last year, i spent a summer in new york. i found a cute studio in brooklyn where i could live alone with a bunch of plants and have my peace. i thought my summer would be lovely—i finally had a big-girl corporate job in new york city, my own little apartment, an independent life.
as weeks went by, i started feeling increasingly lonelier—the sink constantly filled up with dishes that would never get done, every day i had to make breakfast all over again, the mysterious dead cockroach in the corner terrified the shit out of me so i had to facetime my brother to finally find the courage to pick it up and trash it (that occupied me for a whole afternoon). going to the laundromat was exhausting and washing the floor took up a whole day.
sometimes i would rot all day and just watch tv in my apartment and not even step outside, i would get food delivered to my door and refuse to interact with a single person for a whole day. it felt isolating, and i isolated myself. i could feel my brain melting from all the dopamine i was hitting it with, and my job wasn’t as fun as i thought it would be. i felt lonely in “the best city in the world” because my friends from college where not there and i didn’t vibe with the other interns at my job. i felt forgotten.
this year, i spent a summer at dartmouth. i lived with two roommates in a tiny apartment, and i was the lucky winner of the (only) top bunk. i have never in my life picked “double” or “triple” as my top option for any type of housing, because i’ve always valued my personal space more than the opportunity to bond with someone else.
but alas, i have discovered the joy of living with roommates. i love it when i come back home and the dishes in the sink just disappear, the dining chairs change positions, nikes and crocs are missing (my roommates are wearing them today), irene’s slippers relocated from under the dining table to her desk, and katie’s wet swimsuit is hanging in the bathroom (she already did her daily dip in the connecticut river). i love knowing that life is happening around me, that there is someone who relates to me, and that we’re all sharing the struggle of the routine together. i love that even though we’re not friends, we co-exist and that makes me a hundred times happier than i was last summer.
they say being alone is good and healthy for you, and i agree. i guess i forgot how important human interaction is to my survival, even in minuscule doses that feel like drops in the ocean of my life. my summer roommates created a puddle in what otherwise would have been an empty desert.