Parting ways.

At the last minute, Sybille ignored the German part of her and decided to move out of the apartment. She put up an ad for her room, found a new place to stay, signed the lease, and signed the papers releasing her share of this apartment to some random Korean dude, effective 1st July. She did all this in a day, today, before leaving for Europe for the holidays tomorrow.

This whole thing has felt like a bad break up, stemming from an easily avoidable misunderstanding, which grew way out of proportion into a full-blown cold war, a close-the- door-in- your-face, you-avoid- me-I-avoid- you-back, oh-fine- don’t-say-hello-to- me-you-wench, Thing; which died down eventually, in favour of a silent confrontation. I say silent confrontation because the entire ‘argument’ took place via email, which included smileys and teary (or so I imagine) confessions of you’re-the- best-flatmate-I-ever- had-even-though-I-was-g rumpy, let’s-be-friends -even-after-we-move-out, oh-how-I-loved -living-with-you- and-I’ll-miss- you-so-much.

The random Korean dude will move in on the 1st of July, I think, which is when the apartment I was interested in (has potential, right in the heart of the city) is available. Said random Korean dude has a friend to take over my share of the lease a week or two later. It looks like things are working out, and may possibly be the best thing to happen to us.

Tonight, as Sybille frantically packs – both to go home and to move out – is our last night together as flatmates.

We went to the supermarket earlier to ask for boxes. Ended up with five boxes each, formerly home to bananas and potatoes. The boxes didn’t actually fold, so they were stacked on top of each other, my stack coming up above my head and I had to carry them sideways to see where I was going.

We made dinner, watched The Simpsons, talked.

Afterwards, around midnight, she knocked on my door to ask if I wanted to go to uni with her, to return some books to the library.

“Only if you want to, because I can go by myself,” she said.

Of course it crossed my mind that the library would be closed, at midnight, but I thought it’d be nice to go for a walk. It was always a Sybille thing to do, taking random walks around campus at midnight, usually to talk about random things and laugh at possum sounds that scare the crap out of me. Since the cold war started it’s been a while since we did so, and it was nice to talk again.

Of course the library was closed.

“I’ll really miss our random walks,” she said.

And I said “Yeah.” But I really mean ‘Me too.’

—–

Tonight we’re working out who keeps what, of the random things we bought together. Tomorrow I’ll decide on the apartment I’ll move into. And hopefully, someday, my flatmate and I can be friends again.

And hopefully, hopefully, after all the packing and dividing is done, we’ll be so sleep deprived it wouldn’t even cross our minds to cry.

(Stupid, juvenile fun, like blue tongues.)

Because despite (or maybe because of) everything, she really is the best flatmate I ever had, too.