The Wake

Roommates are like caterpillars…. Don’t see the connection? I hadn’t either until I started to think about how for the past three years, I have shared my life with Molly, my roommate. Now, after those three completely ridiculous, yet entirely enjoyable (ok, maybe not entirely enjoyable) years, we are going our separate ways, transforming, if you will, into two separate butterflies from one cocoon. Still not convinced? Read on…

Consider the caterpillar. The caterpillar minds its own business day in and day out – eating whatever milkweed it encounters on its slithery path. The caterpillar’s priority is to eat as much milkweed as possible, until it is large and full enough to wrap and transform. When the time comes, the fuzzy creatures wrap themselves and form a temporary living space, cocoon, and transform into butterflies. It’s not that the caterpillar hates its life and wanted nothing to do with being a caterpillar anymore – the caterpillar’s priorities change. No longer does the caterpillar want to skid around eating milkweed, being captured by little girls and glass jars; instead, it wants to be free to fly and dodge little girls with butterfly catchers.

Isn’t this exactly what we do with roommates? We live together long enough to pick up each other’s idiosyncrasies, share a few laugh and tears, and most certainly get on each other’s nerves. But there comes a time when we pack up and go into a transformation of our own. Our priorities change and we find new living quarters, alone, with someone else, anywhere other than together. And like the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, it is not that they just cannot live with each other anymore (at least one would hope this is not the case). Priorities change. Lifestyles change. There comes a time when you have grown enough that a transformation is all but necessary. So like the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, the roommates part roads, each of them taking what they have ingested along the way to use in further endeavors. Because really, Molly will always expect a warning when her future roommate walks around without a shirt on and I will always expect full detail from the prior evening’s events.

Sure, Molly and I had an amazing three years together (four, if you count the year I spent more time in her dorm room than mine), but it’s time to move on – move our separate ways and do our separate things. Keep in touch and remain the best of friends? I’d like to hope so. Sarah Jessica Parker says it best through her Carrie character on Sex and the City, “People come into your life and people go. But it’s comforting to know the ones you love are always in your heart. And if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away.” Well, in our case it’s only a car ride, but the idea is the same. People shape our lives whether we want them to or not. While we may not be exactly like the caterpillar wrapping ourselves in a cocoon and emerging as a vibrant butterfly, we indeed grow due to our surroundings. To all you roommates out there, keep on growing – your co-inhibitors will only eat up more of what you have to offer and help shape them into who they will become. And to my dear roommate of three (ok, four) years, thank you for adding to my growth – it has been one hell of a stretch.