My roommate... we’ll call her Stacy... my roommate Stacy and I are very... different. She is messy; I am an extreme neat freak (which I didn’t know until I moved to a tiny university housing bedroom that feels not much bigger than a bathtub when it is vaguely messy). She is likes to do papers 20 minutes before they are due and stay up watching freaking Beauty and the Beast the night before; I like starting projects 4 weeks in advanced and be printing my 5th draft the night before a paper is due. She can easily roll out of bed and get dressed in two seconds; I take an hour to carefully dress myself and walking out the door without lipstick is a catastrophe. The list is literally endless. There is a musical called Wicked where Glinda and the wicked witch of the west end up as roommates... it's pretty much my life.
As an only child, learning to coexist with another put stress on my days last semester. This semester, Stacy and I’s “differences” began to escalate to the point where we refused to speak or look at each other for just shy of 3 weeks (save some seriously loud explicates on particularly tense days). Our relationship gave “I hate that bitch” a whole new meaning (for both of us). Living with the hate, being sweet to someone in the hall and then walking into my room and being the polar opposite, slamming doors while she was sleeping, gritting my teeth every time I heard someone walking down the hallway willing it not to be her was unhealthy. What was worse that we have the same God. It was so hypocritical for us to sit there at identical miniature desks, Bibles on both of our shelves, and sneers plastered on our faces.
A friend from high school’s death really shook me up. Since then, Stacy and I have decided to never fight again. We have decided to do our best to love each other no matter how loud or stupid or inconsiderate the other one is. We even started sharing rice cakes... equivalent to like... a Sunni-Shiite intermarriage.
Last night, I walked in the door and found Stacy cuddled up in her bed. She looked like a beautiful, snuggly Kuala bear. We ended up setting down a giant fuzzy picnic blanket, putting Adele on, and eating salad out of mismatched dishes. We shared the ins and outs of our days. We giggled. We screamed. We facebook stalked. We researched names on Urban Dictionary. As she stood up in her navy, silk “mom” PJ’s we kicked the dirty dishes to the side, said that we loved each other, and closed our droopy eyelids. If someone showed me a look at Stacy and I’s new and improved relationship a few weeks ago, I would have fallen over. Laughing about her weird obsession with musical theater, jumping around in circles when that crush finally asked one of us for a number, sharing crasins, telling her she looked lovely in her spring dress, and being able to scream from the shower that “ I forgot a towel! I’m naked and cold and need a towel!” and know she will hear you over her earphones-- are precious glimmers that should not be allowed to fall through the cracks.
This tough spot, like so many that I am sure to follow in my life, is such a lesson in love, healing, and that no one will get very far in life without possessing the ability to understand something from someone else’s perspective (at least not very happily). So many things in this world would really benefit from a picnic blanket and a Caesar salad.
Stacy, this song is to us... I love you babe.
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