To My Long-term Roommate

To My Long-term Roommate,

Boarding school is an unconventional way to make friends. But something about those first few weeks away from home in a big city school propels the forging of friendships with the speed of necessity. Unconventional as those friendships may have been, they were unwavering, a new family found overnight. When we first met, we came to realise that we had lived an hour away from each other our whole lives and never known. Both raised on farms in rural Western Australia, dust in our lungs and red dirt between our toes since we were babies. When the distance of an hour between us shrunk down to two metres of space between our beds, we clung to what we shared, our farms and families far away and a new life stretched out before us. Like most of the other girls, the places we’d grown up were too remote and unpopulated to accommodate a high school. Not as uncommon as you’d think in Australia. Countless towns were simply too small and many of us were too remote to travel to the closest school each day. So boarding school was normal in our lives, something we always knew would come eventually. But that didn’t make leaving home at twelve any less frightening. You were from a town as close to mine as you could get in remote Australia. You understood me, and standing at the threshold of a new life, nothing was more reassuring.

Since those early days the only way I can describe our relationship is as sisterhood, right down to the silliness and the times when we argued. As teenagers you had a bit too much energy for me, and I’m sure you thought I was boring. We liked different subjects, had different friends at school and played different sports with vastly different training schedules. But at the end of the day, we would go back to our room and study together. Or practice handstands or think of tricks to play on our housemothers or I would yell at you for kicking the soccer ball around when I was trying to concentrate. You were excited for me when dance was going well, and I would secretly cheer for you at interhouse swimming even though you were in green and I was in blue. You helped me study for maths tests and I edited your English assignments, our differences somehow as compatible as the things we had in common. We grew so close in those five years that when we moved to college and took up residences just down the road from each other, it almost seemed too far away. We made new friends, finished our first degrees and learnt things about life, adulthood and ourselves. Throughout it all you were the one thing I could count on as constant.

Now, as women, I feel like I somehow know you better than I ever did at boarding school or college, not that we don’t still find ourselves rooming together every so often. We have both experienced exciting successes, and we have both been through some difficult times, and I’m so grateful to have gone through all of it with you. When I sat down to write this, we joked that you were the strongest woman I knew because of all your swimming training and the fact that you can do pull-ups! Very impressive of course, but not the point of this letter. It also seemed like the obvious answer that your strength comes from your ambition, determination and drive. If I’d written this a few years ago, those are the traits I would have said made you strong, that your goals and the way in which you reached them was what I admired. But we’re older now and I know you better. You’re the strongest woman I know because of something much more subtle; your kindness.

Truly kind people are rare in this world because kindness is offering your strength to others. In the past few years, I’ve watched you do this over and over, for your family members, your friends, anyone in your life who was struggling, and it’s this selflessness and caring that makes me aspire to be like you. In the world right now, there is so much focus on furthering our careers, working hard, setting goals and striving for them that it’s easy to lose sight of anything or anyone outside of ourselves. You’re ambition and achievements are a testimony to the fact that these things are important to you too. If asked, you might even say that hard work and determination are your greatest strengths. But beneath it all your kindness is what truly makes you strong, because you strive to be strong for others. You are the strongest woman I know, and pull-ups and career goals have nothing to do with it. Kindness is your greatest and quietest strength.