I have lived with the same woman, a dear friend, for NINE years. There’s a lot that is extraordinary about it, so I won’t go into it in too much length. We met during graduate school and, without knowing each other all that well, moved in together. That was 1996.<\/p>\n
Since our first apartment, where we lived for 4 years, 5 years, we have moved together, to two other apartments. We are a team. There is a comfort level, an intimacy between us, which is truly rare. Especially among roommates. We are very different. Our differences are what makes the relationship so exhilarating.<\/p>\n
I will state something, as a fact, and she will interject with, “Yeah, but I think you might be missing something there …” I have done the same for her.<\/p>\n
We are two relatively young actresses, sharing an apartment, and not ONCE have we gotten in each other’s way in the bathroom. Now that is an accomplishment. She’s a Gemini, I’m a Sagittarian. It works.<\/p>\n
Over the past nine years, we have been through a tremendous amount of life-events together.<\/p>\n
\nWe went through the torturous experience of graduate school together.<\/p>\n
Her father died.<\/p>\n
We both have had numerous relationships and love affairs, which we have talked about endlessly, until three o’clock in the a.m.<\/p>\n
We went through September 11th together, which is a whole story in and of itself.<\/p>\n
I had a 5-month long depression last year. She lived with me through it, she watched me get better.<\/p>\n
There have been times when she cried in my arms. There have been times when I cried in her arms.<\/p>\n
We make up ridiculous characters and have long extended conversataions, in character.<\/p>\n
We laugh like MANIACS.<\/p>\n
We go to see each other in each other’s shows. We have also been in shows together.<\/p>\n
We were in a film together which was chosen to be screened at the Montreal Film Festival last year<\/a>. We took the train up to Montreal to see ourselves on the big screen, to eat popcorn and stare up at our own massive heads. It was an unbelievable experience.<\/p>\n We are telepathic. We help each other out. Our voices have become so indistinguishable that even our own mothers mistake us. I answer the phone, “Hello?” and Jen’s mother says, “Jen?” Our menstrual cycles have been in sync for five years. Haha … women are crazy, but it’s true!<\/p>\n On hot hot nights, we take a six-pack of cold beer, a blanket, and go up to Stevens Point, the most beautiful spot in Hoboken … a windy hill, overlooking the Hudson river, and the entirety of Manhattan. We sit up there, not ever having to talk, just being together, with the night.<\/p>\n It is a miracle of a relationship.<\/p>\n And she moved out yesterday. She got an opportunity for a significantly cheaper place, and she is now gone. My apartment is EMPTY. Nothing on the walls, half the furniture gone, it is like I am a lunatic in a mental asylum. I need to find a new place by September, and although I am looking forward, in a way, to having my own digs, this is definitely a difficult adjustment. I keep thinking I hear her moving around in her bedroom.<\/p>\n This is what acting teachers call “sense memory”. Your senses hold your life-experiences better than your brain, or your memory banks. Memory is a weird thing. It distorts. It lies. But your five senses never lie.<\/p>\n So yesterday I knew that I would be coming home to a weird empty echoing place. Jen called me, as I was commuting home, and she had moved, and all was well, but she basically was having a panic attack from separation anxiety. So, of course, we had to get together. We had dinner and drinks. We sat outside, at a bar on Washington Street, and people-watched like maniacs. Then we went down to Frank Sinatra park, a huge expanse of green on the Hudson, where I watched the towers collapse with my own eyes, the air filled with screaming, literal screaming, I was screaming, too, a man beside me fell to his knees … Frank Sinatra park holds all that in its green.<\/p>\n We lay on our backs in the thick grass, staring up at the night falling, watching the planes pass by. We either saw the first star, or we saw a planet. A glowing bright orb way up to our right.<\/p>\n We talked about stuff. Somehow I told her some stories from high school (my friends Beth and Betsy both having typos in their yearbook quotes….Betsy wrote as her favorite quote:”I wanna go wild like a blister in the sun” … and somehow, when the yearbook came out, the quote read:”I wanna go wild like a BUSTER in the sun…”) and we writhed about with laughter.<\/p>\n Finally, it was time to go home to our now-separate abodes. It was so WEIRD.<\/p>\n Jen’s emotions are much more accessible to her, than mine are to me. If something big and momentous occurs, I tend to freeze up, to deny. It’s a delayed reaction. Big stuff always hits me later. One night Jen, tears down her face, sharing with me how sad she was that our time as roommates ended, asked me, “So how are you dealing with all of this?” I said, “I feel nothing.” She looked surprised, a bit hurt. I elaborated, “Stuff just takes longer to hit me. I’ll probably actually feel this in a couple of weeks. But not now.” There was a long pause and Jen said, “You’re like a man.”<\/p>\n Yes. I suppose I am. That’s not the first time that that’s been said to me.<\/p>\n But coming home last night to emptiness was extremely weird. We have merged to such a degree that I had forgotten what was hers and what was mine.<\/p>\n I walked in the door and the phone was ringing. Guess who it was … Jen. Wanting to talk. Say good night. We had just parted 15 minutes before.<\/p>\n This will be a Period of Adjustment.<\/p>\n It is an end of an era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have lived with the same woman, a dear friend, for NINE years. There’s a lot that is extraordinary about it, so I won’t go into it in too much length. We met during graduate school and, without knowing each … Continue reading