About once a week, I down my coffee and sprint to the bathroom, moments later, only to find the door locked. Someone beat me to it. I pace in the hallway for a minute or two, imagining that they must be almost done.
But time is not on my side, so I take two flights of stairs to the basement to do my business in the spider-infested half bathroom, ripe with annoyance. On my long climb back up to my bedroom, I ask myself why I live in a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house with four roommates.
Sometimes, I wonder why I’m still living here
When the pandemic started, I was living with just one roommate. Then, I moved in with a partner. Our breakup led to a swift life change, and I landed in a big Denver house with a small army of companions after friends invited me to snag their spare room.
It wasn’t really a conscious decision to move back into a college-like environment; it was more like I slid over a cascading waterfall and into my current bedroom and found my accommodations reasonable enough.
I’ve been here ever since.
Though sometimes I wonder about my choice of housing, there are a few reasons I stay: A noisy house feels comforting to me, we’re half a mile away from the train that takes me to the airport (which is extra convenient, as I’m an avid traveler), and rent control doesn’t exist in Colorado, so there aren’t a lot of places that fit my budget in the first place.
I thought my life would look different by this point
If you had asked me where I’d be by the time I was 33 years ago, I would have told you I’d be living out of a backpack somewhere in Europe or South America with a smile plastered on my face. I thought that right now, I’d be traveling around, filthy, with a map in one hand and a baguette in the other. And for much of the year, I do, in fact, live this way (albeit it’s usually an espresso instead of a baguette, and a smartphone instead of a map).
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What I didn’t realize all those years ago, while I was dreaming up my ideal life, is that sometimes I’d crave the comfort of a home, too. I couldn’t have predicted that after a few weeks on the road, I’d grow weary of red-eye flights and begin to crave my bed, a familiar ultra-processed diet, and my guitar. And I definitely couldn’t have imagined that travel was going to be lonely.
There are pros to my living situation
We’re all friends in addition to being roommates, which means we often share meals and socialize while we’re home. Having the company is nice, and I knew coming into the situation that it’d be a fit since I was already close with two of my new roommates.
All of us are in our 30s, and we’ve adapted to pitch in with chores to keep the house feeling like a home. Our landlord — another friend — determined the cost of rent, so thankfully, it’s fair or may even be under market value. That’s really helpful as a self-employed writer who’s never quite sure where my next check is going to come from
There are definite pros to living with four roommates, and my vision for myself never included a cookie-cutter life, with a white picket fence and a baby on either hip. But there are still times when I’d gladly pay double the rent for a place of my own.
I’d like to crap in peace whenever the urge arises. I’d also love to have my own parking space and not have to go to war for space in the fridge when I come home from a trip. But most of the time, the inconvenience of a home full of 30-something-year-olds is worth the freedom it affords me. And the laughter across the house is reason enough to stay.
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