In Fall 2018, I picked my roommates myself. Surprise, surprise. I actually got along with the three of them. We rented a house for a semester before they all left for study abroad. My favorite roommate, Marie, had a teeny-tiny problem that she didn’t share with anyone before moving in. She had IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Totally still would have chosen to live with her if she was upfront about this because one of my sorority girl roommates had it before:

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*If she had ANYTHING with gluten or dairy in it, my sorority girl roommate would be stuck on the toilet for an hour or so. She coined the phrase, ‘some things are worth getting the shits for,’ and even has a cutesy painting that says this hanging up in her living room wall these days. If I’m really lucky, it makes a guest appearance in her Snapchat stories every once in awhile. Being the trooper I am, I once had to dismantle the fire alarm in her bathroom (while she was confined to the toilet) so we wouldn’t get fined for our other roommate smoking pot. My nose took a bit to recover, but I earned roommate of the year for that one*

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So yeah, I’m kind of a really great roommate. And living with someone who had IBS was definitely not a dealbreaker. Shit happens. It was just that there were four of us. And one and a half bathrooms. I also had a lactose-intolerant roommate who refused to succumb to dairy-free lifestyle, despite many interventions about the frequent toilet paper shortage. If you had to pee in the morning, you just had to hold it. We developed the bladders of champions that semester. IBS was way better than a lot of the other stuff I got stuck dealing with throughout the years. Much preferred over roommates trying to have sex in my room, while I was in there. The only issue I had with my current set-up was that the bathroom was on the other side of my room. There’s something especially magical about waking up to the sound of someone having the Hershey Squirts every morning. Foreshadowing. Really set the tone for the semester. My roommate used to sneak into my room in the mornings and light a candle for me so I wouldn’t suffocate in my sleep. Very considerate.

        We moved in with each other in August, so it wasn’t until September, when school started, that we needed to have an intervention about the bathroom. She had to use the bathroom with the shower in it every morning, so we were all fearful of leaving the shower smelling worse than we did before we got in. So, we went through a trial and error phase for most of September. At first, we tried those poo sprays. Shockingly, the Dollar Tree brand works the best. These can only go so far, so we tried bleach next, which got expensive pretty quickly. After many failed attempts, we discovered that Walmart sold outdoor incense that did the trick. $2 would us last three weeks. This tactic worked out pretty well. Then, she got a boyfriend. Worried about her IBS farts and bathroom sounds, we decided on a shower speaker and GasX too. I was recruited to the status of GasX purchaser. At 11- something PM, my roommates would barge into my room and bait me into buying GasX for them. At some point, my other two roommates decided that GasX was the perfect remedy for never farting in front of their boyfriends, so our household was running through GasX like General Sherman went through the South. My roommates knew too many people who worked at Target, so, by default, it was me. I often found myself buying fart medication and various snacks at practically midnight in my Frosty the Snowman pajamas with a face mask on. I’d like to think that the masks made me indiscernible and that the cute cashier who always seemed to ring up my items had no clue who I was, but I’ve definitely seen him crack smiles at me whenever I go to Target these days. Not my proudest moments, but again, roommate of the year status.

        By now, we were all very acquainted with Marie’s bad habits, so when I came home from a long day of class, only to see Marie mooning my other roommate as she took pictures, I assumed my roommate was just pulling a wing woman of the year. Then, after hearing the phrase, “does it look worse than last week,” I thought she was talking about melanoma or something. I was not surprised to see a half-naked lady sprawled out on our couch. Character development. Honestly, I thought it was kind of funny. Turns out, Marie had developed a rash on her butt and needed a better glimpse of it. She wasn’t particularly worried about it because it was No-Nut-November, after all. She was so chill about it, that she invited me to come join her on the couch as the roommates all looked through different photos of it to see if it had gotten better or worse since they last took pictures. Apparently, it had been there for a minute. Next thing I know, she whips out my clay face mask and applied it to the rash. My unexplained breakouts began making sense. I blamed them on the stress of midterms, not the skincare routine that had left my face virtually spotless for the past year. That face mask is hers now. I decided to buy a new one. For the girlies with oily skin, it does wonders. I literally put up with a ton of shit that semester, but it was okay because I loved my roommates and I was able to take the good with the bad that semester. I laughed off my breakouts and that was that. When I asked her about her rash this November, she still had it. Apparently, her boyfriend has a matching one too. This was the worst semester of my life, but I got through it because I loved my roommates, flaws and all. During the whole semester, I was struggling with an abusive boyfriend, toxic friendships, and the stress of classes. Having good roommates made all the difference, but this was not the case in the Winter.