After spend­ing 12 hours away from the house and fight­ing through a 45-minute com­mute in traf­fic, noth­ing feels greater than walk­ing through your own front door. Hav­ing a place to retreat to after a long day out in the world is really bet­ter than noth­ing is. That is unless that place has choco­late of some sort – ice cream, cookie, candy, cake – it doesn’t mat­ter which. Com­ing home is the best part of my day espe­cially after spend­ing the most of my 20’s “homeless”.

I spent the major­ity of my 20’s couch surf­ing. My par­ents advised against me liv­ing on cam­pus. I remem­ber that day out in the garage. My father sit­ting in his shed tin­ker­ing with the lat­est bro­ken thing from around the house. I walked into the garage accom­pa­nied by my mother and we dis­cussed the rea­son­ing behind my desire to stay on cam­pus. My dad thought it wasn’t a good idea for sev­eral rea­sons but the main was issue was  money. Look­ing back on it, he made the right deci­sion for me. I didn’t need to stay on cam­pus. We only stayed 20 min­utes from the school so we agreed that I would commute.

It didn’t take long before the com­mute started to wear on me and I wanted the inde­pen­dence that my friends from high school had. Soon after I started col­lege, my fam­ily decided to move which added an addi­tional 20 min­utes to my orig­i­nal com­mute. My adven­tures in couch surf­ing began.

I started first stay­ing in my boyfriend’s dorm room. It was an all boy’s dorm so it wasn’t the most ideal sit­u­a­tion. Just to use the bath­room, he had to walk me to the girl’s floor or make sure their bath­room was clear. The clos­est thing to a kitchen was a microwave where I per­fected ramen noo­dles. All it took was some sausage and sev­eral shakes of hot sauce to make some­thing that resem­bled a meal. I remem­ber glid­ing down the hall mak­ing friends with the neigh­bor­ing boys. I even bat­ted my eyes a cou­ple of times to get free pop­corn. Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure if I was sup­pose to spend the night but hey it was college.

By my sopho­more year of col­lege, my boyfriend moved to his own apart­ment and I fol­lowed him there. This time we had a kitchen and more room but the liv­ing arrange­ments weren’t ideal. He was messy. On sev­eral occa­sions, I would have to use super­hu­man strength to get the door to our room open enough for me to walk in. Once in the room, I saw piles of clothes sprawled out on the floor as if it was laun­dry day after a 7-month strike. The great­est pile of laun­dry was con­ve­niently located behind the door.

When I was a junior, the messy boyfriend was out of my life and I was back at home with the 40-minute com­mute. By this time, I had made more friends, which increased the couches that I could crash on. I joined a soror­ity, and had all these new sis­ters to hang out with. I also had a new boyfriend and spent the major­ity of my time at his house. Between my sis­ters, and my boyfriend, I hardly ever went home. I lived out of my car and jumped from couch to couch. My back seat always had a bag filled with clothes for every occa­sion. Going home was such a task, that I had to be ready for any­thing that popped up last minute.

This went on until I grad­u­ated. Though by the time I walked across the stage, I had a more sta­ble home even if the fourth wall was a cur­tain. I stayed in the sun-room of a three bed­room apart­ment with three of my clos­est sis­ters. Three of us shared one bath­room, which led to many pas­sive aggres­sive notes stuck to the mir­ror. One of my sis­ters then pro­ceeded to move her messy boyfriend in which led to tense sit­u­a­tions around the house.

Finally, after liv­ing in the “soror­ity house”, I paid rent at my own place, which I shared with two other girls. One of them decided to move their boyfriend in which of course cause a repeat of my pre­vi­ous sit­u­a­tion. Even though I put an end to couch surf­ing, I still longed for a place where I lived alone.

My next apart­ment sat­is­fied my wish and I was at peace with my liv­ing arrange­ments. More at peace than I had been in a very long time. Then one day I lost my job and I was back stay­ing with some­one else.

Fast for­ward to 2010, I moved into my own place. The same house that my fam­ily moved away from when I started col­lege. For the past two years, I have lived on my own and enjoyed the lack of room­mate. Well unless you count my dog. Every­thing was on me. If there was a mess, then I made it. If some­thing needed clean­ing, I did it. If some­thing was lost in the house, I lost it. I moved it. I broke it. I burned it. I left it on. I turned it off. I unplugged it. I plugged it in. I had no one to blame which made things sim­ple and lovely. If I needed to cor­rect it, I did.

Around the same time that I found my peace in my child­hood home, I fell in love. With falling in love, I thought it was a good idea for my love to move in with me. Plus, I had begun to couch surf again at his house (no, he didn’t make me sleep on the couch but I was tired of split­ting my time between two houses). So he moved in.

My couch surf­ing has ended and so has my joy of liv­ing alone. Even though I have to turn off lights that I didn’t turn on, clean dishes I didn’t dirty, wipe messes that I didn’t make, turn off things I didn’t turn on, and unplug things that I didn’t plug up, I won’t change it for all the choco­late in the world. Too much choco­late can make your teeth ache. This whole “liv­ing together” sit­u­a­tion, (not sure why I put that in quotes) is an adjust­ment espe­cially for some­one that once stated that her and her hus­band would live in duplexes next to each other but never in the same house. It is one that I am glad to make – I mean it’s bet­ter than couch surfing.