On behalf of all of us who complain about you, I’m sorry.
I’m sorry that we complain about how many of you we have to room with just to –UGGGH – live in this beautiful city.
I’m sorry that we complain behind your back about the way you don’t do the dishes. Or steal our cereal when it was CLEARLY ON DREW’S SHELF. I’m sorry that we complain about how you were lying in your email when you told us that you do not bring the party home, when you do, in fact, bring the party home (and she's usually a bit of a hot mess).
I’m sorry that we complain about how you’re either too loud or too hermity, which seems a little Goldilocks of us. I’m sorry we complain about how you drink too much and how you watch movies too loudly while totally stealing our Netflix password – and we know because we SEE what you’re watching in the queue. I’m sorry that we hate your boyfriend or girlfriend and really wish they wouldn’t take showers in the morning when you know we’re all waiting to take one – and can’t they just take one at home?
I’m sorry that we complain about these things, roommates, because these are the things we’ll talk about endearingly to others as we grow up in this town.
We’ll joke about your bad habits the same way you’ll probably joke about ours. We’ll lament how great it was to be younger, to pay too much to live with strangers. It’ll be ironic, roommates, because we’ll miss everything we say we hated about you.
Because we secretly love you, 9,487 roommates we’ve all had over the course of our tenure in San Francisco.
- We love the nights that you talk with us about our recent breakup for the 4,209th time in your room and don’t ask us to get the fuck over it already.
- We sorta do love that when you bring the party home, you’re probably just trying to get us to stop being such a goddamn hermit.
- We love that even though you steal our cereal, you may have an attractive friend that we will inevitably hook up with one time, and you won’t hold it against us.
- We will always remember the time we played music too loud on a roof or on the street wearing a blanket as a cape while making horrible life decisions together.
- We will always laugh about when you’d walk to the bathroom after sleeping with someone you brought home, and we’d do the eye contact “high five” in our minds.
No matter who we are, we move to this town and live with a house full of strangers. We complain about them, about how different they are from us. About how sketchy they are because we found them on Craigslist, and for all we know they could be a cat lady or a mass murderer. Or a convicted child molester who lives in the wall, which is in no way a true story. (Just kidding, it is.)
But in the saccharine sense, a lot of those crazies end up being your best friend. Or they’re the guy you see randomly out at night and give a big hug to because they’re not forgetting to flush the toilet at YOUR house anymore.
A lot of the roommates we say we hate are the memories we oddly reminisce about the most.
So here’s to you, roommates. Even the bad ones.
Because like it or not, we’ve all been someone’s favorite roommate and someone’s worst roommate.
The cool part is, we lived with a total fucking stranger and made memories. You’re the starter kits, the people we’ll replace with others the rest of our lives until we’re married or until a cat does, in fact, become the only breathing thing we share our places with.
We love you, roommates. Now please remember to flush the toilet.
Written by Drew Hoolhorst in 2013. Republished in 2026.
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