blog is for brain dump. this is what i am thinking about today.

i miss my roommates!! i miss living with my friends. it turns out, no matter what kind of state i'm in it's just better to live with people.

precious moments exist when people are around. people go together.

you might be getting up to get a snack in the middle of the night and your friend from college who is now your roommate's boyfriend is getting water and its 2:00 a.m. and he catches you in the dark with your head in the fridge or vice versa, and that might happen enough times that you guys start to crack up when it does.

you might step in and close the balcony door at exactly the same time that paula steps in and closes the front door, which are parallel to each other. it is late and you're both trying not to wake the other up but you are both up and you make eye contact in silence and check the time and burst out laughing.

a few months earlier, you might have been walking home in downtown, racking your brain for friends whose leases are up soon too, and kevin and your future roommate call out the car window to say hi, stopped at a red light, and it turns out she needs a roommate as well.

a few months later, he will use that car to move in just about every significant piece of furniture for the apartment that we can find on facebook marketplace and i conveniently happen to be out of town for most of the heavy lifting.

you might be on your friends couch in another state and get a text that we have kittens now. and when you get back from visiting your mom up the coast (and having a fantastic time) there are two harbingers of chaos in the living room who become so absolutely important and beloved by friends and parents and coworkers, and because your roommate works for a private label company their little faces end up on a crewneck graphic for a fall '25 delivery going to Target.

you might have wanted your own bathroom and you might have wanted a massive balcony that overlooked from downtown all the way to the east side and you might have wanted a pink velvet couch and you might have gotten everything you wanted.

you might come home and your friend who you were just thinking of is sitting on the couch. you may leave for a walk and the place is empty and when you get back the kitchen is full of laughing and clanging and theo is here and he's making avocado toast. and it's perfect because you're starving and mariah brought back some kind of aioli from somewhere and is making everyone try it. and there's always something in the fridge that's awesome and something that was maybe awesome like 12 weeks ago and it shouldn't be in there anymore but it's okay no one is gonna deal with it or get mad but we will eventually all stand around to watch mariah pull it out of the lower shelf back corner and go "ew what is that?!" and all belly laugh until we can't breathe and the smell is gone.

you might find yourself exiting a lease in the fall because your roommate who drifted as a friend is moving in with her partner, and by the time it's next halloween he is at our party and she is not.

maybe you came home from work and you were exhausted and dreading the fact you have to cook but you open the door and there is magically a homemade pizza fresh out of the oven and since there are no chairs for the entire lease (??) we sit on the couch and the floor and vent about our industry and how odd and fucked up it is and how we love it all the same.

–––

i made the bold and courageous decision to get a studio apartment in may of this year. it was a decision i deliberated over for many hours. partially it was logistical, partially just out of curiosity –– how would it feel to live by myself? would i feel more "adult"? more independent? scratch the itch. it felt like time perhaps.

the answer to both is no. i'm now on the other side of it like. eugh. i miss my friends.

i wish the three of us had adopted the kittens and kept living together instead of letting them get adopted by someone else and going solo.

i guess sometimes you make decisions and no matter how long you think on it and ask people about it and make pro-con lists there is no way to guarantee a desired outcome. this part of my life is like the second semester of high school chemistry when you start to put together that there are more exceptions to the rule than applications of it and so the rule is obliterated. not quite sure what to do with this.

i guess we just kinda rock and roll. there are seven and a half months left of this lease.