First Year College Nightmare

When people think of moving away from home, and taking their first step into the world as an adult, most would feel excited. Even though I enjoyed my family and being home, I was also looking forward to the new experience. My main fear was making friends.

Now, I'm pretty sure I have social anxiety. It gets to the point where I think anything I say to a stranger just annoys them, and they just pretend to enjoy talking to me. I hate it, and I know it's irrational. All I could hope for was that my roommate would be more of an extrovert, and through her I would make some friends. We had been talking through email and text messaging in order to figure out who would bring what, and from our conversations she seemed really nice and compatible. I had informed her that I'm more of an 'early to bed, early to rise' type of person, and she said she was the same way. Everything seemed perfect.

When move in day finally arrived, I was stoked. It was fun to get everything set up, and I had my side of the room pretty much done by the time my roommate showed up. Both our parents were doing most of the talking, and they happened to mention that my roommate had originally wanted to get an apartment with her friends, but her parents made her experience dorm life.

Once the parents had said their goodbyes, the awkward silence began. I really tried to bring up a conversation, but her answers were always short and to the point, like she didn't care or want to talk.

And that's how the whole year seemed to go. Since I need some sort of noise to fall asleep, I asked if I could play soft music. She outright denied it, going on a mini-tangent about how she needed complete silence. I proceeded to have to wear earphones at night.

We had a war over the air conditioner. I liked it warmer, while she apparently liked it freezing. The bad news was that the air vent pointed at my bed, so if I lost the battle for the day I would be freezing. However, once the air switched to heat, it took my roommate about a week before she realized that turning it up made it hotter in the room. It was even getting too hot for me. Most of her friends were boys, and they would just come barging in the room without knocking. Most of the time it was fine, except for the instances that I had to quick throw on the shirt or pants I was in the middle of changing into.

The absolute worse part of it was that her definition of 'early' and mine were completely different. Not only would she come in the room at all hours of the night, but she wouldn't do it quietly. I'm a light sleeper, so most of the time it didn't matter, but it irritated me the times she would flip the light switch back on while I was trying to sleep.

My only saving grace was the weird way I made my best friend.

I had received a Facebook message from a girl in my high school, whom I have never talked too much before since we were so different. She said that her roommate was a lot like me (a.k.a. weird), and that we should hang out. Being the desperate loner I was, I had agreed.

Now a senior in college, we are inseparable, and our little adventures are a story of its own.