Living With Your Roommate’s Ghost
When your roommate moves out after two years, where do all the memories go?
Clare’s and my roommate moved out of our three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in January. She took the trash can, the toaster, the fruit fly traps, the blender, a reading chair, and four dryer balls. Everything else in the common areas of the apartment was either Clare’s or mine.
And yet, after she left, the place felt empty.
Roommate relationships are interesting. I met her parents and her ex-husband and her boyfriend (and the men in between). I was there to give her hugs when her cat passed away and hugs when she found a new one. I know what she keeps in the refrigerator — what her go-to meals are and what beer she likes to drink. I know what ice cream she eats on bad days, and I know what she likes to bake to bring into her office. I know her friends’ names and details about their lives. I know what TV shows she watches, and I know which books she wishes she could find time to read. I know a lot about what she wears and the music she listens to in the shower (metal, which I could often hear from the kitchen).
But I’m not sure I ever really knew, well, her.
Her hopes and dreams, her fears, her goals, her insecurities. I knew some of those things in the early months of living together, when we went out to bars and had designated Ted Lasso nights on the couch. The early days of: “Let’s go out for a monthly roommate dinner,” and “Ooh, want to check out that concert with me?” When we talked about our pasts and our traumas and thought, “Are we friends?” But it quickly became clear we were just roommates who were friendly — we weren’t friends. She’d have her friends over for movie nights, and Clare and I were never invited to join them. We’d have our friends over and hope she wouldn’t be around. Later, our conversations happened more and more in passing. “How was your day?” “Any fun plans over the weekend?” “I got more parchment paper at the store.”
It’s a weird feeling to realize you know someone — and don’t. To realize you’re sleeping down the hall from someone who is, in so many ways, a stranger.
We found our roommate on Facebook. She didn’t look like a crazy psycho murderer or kleptomaniac, her cat got along with dogs, and she liked to thrift and sing along to Broadway songs.
But as things go when you spend prolonged time with someone, little things start to become grating. You start to wonder how many times you can text —
— without losing your mind.
Still, things probably could have continued on continuing on if not for The Boyfriend.
I was destined to dislike him from the first time I met him: during the Olympics when he joined me on the couch, where I’d queued up the USWNT game and was wearing my Megan Rapinoe kit. He started mansplaining the team and their tactics and the players’ backgrounds, saying he’d been following the team for two months. (Me? Twenty-one years.) At halftime, he asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I was a sports editor. He said, “Oh, so you already know all of this.” Unable to help myself, I responded, “And more.”
Three of us in the apartment was starting to feel like a lot. But four? I was annoyed. I wrote and rewrote and deleted drafts of texts I’d never send. Even nicer-than-me Clare admitted the situation with The Boyfriend wasn’t ideal. He was extraordinarily loud! He was here during the workday watching movies with her! He was here during the workday streaming video games that took up all my WiFi! He was mean to my dog! He was rude to our dad when he was visiting! I started talking to our roommate less and less in a silent protest. I started trying to make sure I wasn’t around when she — and definitely she and he — were. The vibes in our place got so weird that we’d sometimes go days without being in the same place for more than 10 minutes.
In the end, it was Clare who caused us to go our separate ways. At least that’s the reason our roommate gave. For Christmas, Clare got a puppy. Our roommate was ready to get another cat and wasn’t sure they’d mix. The end? The end. Soon, our hallways became overrun with boxes and packing paper. Our apartment was taken over by things she’d found in a “Buy Nothing” group on Facebook — kitchen chairs, shelving units, crockpots — all the things she’d need for a place of her own that, this time, Clare and I couldn’t furnish for her.
And then the boxes started disappearing, finding their way to their new home.
I didn’t realize the last time I saw her would be the last time I saw her. I was violently hungover and lying on the couch trying to keep down a croissant. (I was unsuccessful.) I have no idea what the last thing Clare or I said to her was — or what the last thing she said to us was. I figured she still had at least two more trips left to our apartment, and she didn’t say anything about not coming back. I’m not sure what would have been different if she had.
It’s weird to have things end on such an unfulfilling note. Did she actually leave because she hated me? Am I a horrible person? Did I make it too clear that The Boyfriend was a problem? Was this always how things were destined to end?
Two years of living together feels like forever in the moment. You think you’ll always make your breakfast next to this person — avocado toast with an egg and a matcha latte for me, buttered toast with yogurt and a milky coffee for her. You’ll always know whether she’s watched the latest episodes of The Great British Bake-Off and Doctor Who and what she thought of both. Your shoes will always line up next to each other’s in the entranceway: my Boston Clogs, Clare’s Hokas, our roommate’s gold Vans. You’ll always know the cadence of her life — until she takes her final box out of the apartment and… you don’t.
It turns out two years really isn’t that long, not when you zoom out and look at things. The time we lived together was less than 1/15th of my life so far. Our lives briefly intersected, but Clare and I will keep living our lives, and our roommate will keep living hers. In the end, this time that felt so consequential was just a blip on the radar — and it will become less significant with each passing day.
Still, it’s weird to think that after two years of living in close quarters, I’m never going to see her again. After two years of talking to her daily, I’ll never speak to her again. I’ll see bits and pieces of her life on social media, and maybe I’ll throw her a like every once in a while. Maybe I’ll see engagement photos with The Boyfriend, or maybe a new partner will appear on her Instagram grid. Maybe I’ll see her across the crowd at a concert for that band we both love. Maybe she’ll think of me every time she bakes chocolate chip cookies with the recipe I gave her. Maybe she’ll see Clare or me tagged in photos of the dinner parties we’ll throw in our space, which she was once so familiar with.
We were maybe friends and then friendly roommates and then people who lived in the same space — and now we’re just strangers who know a whole heck of a lot about each other.
Our former roommate’s mail still came for about two weeks after she left — an alumni magazine and a credit card mailer. She made off with Clare’s scissors, my toothpicks and skewers, and (we’re 85% sure) the meat thermometer our mom got us. She left behind a mug that was tucked away in a kitchen cabinet. And she left her room and bathroom a disaster — another spot in the apartment for us to clean. Some things never change.
Clare and I have a new trash can, and we’re using the remnants of a box of dryer sheets. We’re making do with our food processor and mini blender, and we’re scouring Facebook Marketplace for an upgraded reading chair. We still need to do something about the fruit flies. But most importantly, we have a new roommate who seems like a much better fit.
Maybe we’ll even be friends.