Last spring semester, I agreed to room with one of my good friends next year when I return from my year abroad. However, as the plans for our housing options became more developed and consequentially more complex, I realized that I wouldn’t feel like I’d be able to be her roommate and finish out senior year still being friends. You know those infamous roommate stories where the roommates are best friends at the beginning of the school year and hate each other by the end of the year? Yeah, I feel like that’s what would happen with us if we went through with living together.

There were a lot of other little reasons which became apparent that made me realize I wouldn’t be able to live with her and be 100% happy senior year, but the clincher was the gut feeling I had that we’d end up hating each other if we lived together. At any rate, I had to email her and let her know I couldn’t agree to be her roommate anymore. I tried to break the news to her in the nicest way possible and explained every single reasoning and train of thought I had as to why I was backing out of our plans. And all the while I was writing the email I thought to myself, “You have to speak up now, if you don’t speak up you will just regret it. You’ll always wish you had said something, however hard it might have been to say.”

Writing that email sucked. (And before I get judged for choosing email as my method of communication, please remember that I am studying in an intensive language program in Beijing. Read: I have little to no free time, a 12 hour time difference, and temperamental Internet.) But you know what’s gonna suck even more? Reading her reply. I haven’t got one yet, but I’m dreading how awful I am going to feel when I do receive it.

There’s small comfort in knowing that it was far better for me to back out of being her roommate now rather than after a lease was signed or we had moved in together. But I still feel like I’m letting her down, which is a feeling I absolutely hate.

Tags: college