I can't afford to pay my rent anymore.
It was a shocking discovery. It has been humbling and humiliating. And the hardest part of it all is that this is the best roommate situation I've ever been in. I had to call a roommate meeting like a diplomat and break the news to two of the nicest, coolest people I have ever met.
"Break the news" is a solid phrase. "Breaking news!" It's like someone took a sledgehammer and smashed the words into bits.
Deepening the lines around my mouth that fossilize the frowns and the sighs I had been wrestling. Breaking like the breaking of a home. Like a home-wrecker. Broken-up, like a spoiled love.
And then I felt selfish. Like I should be able to handle it. Magically pull time and energy and money out of the air, as if no one had thought to do that before. Conjure the groceries I need and the medicine to keep me going. My heart castigated itself for making my friends worry and for tearing apart our perfect balance of dishes-garbage-dishes, because girls do dishes and boys haul trash.
Hauling the trash from my brain, I wanted to scream, "This is not my choice!" I wanted to yell, "Never mind!"
I wanted to shout and break the numb silence that swirled around our living room, freezing the spiraling paisleys of my busy rug, wilting the stiff roses in her vases on the counter.
I don't want to go. I don't want to fill my gallery room with an anonymous sub-leaser and risk vacuuming months of Himalayan cat fur blotting out all evidence of my being there.
I don't want a more intrepid or wealthier tenant to sequel my presence and win my friends with late night confessions in front of a muted television and baked goods--because I can't cook at all, it's embarrassing. I don't want them to like her more. I don't want her to light Anthropologie candles or quote The Lord of the Rings or beat everyone at Cranium. Because that's my job.
And I know I'll still be in the same town, within the same circle of acquaintances, but when you live together, you are a clan. You are united and any sociology book could tell you that you form a special bond. Any psychology book could tell you that breaking up the family core cause stress and trauma and vast amounts of uncomfortable adjustments.
And now, what is there to do except to swallow my pride? Swallow my 4.0-gpa-with-two-part-time-jobs-and-a-killer-apartment arrogance and move on and move out? Because to live here, I have to work more. To work more, I have to study less. To study less, is to scrape by. To scrape by is to lose momentum. To lose momentum is to miss out. To miss out is to fall behind. To fall behind is to fail, and failing is swallowing my pride anyway.
Maybe it's okay to be selfish? Maybe I shouldn't call it selfish at all. What do you call it? Self-preservation?
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