Roomate Rituals
Finding ways that make us more than strangers in an apartment together.
The one thing I wasn’t prepared for when university began, was the amount of time spent in a space shared by strangers. It seems silly, knowing how much time I've spent in life in classrooms, restaurants, libraries and other places with people I don't know, but university unlocked a new kind of location:; a home. It’s difficult to exactly find a place to call home. I spent my first year within the walls of a dorm room, constantly treading the line between never wanting to leave, and going back to my hometown without looking back. Finding housing was a challenge, and finding roommates was a different beast. I had only known my one roommate for around eight months, and had only met my other two roommates twice before we moved in together. Group chats and text threads aside, we didn’t know much about each other, and now we were about to share a deeply intimate and vulnerable space together. I didn’t realize how much I had taken for granted the past 18 years of my life, where I knew almost exactly what I was coming home to. That stability was gone, so I had to re-learn it.
Movies are the easiest way to my heart. Two of us (myself included) are film majors, so watching films is a regular occurrence for me. I would watch films on the couch, and watch my roommates slowly trickle in and out of the living room, asking me questions about the film, sometimes pausing to watch a long, before exiting off to something else. Slowly, watching movies became less of a solitary experience, and more of a communal one–, picking out a film to watch alongside a drink or two, and being able to share and discuss the film together. It was the little things, like everyone laughing at the same joke, or making the same observation about a scene, that began to bridge the gap between us being strangers to something more. We didn’t all have to like the movie, but spending that time together through a shared experience created memories that were joint, not separate.
I have a bad habit of being a distraction. If I'm interested in a topic, I’ll spend anywhere from five minutes to five hours talking your ear off about it. I love the art of dialogue and having conversations with people, but I also know how sometimes I can get carried away and talk someone into never wanting to have a conversation with me. This doesn’t happen with us. If both of us manage to sit down in the same room for more than five minutes, that brief conversation often turns into full philosophical- level debates–, ponderings on religion, family, whatever the topic may be. I’ve sat in the same spot while watching the sun go down as I’d been on the Wwikipedia page for various animals, just because we had questions about them. I’ve dissolved into fits of giggles because it was 11 pm, and we’d somehow not run out of things to discuss since 6 pm. Those moments of spontaneity can be rare with how much we treat the place like a revolving door, but I'm grateful for those windows of opportunity when we can talk face to face.
Nothing connects us more together than food. Eating together is an easy way to build a relationship, but sharing a meal together is the easiest way to one’s soul. The second time all four of us hung out was at Chez Piggy for brunch. It was a slightly awkward meeting, to be honest, but the one thing we all universally agreed on was how good the food was. Since then, we’ve made it out to brunch at the start of every semester. We’ll each get our own food, but pass around plates, steal fries, and share drinks with one another to get a taste of each other’s perspectives. All of us have uniquely different tastes, which makes it even more exciting to see what others will get. We’ve also made meals together, each contributing a part to breakfast for dinner, or grabbing different chip flavours to share on the couch. No matter the occasion, food is our language of love.
The more I revealed the mundane interactions just by being in the same space together, the more we all grew closer, and it made me feel like my apartment was more like a home. I know that one day these moments will become memories, and I'll be grateful to have spent them with them.
