CALLUM SKEFFINGTON

MY SHARED LIVING NIGHTMARE.

IN JANUARY 2020 I FOUND

myself in the position of needing a new place to live. My flatmate, and best friend of almost twenty-three years, was moving in with her boyfriend, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to afford the rent for our apartment by myself. I initially was hopeful that I would find someone to move in with me, but in the wake of Christmas and all of my friends already in rental contracts, it proved to be fruitless.

I turned to an agency who provided single room rentals that eventually led to me renting a room in a six bed house. Now, shared living was something that I was aware of, however I only really associated it with university students. So as a twentyfive year old “adult” I felt like I was taking a major step back by moving into a shared household, especially when my friend was moving in with her boyfriend and even thinking of a mortgage. But I had no other option at that time.

If you have never experienced shared living first hand, there is one thing you do need to understand; it is a lottery of luck. I work with a girl who really did luck out when she moved into her shared house. They all get along really well; their landlord even has potential renters meet at least one of the existing household so they can give their seal of approval. They have Come Dine With Me dinner nights and do their home workouts together. They have a group chat, they know each other’s names and they actually interact for longer than twenty seconds at a time. I had none of this.

Aside from a few brief exchanges of names when I first moved in, which were subsequently forgotten, the majority of the people I lived with never even bothered to introduce themselves. I resorted to nicknaming most of them, and the closest thing I had to Come Dine With We was when a Russian guy decided he would go through my cupboards looking for food. Right in front of me.

The turnover rate in a shared household is fast, so in the time I lived there I encountered a lot of different types of people. Like the guy in the room above me who washed his dishes in the bathroom sink. He and his girlfriend would have obnoxiously loud sex, and I woke up many times, in the early hours of the morning, to the sound of her foghorn moans in return to him slamming her into the mattress.

I can’t say that I miss Thrasher and Moaner any more than I miss Headphones - a girl who was hell bent on avoiding conversation by never leaving her room without music blasting in her ears - or the Filipino girl who would leave raw, unpackaged meat to defrost on the kitchen worktops for days at a time. Raw Chicken was a lovely girl who, unlike most, actually made a bit of an effort to talk if you were to walk in on her prepping a week’s worth of meals. But the conversation was always the same. And there are only so many times I can endure the same small talk. For some unknown reason, she had come to the conclusion that I had a really good job that I loved, despite the fact that I had told her every single time that my job was just okay, and my living situation spoke for the salary.

HE AND HIS GIRLFRIEND WOULD HAVE OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD SEX, AND I WOKE UP MANY TIMES, IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING, TO THE SOUND OF HER FOGHORN MOANS IN RETURN TO HIM SLAMMING HER INTO THE MATTRESS.

Raw Chicken wasn’t the worst, by any means, but her for-a-time boyfriend was a complete creep and easily fifteen years older than her. The Boyfriend was one of these typical facebook theory lovers, who was quick to knock on my bedroom door back in March 2020 to warn me that helicopters would be flying over Belfast that night to spray disinfectant across the city to wipe out COVID. He would force a conversation with me every time I saw him, and multiple times I was asked to join them for dinner; usually when I had just finished cooking for myself to watch in front of the TV in my bedroom. Needless to say, my bedroom door was locked every night when he was over.

I’ll never know why they broke up. I only know that she left a bag of his clothes at the front door one day, and I saw him drop off flowers and a box of chocolates. Those were quick to find the overflowing bin that nobody but me ever seemed to empty.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that my time in shared living was entirely horrible. I did like the way I had decorated my bedroom. It was conveniently close to the city centre, and the rent was fairly cheap considering the bills were included. And I did spend four out of the eleven months living in my home house with my family thanks to the pandemic. I am glad to be out of that shared house though. Glad to be away from the Russian who stole my boyfriend’s leftover pizza, causing me to leave a very passive aggressive note in the fridge. Glad to be able to sleep through the night without the thumps and pounds and gasps and moans of two shameless cis-het’s having sex. Glad to have my toiletries in my bathroom rather than in a box under the desk in my bedroom. And I am glad to have moved into a house with my boyfriend after we both spent a few months living out of my bedroom in the shared house. It is great to have the space to sit further than a few metres apart.

I didn’t have the best experience in shared living, but it could have been worse. Like it was for the Belgian girl who moved over to Northern Ireland just as the pandemic was kicking off, and spent all of her time living and working in her bedroom, only to move back to Belgium again

This is an opinion piece from the columnist/contributor and not the opinion of GNI MAG / Romeo & Julian Publications Ltd.