The other night I was hanging out with a friend and we somehow started talking about gymnastics and I mentioned that Ally Raisman looked a lot like her. She googled pictures of Ally and said, "Yeah, I can see how she kind of looks like me. Isn't it weird when there are random people who look like you?" "It is. I don't think I've met anyone who's looked like me before," I replied. It was true, I haven't really met anyone who looks like me, but I've met a few people who could've passed as my siblings. One of them, happened to be my college roommate, who I continue to write about because, even though we burned bridges years ago, at one time we were close friends and sometimes told random people we were sisters. And they believed us.
The summer before I started college, I was working as a score keeper at a basketball tournament in Colorado Springs. There were people from all over the world there, but none of them looked like me. So, three weeks later when I found myself in Hawaii face to face with my roommate, who was half Black and half Thai, it was strange. Really strange. Then, she told me she was from Colorado Springs, where I had just been, and all I could think was, "What in the world is the universe trying to do here?" She even commented on the weirdness of it all, "How did they manage to put the only two half Black, half something else girls on campus together as roommates?"
We were so much alike, but as the days passed, the stark differences began to show. I have always been an organized and goal-oriented person. A lot of people hate that (which is a discussion for another blog). My roommate was one of those people. She always seemed annoyed with me and I was never around to do anything to cause her to be annoyed. I was taking six classes, playing intramural soccer, and working at a grocery store. By the time I got back to the dorm, it was usually 10pm and I was exhausted. My roommate, on the other hand, liked to party. Her and her friends made fun of me whenever they did see me for being "so perfect." They didn't realize how much I wished I could be like them and just have fun, but I had goals and really strict parents. Somehow even when you finally go off on your own, your parents still have a grip on the reigns of your independence. Especially when one of your parents is my drill-sergeant dad. When I was younger, he could just give me a mean look and I would start bawling and confessing and apologizing for the most miniscule things. If my roommate and her friends would've had my dad, they would've understood, why I was "so perfect" in the beginning. But they didn't and we ended up hating each other. I moved out.
The second semester came and her friends had left. She befriended my new roommate and soon we all ended up hanging out. I was different this time. Soccer season was over, I wasn't taking as many classes, and I had realized that I was actually okay on my own. This new sense of self-awareness presented opportunities for: dating, drinking, and partying. Boys and bathroom confessionals about said boys turned me and my ex-roomate into friends, and eventually sisters. We could identify with each other and would often have long conversations about being mixed and how other people viewed us. We had the same circle of friends and all of us were pretty close, but there was something different about our friendship that we could never really explain. We had gone through so many of the same things; racist comments from people who didn't think they were being racist, how difficult dating was, how even though you want to say you are just one of your races, neither race really accepts you. Her dad had also been in the military, so she knew about military life. She understood why it is so frightening to think about what will happen when you don't have your military id anymore. In military communities, there are so many mixed-race people, you belong, no matter who you are.
Our similarities started to outweigh the differences and made us inseperable for two years.
Then, senior year came. Everything started out fine, but then we became roommates again. I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I found out we were going to be roommates again. I knew that was the reason we'd hated each other before. You can get tired of people, even if they are your best friend. We went out, did everything together, and then she started dating her boyfriend and I found my husband. We stopped hanging out so much and when we did see each other, it was like in the beginning when her and her friends thought that I thought I was "so perfect." My husband was this really nice guy trying to impress me enough to get me hooked for life. Her boyfriend seemed to be the same with her, but for some reason, she didn't seem to like this. I was content. I had grown up and moved on from the partying. I knew that chapter had to end so I could start my new life, but I think she took it the wrong way, like I was giving up my friends to be with a guy. She started to hate me and turn some of our friends against me. So again I moved out, but that time I also moved on and have been relatively happy ever since.
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