30 Things I've Learned: #4

-Live with roommates. 

Nothing has taught me patience, agility, and refrigerator etiquette like sharing space with people.  My freshman year of college I lived in an apartment with 3 other girls.  The girl in my room was bipolar and did not take her meds. She went into more than one fits of rage, ripping out chunks of her hair in the bathroom - and leaving it.  She left handprints on the wall after one incident. Another time she "dropped" my computer. Then there was the time I came home to her washing dishes in a full on ballgown, "where ya going?", "to the grocery store". Ah, of course. Why didn't I just assume? 

My sophomore year there was the girl who flirted with my boyfriend via instant messenger, told him I was sure to leave him, but she wouldn't. #squad wasn't a thing back then. She would be the same girl that would go on to tell anyone with ears that I was dating my boss (I was an RA, he was in charge of us all).  She did it in an attempt to get friends. I politely told her one night to never speak to me again. That in attempting to use gossip to gain friends she'd lost one (and gained none). I never spoke to her again. No loss there.  

My junior and senior year I lived alone and then with a roommate. Both would go by uneventfully. Living with a boyfriend is much different so he doesn't fall under the "roommate" category. And now there is San Francisco. My official full circle moment - 10 years later.  This time there are no Cinderella girls, but there have been narcissistic guy and creepy dude.  Each one forcing me to utilize my room as it's own studio-like apartment. 

Every roommate has been unique, a couple were awesome and are lifelong friends. The people detailed above are lifelong lessons.  I've always known I wasn't a person who liked having a roommate.  I have a specific style and taste and above all cleanliness that usually clashes with at least one person in the house.  Not to mention the potluck style of obtaining roommates - randomly assigned in college, craigslist now - is rarely a combination that works.  But all of them have been important pieces to the puzzle.  I make no secret patience is a virtue I am continuously working on.  One of the major lessons I learned during my breakup is that I didn't possess enough of it throughout the relationship.  So I don't find it the least bit ironic that nearly a decade after my first go round I'm once again acquiecing and compromising with strangers.  Some lessons are best learned the second time around. 

This will most likely be my last roommate situation (even if I don't get married, I'm not exactly aiming to have a roommate at 40).  So I'm trying to make sure that amidst the disagreements and trade-offs (1/4 of a fridge is not nearly enough) I learn something, something I can take with me on my next journey. My next cohabitation with a significant other.  

Roommates at 20.  Roommates at 30. Bookends.  Quite opposite and thoroughly the same.  But the perspective? Entirely different.