Like a lot of college students, I have roommates. We live in a dorm, which puts all three of us in one not-very-large bedroom, so I've gotten very comfortable with them. We hang out together, we eat dinner together, and usually, if we leave campus we end up leaving together.
One of my roommates, Kaitlin, is very close to her family. She's gone home at least twice as many times as I have, and as much as I know she needs to see her family, it really sucks when she's not here. We're very close and when she's not here it feels very lonely, and I'm not totally sure what to do with myself.
On any given day, we'll just be sitting in our room and I'll roll over in my chair just to show her a meme or something along those lines. We aren't always interacting with each other, but the comfort of having each other in the room has always been very nice. I really lucked out in the roommate department because I ended up gaining best friends out of both of mine, but it's always a sad day when they aren't.
Suddenly, you don't have that same person to eat dinner with or to ride with you in the car when you want to go grocery shopping. They aren't there to marathon the Harry Potter movies with you for the millionth time or go with you on a late-night McDonald's run.
When I was living with my family, I would often get lonely because I didn't have any friends that lived close enough for us to hang out regularly, so I was very excited to live with roommates! But when they're not here, it feels even worse than the loneliness I had back then, because instead it starts feeling like I live entirely by myself, and I don't like that very much at all. At a max, she's only gone for two or three days, but when those are weekend days and you don't really have anything better to be doing, those days feel like absolute eternities.
Technology does allow us to stay in touch while she's away, but those interactions are typically just Snapchats to keep the streak alive. It's an absolutely awesome feeling when I go pick her up from the train station or if I come back to the room and she's already here. We've only been living together for just about two months now, but I already consider her a part of my family and dorm life is way better when she's here.
