their piss-receptacles, away. I’ve lived with the person that watched religious programming on the Vision Network at 2:00am at a deafening volume with his face pressed against the glass. I’ve lived with people that deep-fried every piece of food they consumed and never changed the oil, reusing it for every meal during their entire 6-month stay in my apartment. I assure you, I’ve lived with the worst. Craig being employed and sane means that I have climbed at least a ladder’s length in rungs of quality in finding a suitable roomy—I just hope he feels the same way.

The former roommate that stashed his urine-filled bottles under his bed prefaced his ultimate departure from our mutual accommodations with the comment, “I’m tired of putting on clothes in the middle of the night to go use the bathroom.” It seemed like an enigmatic and humerous statement at the time because: a) the piss-jugs indicated that he wasn’t fond of getting out of bed, let alone getting dressed, and b) if he ever did make it to the bathroom after hours, he did so like some horrific, stained-bed-sheet-wrapped manifestation of Ignatius J. Reilly; like some enormous, white, Pacific islander caught during the ritualistic nocturnal communication with off-shore whales, in an oversized sarong that barely covered his monstrous frame—far from what clothes are generally defined as, by Western standards. But, on the cusp of Craig’s fist night living here, I’ve come to the realization that there is luxury in the nude commute from bed to bath, and I’m now forced to admit that I’m not looking forward to the major life change that is robing before a trip to the loo.