The Perils of Communal Living

They say that you don’t know someone properly until you’ve lived with them. I say you don’t know yourself until you’ve lived with other people.

Most people who have been to college or university will know what it’s like to live with others. But once the adult world has crept up on you and you find yourself living with strangers, it’s a whole different ball game. No longer is the housemate with a road-kill collection a novelty, nor the stoned housemate with a penchant for 3 am feasts a source of entertainment.

Growing up, I loved visiting London. I’d conjure up ideas in my mind of how exciting life would be if only I could live in such an amazing city. Well, now I do. Unfortunately, living in such an expensive city means compromising, and compromising jars your views of a city that once could make your heart beat twice as fast.

Since moving to London a year ago, I have shared three flats with a total of 21 strangers. I’ve had the police round to confiscate drugs, been victim to threatening notes (made more offensive by poor English), and experienced more passive-aggressiveness than any human deserves to endure.

Communal living has taught me quite a lot about humans. It’s taught me that my generation is not very good at taking care of themselves or their environment when left to their own devices. It’s taught me that you can be in your 40s and still be a mess, and that drunk isn’t funny when it shouts at you at 4 am and calls you ‘irrelevant’. And the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that smokers have crippling selective dyslexia when it comes to ‘no-smoking’ signs.

More than anything, though, it’s taught me that I’m irritable, impatient and in terms of standards of cleanliness, I’m turning into my mother. I generalise far too easily (see above), and moan about dirty dishes when I know things could be monumentally worse.

Sharing the place you call home with strangers can be challenging. But more annoying than loud music, dirty dishes or bathroom-hogging is feeling a sense of injustice when you know you should have perspective. But rising above things that sit right outside of your bedroom door is difficult when you regularly fantasise about weeing in your flatmate’s freshly run bath.