My roommates are my 2 bestest friends in the whole world.
This is not the fate of some freakishly-perfect-craigslist-roommate-matchmaking (I have heard of this happening, though I wouldn’t be surprised if such stories are urban myths). The three of us met in San Francisco at the impressionable age of nine and have been best friends for nearly a decade. We often day dreamed about “how hella awesome” it would be to live together during summers of rooming together at Chorus Camp (a camp where you sing 6+ hours a day and think it’s great but complain about the evening activities that involve sport-like games- it’s a camp that makes no sense to outsiders but holds some of the fondest childhood memories for many campers). This was always one of those “wouldn’t that be great, but it will never happen” day dreams. Especially as we got older, fond ourselves in three pretty different corners of the country, and couldn’t even coordinate a summer to all be counselors at camp together.
Then about this time last year, we found ourselves lying on a hill staring up at clouds (picture it that way at least- in actuality this was probably a 3-way phone call or e-mail chain and the image of that is lame), contemplating our futures, which were no longer distant fantasies but up close and staring us in the face. The “what if” turned into “why the hell not?”. Then after months of “I can’t really believe this is actually going to happen”, and 2 of us apartment hunting, signing a lease and faxing papers to the third who signed sight unseen, we all moved into our very own apartment in the “center of the universe.”
The idea of living with your 2 best friends inspires bipolar emotions. On one hand excitement and glee. The other dread and fear. Your living with your best friends? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve heard variations of that a lot. It is terrifying. A classic scary story: One dark and stormy night 3 best friends move into an apartment together, thinking it’s the best idea ever! After just weeks of dirty dishes, loud sex shaking the walls, neglected chore charts, “2 is a company 3 is a crowd”incidences, they all hate each other and claw each others eyes out and never see eachother (because they’re blind AND they’re mortal enemies) again. I’m not just being dramatic, it’s not joke that living together has ruined many a friendship.
It’s been over 6 months in our adorable Manhattan apartment and I still have both my eyes and my two best friends very much intact. We have yet to have a fight, or even any passive aggressiveness worth mentioning. In fact, with one roommate gone this week for spring break in the DR the 2 of us remaining sit around missing her to the point where we are forced to borrow her clothes to simulate her presence, thus making her absence easier (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
We may not fill the “live together and hate eachother” cliché but we do a damn good job at the “so cute it’s almost gross, giggly, finish-eachothers-sentences, bestfriendsforever!” cliché. I love my roommates, my living situation, and it’s really amazing.
