I spent two months in hell. The kind of hell I had signed a contract for. The cave I was to call home was dark and gross. As you walked in, the one dim light in the kitchen did nothing to light the rest of the cramped apartment. Every surface of the kitchen was covered with used dishes, pans and leftover food. The guinea pig next to the sink completed the area. The living room was covered in pet stains with other unidentifiable marks and had a TV blaring so loud you would have thought the plaster on the walls was going to crack.
My room, the only tiny corner of the cave that was clean and livable, was the box I hid away in. I prayed I would be delivered out of this hell. How would I make it in this new town if I couldn’t even cook Velveeta without risking my safety? Finally, my prayers were answered, and I moved to a new cave. This one, all mine, was clean and bright. No roommate, no spots on the floor and a pigless kitchen.
I spent two weeks alone and happy, reveling in my little space. As an only child, I wanted to be alone. I knew I could make it alone.
It was Aug. 21 at 4:30 p.m. It was the end of move-in day.
I had made it with no random roommate to ruin my perfect, little cave!
Then the phone rang.
The number, which I was all too familiar with, flashed on the screen. Suddenly, my heart, which was perfectly placed just moments before, was now in my stomach. My random roommate would be here within the hour.
What if this new roommate was just as bad as the previous? What if she had a guinea pig and wanted to keep it in the kitchen? I wanted to cry. Could I handle this?
There was a knock at the door. It’s her! As my nerves tried to get the best of me, I answered the door and welcomed the newcomer into my cave. From the start, she was completely opposite of me — tall and skinny with straight, blond hair. What could we possibly have in common?
We spent hours watching “Family Feud,” “I Love Lucy” and “Friends.” We stayed up until 4 a.m. talking about anything we could think of.
It probably wasn’t the first night or the first week, but somehow, my cave turned into our cave.
I don’t know if it was the countless bowls of Chipotle or the bond created after surviving a horrific fight at 3 a.m. that involved a “Jurassic Park” spider, hairspray and a hammer. Maybe it was the fourth time we saw “The Avengers” in theaters. But it might have been the one look and the two words — pink bunny — that proved we were on another level of communication. It was all random, but it had turned us into the perfect random roommates.
It’s been two years since Maggie came in and showed me the true meaning of crazy love. She’s the Lucy to my Ethel; she’s the Rachel to my Monica. She had turned into a friend, who quickly became a sister. Randomness brought us together, and now, I’m not afraid of life’s unpredictability. We’ve made a home in this “just passing through city.” If there is one thing this experience has taught me, it’s no matter how bad things are, sometimes random can be just what you need to turn any experience into perfection.
Ellen Farley is a public relations senior at UF. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
