Personal: Meeting Roommate

Ten years ago this week, I met my best friend. This picture of us was taken that week. When Roommate and I met, I was living in New Orleans, and he was living in Knoxville; he was working for the Writers Retreat Workshop, and I'd won the inaugural Robin Hardy New Student Scholarship for the event. We'd corresponded via email before we met, and I remember thinking, "Oh, this guy is great." And when I met him in person, it was, like, crazy fireworks and rainbows.

I live with my ex-boyfriend. And that is, by any estimation, a little insane. Roommate and I lasted only three or so years romantically; but our love for each other was so solid, so real, that it seemed wrong and weird to call the friendship quits too. I think that's pretty awesome.

Every so often, Roommate gets it in his head that it's time for him to move out or change cities (usually, this is at least in part because some woman has worked her way into his heart....). I promise you this: if and when the time comes for him to move on... and I'm pretty sure it will come some day...  I will be, like, whoa devastated. We've been through some stuff together, Roommate and I: my divorce, Katrina, my cancer, his heart attack, some heartbreaks, a couple of family deaths, a miscarriage. But BFFs through all of it.

Thanks for everything, Roommate, my chosen brother.