They say a true friend will never leave your side, will never judge you when you confide in them. Well, I have had my share of “best friends” and I beg to differ. What is a best friend anyway? Is it someone who buys you things? Someone you can always count on to party with? I still don’t know after one particular incident I had with my best friend.
I’ve known her about 16 years of my life now. When we were little, we went to school together, slept at each others’ houses, played, and did all sorts of things that young kids would do. We were BFFs. Best Friends Forever! Ha, we were such dumb young kids. Yeah, we would fight from time to time, but for stupid reasons like who got to play with Barbie longer or who deserved the last chocolate chip cookie.
As we aged and began our middle school years, the fights became more intense. We were caught smack-dab in the middle of our crazy preteen years and boys and sports were always the topic of discussion. There weren’t many cute boys, so you could only imagine how many cat fights there were over Mr. Popular. What better way to catch his attention, but by joining every single sport and being good at them? So that is exactly what Miss Hay and I did. I absolutely hate admitting when I’m not No. 1 at something, but I must admit she was the better athlete.
Our junior high years flew by too fast and now high school was all the hype. We couldn’t wait. High school meant that we would get to hang out with all the cool older kids and run for things like class representative and most attractive. However, our plans went down the drain once I moved. I moved from a town of under 1,000 to one of 5,000. It was a whole lot bigger and I liked that. The new distance made our friendships drift apart. We were both extremely involved in school and didn’t have much time to talk or hang out with one another. We were both swamped on weekends with sports, UIL academic events, and Future Farmers of America.
Nonetheless, we both wound up at TAMIU. I was so excited that we would start our old friendship again. I couldn’t wait to room with Miss Hay and I thought she felt the same. I was wrong.
It just so happened that Miss Hay’s cousin, who happened to be one of my classmates from high school, was going to room with my best friend. I was furious. This girl was a compulsive liar who always started drama, and even though she was Miss Hay’s cousin, she too knew that the cousin was the epitome of a drama queen. So I left it at that, and the two cousins roomed together while I roomed with another friend of mine from high school.
Things started out great for Miss Hay and her cousin, they loved their living arrangement and there wasn’t anything negative to report. My roommate, on the other hand, was a recluse. She never left her cubicle of a room, not even to eat, work out, or wash laundry with me. I believed it was because of her possessive boyfriend, but she constantly reminded me that he wasn’t the reason. She told me it was because she really felt there was no point to socialize with any of the people on campus. I thought to myself, “you crazy girl.” How would she ever have a career if she didn’t feel socializing with other human beings was a must? I couldn’t change what she believed, so I left it at that. It felt like I didn’t even have a roommate.
As our first year at TAMIU progressed, Miss Hay started telling me that she and her cousin were having heated arguments about a boyfriend who wasn’t even a student at TAMIU but was living with the cousin in her room. Cecily began to skip class, even though she was only taking nine hours, and started talking less and less to Miss Hay. One thing led to another and I told Miss Hay I was right about her shady cousin. I told her that if she had just roomed with me, she would have saved herself the trouble and the heartache.
She got angry with me for talking badly about her cousin, but it was the truth. It’s obvious that no one likes to admit when they are wrong, but Miss Hay was beyond stubborn. She couldn’t stand the fact that she was basically stuck living in a situation where her own blood turned on her and her “best friend” was correct all along. Miss Hay began to ignore my calls and stopped hanging out with me. I wrote her a letter and left it in the crack of her door, but I never got a response from her. After only two months of college, I found out from someone else that the cousin was kicked out of the dorms for allowing her boyfriend to live with her. Miss Hay was roomateless.
The day after I found this out Miss Hay and I ran into each other at the REC. It was pretty much impossible to ignore each other, so I asked her how things were going and she simply responded, “Okay,” and walked off. I wasn’t expecting the cold shoulder, but I got it. I didn’t understand why she was reacting so drastically about this. Maybe I didn’t know the whole story, maybe it was more severe than I realized. Still, I did all I could do. I tried being the bigger person by apologizing to her through a letter, I called her constantly, and I even tried speaking to her in person. Everything I had done was a failure. I decided I had done all I could do and wasn’t going to bend over backwards for someone who obviously didn’t care about our friendship as much as I thought she did.
The year went by so fast and before I knew it, finals were coming up and I had a whole summer to plan ahead of me. After finals, I had to move out of my dorm fast. My older sister was graduating from college and I had to take three exams earlier than scheduled just to make it to her graduation on time.
Moving out alone wasn’t easy, but I did it all in one night. That night I saw Miss Hay taking some stuff down to her car. It looked like she was struggling, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I should go over and lend her a helping hand after all that had happened between us. Being the nice person that I always am, I went over and asked her if she needed help. To my surprise she said yes. After everything was loaded up in her car, we hung out by the pool for a while just catching up on almost a whole year of not speaking to each other. I didn’t bother asking why she stopped talking to me, but she explained anyway. She told me that her cousin wasn’t going to return to TAMIU and had quit school all together. I told her it was getting late and I had a final early the next morning, so we left the pool and walked our separate ways.
Just as I was about to turn the corner she yelled out, “Roomies next year for sure Sarah.” I stopped, turned around, gave her a look of uncertainty, and entered the building. They say friends should never room together because it splits them apart. I both agree and disagree with this statement. I think it just depends on how well you know and trust the person. I’ve seen friendships end because of living situations, but I have also seen them grow stronger because of it. Through this and many other experiences, I have accepted that fights are normal. Knowing how to deal with them is the hard part. It’s next year now and my roommate is…
TO BE CONTINUED!