After living in an apartment connected to my parents’ house during graduate school, it was time to move out on my own. I wanted to live alone near my university, yet, after much searching it became clear that in order to afford renting a home in this area, I needed to find roommates.
Before long, I found two roommates, and it felt nice to share a home with boys after growing up with two brothers. Unfortunately, from the very start of our communal living situation I found that certain behaviors—the way one of my roommates cooked, cleaned (or didn’t clean), ate, and spoke—irritated me. I started feeling resentful that I needed to live with roommates at all, and I really wished I enjoyed being around them, rather than simply having to tolerate their behavior.
A few times during the fall, I had come home from work to find the front door unlocked and the garage door open wide with no one outside. I felt frustrated that my roommates weren’t taking our home’s security as seriously as I was, especially since I learned before moving into our house that there had been a break-in the previous month. I tried not to let that fact scare me, or question the safety of a neighborhood that I loved, but I still diligently locked the door whether I was in the house or away. Safety had been something surrounding my thought for quite some time.
