I'll be the first person on the planet to admit that I LOVED living alone.

There's so little pressure to do things that you have to do when you have someone else living with you. Like making sure the TV isn't too loud when you watch it at 2 in the morning. Or getting dressed.

I'll also admit that having a roommate hasn't turned out to be the crash and burn disaster I braced myself for.

Matt and I moved in together on April Fool's Day of this year. Nearly three months later, not only are we both still alive, but we're actually still friends.

This might have something to do with the fact that we rarely actually see one another. Between us, we have three jobs and school. Factor in time to shower and sleep and that's pretty much the day.

I actually like living with someone who I have known for the better part of a decade. We know what one another is like, so there's no real big surprises. Plus, because we've known one another we do some goofy stuff that probably wouldn't happen between two people who had just met.

I'm stressed when I get home from work. I don't know what it is about work that does it to me, but it never fails. The time span from the moment that I walk in the door until I'm actually ready to deal with the rest of the world is about ten minutes. I just need time to get changed, pull my hair back, etc. Just shake off the day, basically. When we first started living together, Matt use to knock on my bedroom door as soon as it was shut, and I'd always be grumpy when I answered it. One day, he figured out to give me a bit of time. After about fifteen minutes, he knocked on the door. I answered it and we struck up a conversation. I had been on my feet all day, so I sat down. On the floor right inside the door. Matt sat down on the floor right inside the living room and we sat there like that for probably thirty minutes just talking.

Another time, about a week after that, I was sitting in the living room watching 'Welcome to Collinwood' at about 2 in the morning. Matt strolls out of his room to tell me good night. He sat down and gave me a friendly hug, then got wrapped up in the movie. The thing was, we both still had one arm around one another, so we sat there and watched the last twenty minutes of the movie with our arms around one another's shoulders like chums.

For whatever reason, I get up at 9:00 every morning to watch 'Sliders' on SciFi. One morning as I was doing this, Matt's door was open and I heard him talking to someone. I knew that a guy that we had gone to school with had just returned from war and they must be catching up via phone. Little bit of background, in high school, I had a mad crush on this guy (the one who had been to war, not my roommate), so I was interested in hearing how he was doing. Well, I'm sitting on the couch, with my hair a mess from just getting up, not a stitch of make up on and dressed in my very oversized WKU shirt and grey sweats (Matt is use to seeing me like this. It's my apartment too and I don't get all dressed up to just bum around here) when Matt walks out of his room.....close on his heels was the guy I've mentioned (whose name also happens to be Matt...there seems to be an abundace of those in my life). My first instinct was to get up and flee to my room, but I faught the tempation and sat there wishing I could be anywhere else as we talked for a few minutes. I'm not interested in the guy anymore, but it would have been nice to not have looked like pure and utter bum when he saw me for the first time in five years. *groan*

Some of the goofiest things also come out of your mouth when you have a roommate.

One instance comes to mind:

I had a Saturday night off, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was on. Yipee!! I grabbed my pillow and blanket and sacked out on the living room floor. Now, let me give you a visual: I'm laying in the fetal position, head on a pillow, blanket up to my chin in a pitch black room where I'm facing a TV that is on. Matt strolls out of his room, looks at the TV and says (and I quote): "Ooh! 'Last Crusade'. What are you doing?"

Yep. I just kind of had to look at him for a moment. I finally told him I was duck hunting.

I know he meant to say "How are you doing?" but I had to giggle none the less.

Matt and I react to things in very different ways. If something goes wrong, he holes himself up in his room. I just yell and get it out.

We both like the same things for the most part, which can be a good or bad thing. The good thing is that you know what to buy at the store. The bad thing is that we have spurts where we will go through a loaf of bread in two days because we eat pretty much nothing but sandwiches.

Somehow, everything gets done around here. The dishes get washed and the trash gets taken out. We don't ever actually talk about it, but one of us will pick up the slack if the other is having a bad week.

All in all, I enjoy having a roommate.