My freshman year at college was all I hoped it would be. Not only was I being educated, but I was having fun, joining clubs and organizations, and learning new things about myself everyday. One thing I did not expect to learn was what it would be like to live with a lesbian roommate. I met my roommate, Erin, through an accepted students group on Facebook, the summer before my freshman year. We met at our orientation and hit it off immediately.

Classes started and before we knew it, we were college kids! Crazy! About a week or two in of our first semester at Seton Hall, Erin told me she wanted to tell me something. She tried to push it back and tell me in the morning, but I got her to spit it out that night. As she laid in her top bunk, she uttered the words, “I’m a lesbian.” Honestly, this didn’t surprise me because I had one of those gut feelings. But, I reassured Erin that night that it did not matter to me if she was straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pink, or purple. It still doesn’t matter.

I learned so much more from Erin than I ever expected to in my entire life. Of course, your friends teach you a lot. Especially when you live with them. But they teach you a lot more when they face something every day that you do not quite understand. In this situation, I do not understand what Erin has to go through as a lesbian, or a homosexual.

She’s brave.

Erin decided to “come out” in her freshman year of college, a time that is not exactly the easiest. We were all still transitioning from high school and our past lives into a whole new ground, and so, to me, she is one of the bravest people I know.

She’s strong.

She endures things that I can’t imagine having to deal with. Comments, remarks, and crude rumors have often come her way, and yet she handles them with grace. Being strong is something we all do, but being strong for something as simple as sexuality shed a whole new light on the topic for me.

She’s different.

Whenever I think about life, I think about how we are always told to “stand out” from the crowd. Erin is one of those rare people that I think actually does that. She has an incredible personality and a great sense of humor, but aside from this, she’s just different. I think “coming out” helped her to really establish herself and her uniqueness.

She’s accepting.

She is extremely accepting of all kinds of life, as we all should be. If I ever have a negative thought about someone else, I stop, think to myself, and remember that I wouldn’t want someone to think badly of me, especially if they don’t know me. The way to avoid this is to be accepting from the get-go. Living with Erin showed me that I need to accept everyone in this world, no matter what. I think I am doing that each and every day.

She shows me who I want to be.

When I think about what she has gone through and the people she has faced, I know that I want to handle it like she has. I want to be all of these things: brave, strong, different, and accepting.

So when people make comments about living with someone that is lesbian or gay, I take those moments to my advantage. Instead of blowing it off and saying something like, “yeah, it was interesting.” I take the time to actually educate some people. I tell them that she is just like me, we are best friends, and I would not change my freshman year in college for a second. But most importantly, I tell them that I learned so much about another person and that I grew from all of it.

Growth is possibly the best thing that life has to offer.