Roomies

Choosing who you live with is something I never thought about when I was younger. I think the only times I gave it any consideration was when Dad would leave for days at a time and I'd need a babysitter to stay over at the house. It obviously becomes a much bigger issue when you get older. When my Dad married my step-mum, I had my first inkling that even if you like a person, it doesn't mean you'll like living with them.
I remember contemplating moving out after graduation. One of my best friends and I had decided we would get an apartment together; we basically lived at each other's houses anyway, what would the difference be? That fell through pretty fast, since we were both applying to universities and that took all our organizing abilities, so I applied to residence at Dal. The thought of living with a stranger terrified me, and the fear was prevalent at my closed-off-from-the-world, upper-class high school; all the other kids in my grade were clamoring to get single rooms at their universities of choice, scared of what low life they might get stuck with.
I got a single room, awesome, and lucked out by getting placed around a lot of amazing people. One of whom stopped me one day, as I was carting laundry around, and asked if I wanted to live with her. She was getting a house together with some friends, but they wanted to get a 5-bedroom and they were one person short. I remember just forcing myself to not think; I said yes right away.
That was me trying to force myself "out of my comfort zone," or "embrace the university atmosphere," which I'm pretty sure I thought were the same thing. Turns out it was an amazing choice. I ended up in a house with four friggin' wicked people (only two of the original plan, lessons learned there), made a girl cry (which is an extremely awkward scenario), and definitely cemented some long-lasting friends. Maybe I'll write about my first digs another time, because it definitely deserves more space.
Living in my first real apartment, with my first real roomies, I learned some important things. A lot of them involved what I could and couldn't handle in a living companion. In addition to first-hand experience, I heard horror stories from friends going through their first roomies as well. All in all, I lucked out hardcore first time around.
All that luck must have brought the fear back. A five-bedroom house is a house that probably won't last, not unless you're some devoted polygamists. The house split up, and I latched onto someone I already knew I could live with. Things happen, though, and shit changes.
These last two weeks, I found myself freaking out because I'd gone from excited to have the perfect roomie come back in September, to desperately trying to find anyone who would live with me. Dangerous times, but money hold too much of a sway to be picky when there are only two months til the guillotine falls. Once again, however, I lucked out, and the best friend from the beginning of the story needed a place to live.
So I'm not sure how things are going to work out, Kait and I are perfectly aware that some day in the near future there may be an attempted murder in here, but I'm thinking that eight months can't totally destroy a good friendship and who knows, maybe it'll be GOOD! Either way, the terrified feeling that I had when I thought I would end up with a stranger off Kajiji is gone now, and I couldn't be happier.

Okay, enough rambling. Work in the morning.
I'm sure if you're reading this, I love you;
- SOS