At 7:00 in the morning, I wake up to the sound of her making a coffee. We take turns washing our faces in our shared bathroom, attempting to converse while brushing our teeth and getting dressed for our very different days. By 7:30, she’s out the door for class. I follow shortly after.
By 4:00, we’re usually home again. On good days, this means a D’Lites run for specialty soft serve loaded with rainbow sprinkles and gummy bears, followed by our designated couch and homework time watching something stupid, cheesy, or wonderfully mindless. The Office is always a safe bet, but Dancing With the Stars works too.
None of this sounds important. That’s exactly why I’m going to miss it so much. This is my last year living with my best friend, and lately, I’ve started to notice all of the tiny pieces of our lives that I know without ever intentionally meaning to learn them.
I know the sound of her keys in the door. I know what time she leaves in the morning and when I can expect to see her in the afternoon. I know the power suddenly cutting out means she’s blowing out her hair. We know when the other needs to do laundry, when one of us has an especially long day, and what errands that could easily be done alone should be an excuse to leave the house together.
Our lives are completely different. She’s in nursing school; I’m finishing a degree in psychology. Our courses, responsibilities, and plans after graduation barely resemble each other’s. Yet, after living together for the fourth year, our schedules have become accidentally intertwined. There are the routines, and then there are all the things that happened often enough to be a staple in our house.
We’ve pretended to be bartenders in our kitchen before a night out, throwing together questionable versions of beloved cocktails with heavy-handed measurements. We’ve thrown joint parties where all the different people we’ve collected throughout college somehow ended up packed into our tiny house. We’ve complained about our boyfriends, gone on double dates, locked in together, watched a downright unreasonable number of crime documentaries, and dragged ourselves out for hungover coffee and bagel runs more times than I can count.
And our house is evidence of all of it. There are all the silly little trinkets we’ve collected, birthday decorations that somehow became permanent decor, and random things we’ve dumpster-dived for during move-out season. Eventually, we’ll have to sit down and decide who gets what. I think that’s when it will feel real.
College friendships are strange because proximity does so much of the work for you. Your best friend isn’t someone you need to make plans with three weeks in advance. She’s right down the hall. You don’t need to call her to ask how her day went because you hear the door open when she gets home. You don’t need a life update because you already know she had a class at 7:30 this morning, has two exams she’s worried about next week, and needs to meal prep tonight.
After graduation, knowing these intimate details of each other’s lives will require intention. She won’t know that I’ve been sitting on the couch for three hours pretending to start an assignment. There probably won’t be a spontaneous D’Lites run at 4:00 followed by couch time. We’ll have to call, text, plan visits, book flights, and remember to tell each other about all the ordinary moments we currently get to witness firsthand.
Our eventual separation makes me sad, but I also think there’s something really beautiful about why it has to happen. At the end of next summer, she’ll graduate from nursing school and begin the career that she has spent years working towards. By that time, I’ll have graduated as well and hopefully be starting graduate school in a bigger city than Gainesville. We’re chasing completely different dreams, and I hope they take us exactly where we want to go.
Maybe the bittersweet part of your last year of college is realizing that getting everything you’ve wanted for the last four years also means leaving behind the life you worked so hard to build. I don’t want to stay in this house forever. I want to see where she ends up. I want to see where I end up. I want us to visit each other in whatever cities we eventually call home, and hear all about careers, relationships, homes, and lives that neither of us can picture yet.
But, I also know that there will probably be a day when I’d give anything to be back on our couch at 4:00, eating soft serve covered in an irresponsible amount of rainbow sprinkles and gummy bears, watching something stupid and knowing exactly what tomorrow looks like for both of us.
Someday, I might not know my roommate’s schedule by heart anymore. But for four years, I got to know her life that way. And I think that is one of the greatest gifts that college gave me.