Redheaded Jill

My poor roommate.

In February 2013 my parents, youngest sister and I flew to Alabama to hunt for apartments. I had been accepted into law school and it was my first time getting a place of my own.

It was winter, but I remember the weather being warm. I thought, “If it’s this warm in winter what will summer be like?” We toured the school, found an apartment, and made a quick trip down to the Mississippi coast to visit some family friends.

In August we moved in. I say “we” because I had a roommate. I had a good friend from undergrad who I convinced to move to Alabama with me. We had a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment. She had a job on campus and I had school, so we mostly did our own thing.

I should have learned my lesson from undergrad, because I do not do well with roommates. I am extremely introverted and honestly pretty spoiled. I didn’t love sharing my space. I didn’t love her furniture. I didn’t love hearing her play the piano. I didn’t love the different approaches we had to life. I was afraid to move to a new place all on my own but I should have done it anyway. My poor roommate. We were both lonely and disappointed with the whole situation, but I was not empathetic at the time.

I was so salty about having to live in Alabama. I wanted to be in Texas, but that’s another story. I was negative and surly and snarky. One night my roommate confronted me and asked why I couldn’t just try to have a better attitude. OH that was the WRONG thing to say… (In other words, I was not mature enough to accept her constructive criticism.)

We survived the year, though it was a long year. At the end of it I dropped out of law school and moved back home to Kansas. My roommate stayed in Alabama, where she eventually got married and started a family. I am grateful to her because I met a lot of amazing people through her job and her church family. I harbor a lot of guilt because she was convinced to change her life at my request and I ended up being a total buzz kill. I hope she’s living a happy life now. And of course she’s an adult who could have moved anywhere she wanted. Maybe it’s a little conceited to think I held that much sway over her, or anyone for that matter. But the guilt remains. It was my idea. It was a selfish one.

The ironic thing is… we disagreed on a lot because she is pretty “crunchy”. Very into natural living, well water over tap water, raw milk over pasteurized milk, homeschooling over public school, etc… Those things drove me a little batty in 2013. But 2023 me is 100% on board. I have use filters and distill my water so as to avoid the fluoride, I only drink raw milk from a local dairy, if I ever have kids I will NOT be sending them in to our public school system… I guess you could say it was “the right time the wrong me” as the song goes…