Hello, lovelies! I officially moved out on August 5th and now that it’s been a few months, I feel like I can give you an update. This post isn’t going to be about leaving my special needs sibling. That’s going to be a completely different post. This is just about my experience going from commuting to college to living in a dorm. I hope you enjoy.
//Preparing To Move Out
I prepared at the absolute last minute and bought things very slowly. This was mostly because I didn’t want to make my mom feel bad. I transferred to a school that is about an hour away, so she knew that I had to move, but she had outright told me that she didn’t believe children should leave their parents’ house until they’re married. It was just how she was raised and she wasn’t comfortable with it, but I’m proud of how she’s handled it. I also help a lot with Mysoon (my brother who has autism), so she had been stressed about that.
Most of the things I brought to the dorm were things I already owned. Since I don’t have a meal plan, I had to buy things like a microwave, a mini-fridge, and pots and pans. I shouldn’t say “I had to buy” because my parents paid for everything. That’s why I mostly brought stuff from home. I didn’t want them to spend too much.
Everything was super last minute. I didn’t start preparing until two weeks before I moved out, but I managed to have the room completely set up before classes started.
//Move-In Day
My entire immediate family came with me on Move-In Day. I actually didn’t bring everything with me because it wouldn’t fit in my car if I wanted everyone to come. And we needed everyone to come so that Mysoon could see where I was living. That way, we could explain to him where I was five days out of the week. (More on that in another post.)
I was one of the first ones to move in because I chose the earliest time slot. At my university, you can move in at any time the week before classes start, but you have to pick a time slot online. I chose the earliest one so that I could go back and forth all week to help my brother adjust.
Because I was one of the first people to move in, I was able to set up my side of the room before my roommate. My dad and brother, Zidan, lofted the bed so that my fridge could fit under it. I also hung all my clothes in the closet and set up my desk. We only stayed in the dorm for an hour before driving home because my dad had work. We looked around, saw all the study rooms and kitchen. My parents were super excited for me and like how safe it was.
That was a Sunday. I didn’t go back to the dorm until Tuesday because I had plans with my friends on Monday. I cried for like 15 seconds in my car on the way there then got over it. I spent two nights there and went to a few events and got some logistical stuff done. I went back home on Thursday to see Mysoon, then drove back on Friday. After spending the night there, I came back on Saturday and went to the Taylor Swift concert (SO FUN!!!). Then I went back on Sunday night before classes started the next day. (That was also the day I met my roommate).
As you can tell, I went back and forth a lot the first week I moved out. I did that to help transition Mysoon and get him used to me not being there. That’s obviously not how it works for most people. I did go to a bunch of events like coffee socials for transfer students and late night field day, so I didn’t miss out on everything. There was just a lot of driving back and forth.
//When Did It Start Feeling Like Home?
It actually started feeling like home pretty quickly. And I say that as someone who lived in the same house her whole life. After twenty years in the same place, I didn’t expect to get used to living in a dorm so quickly. Within two weeks, I was already starting to think of it as home. I drove back and forth a lot in the month of August because a bunch of my cousins visited for Eid, and whenever I thought about “going home,” I thought of my dorm; not my childhood home.
I feel this more and more each day. I’ve gotten used to not living with my parents. I go back every weekend to visit my family and for my job, but I’m used to being here now. It feels like home even if it’s a different kind of home.
//Living With A Roommate
I’ll write more in-depth about this later, but I really love my roommate. She’s awesome and we get along great. We can have long conversations but we’re still able to study in our room without distracting each other.
My one worry about living with a roommate was constantly being around that person. As an introvert, I need my alone time and want to be in our dorm room by myself once in a while. Thankfully, our schedules don’t completely match up, so we can both have some alone time in the room every day.
I’ve had my own room for the last decade-and-a-half, so I needed to learn to be quieter since my roommate takes naps every day and is a very light sleeper. According to her, I’ve improved by a lot and can nap without noticing me enter the room.
That’s all I have to say for now. I’ll eventually write a whole post about living with a roommate, but for now, all I have to say is that I love my roommate and we get along really well, but we literally have to make plans to hang out because we’re both so busy with school. That’s one thing I’ve learned. You can live with a roommate and you can go on perfectly without talking to each other. Even so, I’m glad my roommate and I are actually freinds.
(Also, when you share a suite with three other girls, hair gets everywhere. I rarely see my suitemates, but I vacuum the hallway between our rooms every other day because there is a ridiculous amount of hair on the floor.)
//Things I Don’t Love About Living On My Own
I can only think of two things. One of them is being sick. I had an ear infection and a 102-degree fever last week and it was terrible. I had to wake up in the morning and take an exam. Then I dragged myself on the shuttle bus, got to my dorm, popped some Tylenol and crashed on my bed. I felt terrible. And what makes it worse is that it was one of the weeks where my mom didn’t give me food and I was planning on going grocery shopping that day, so I didn’t have anything in my fridge.
That’s definitely the worse part. When you’re sick, you are still expected to function as a human being, go grocery shopping and cook your own food when you can barely stand up.
My only other dislike is doing dishes. I don’t really mind doing dishes. It’s just that the sink in my dorm suite is tiny and water gets all over the counter when I wash them. The plates don’t even fit in it.
The worst thing is definitely not being able to see my family. This won’t be a problem in the future when I live nearby, but I currently live an hour away, so it’s not like I can come over and see my brothers every other day or so.
//Things I Love About Living On My Own
There are so many things I love about living on my own. I love being able to go out on weekdays without it being a huge fuss. I love the “adulting” aspects like budgeting my money and deep cleaning my room. I love living fifteen minutes away from one of my best friends. There are so many amazing things that I can’t possibly list in one post. There’s going to be a whole slew of posts about “adulting” things, so stay tuned. (I’ve already published my budget example.)
Something I do really like is the clean slate. I lived in the same room for 15+ years, so I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. I’m a huge bookworm, so there are shelves filled with books in my room. I’m the only daughter, so my mom buys me a lot of clothes. I’m a pretty neat person, it’s just that I have so much stuff in my room that it’s hard to keep everything in the right place.
Before moving, I completely purged my room. I mostly went through clothes and old birthday gifts, but that cleared up a lot of space. I definitely want to do that again in winter break. While my childhood bedroom still has a lot of work to do, my dorm is a well-oiled machine. I know exactly where everything is and I don’t need a lot to live in it. All my stuff fits in my small dresser and desk. I can find everything I need and all the things in my dorm can fit in two large boxes (and that’s only because of the microwave & refrigerator. Otherwise, it could fit in one box).
Not having so much stuff makes it so much easier to clean, too. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever become a minimalist, but I definitely plan on living with less stuff after graduating and fully moving out of my parents’ house. The good thing about moving is that I was forced to go through everything and prioritize what I needed.
//The Emotional Transition
Here’s the thing. The month I moved out was completely crazy. The simplest thing about August was moving out and school starting. My cousins from Bangladesh, New York, and Tennessee came to visit, so I had to drive home multiple times a week. Eid was that month, so all the events that come with holidays were taking up all my time. I had to help my mom host a lot of people at our house and I don’t think I slept in my bed at home once because there were so many people. (Those were times where I wanted to go “home” and my dorm at school felt like it.)
I didn’t have time to process any of it. I had gone through a HUGE life transition, and it never felt like it was about me. The entire time I was preparing to move, I was thinking about my mom and my brother. After moving, I went back and forth between home and my dorm to get Mysoon used to me not living with him. Then Orinta and all my other cousins visited, and I had to make the most of my time with them because I probably won’t see them for another year. I was driving everyone around, going out even though I was exhausted from school, and I had to think about them. Even the weeks before I moved out, my friend Deya had just moved to America alone, so I spent a lot of time helping and talking to her about all the things she needed to do.
I genuinely didn’t think of myself at all.
I wasn’t overwhelmed by all the tasks I had to do. I’m really good at time management and self-care. I cut back on work and finished all my studying while I was on campus on weekdays. I just felt kind of off after my cousins arrived.
It was the first weekend after classes started. It was also the weekend before Eid. I had a lot of fun that weekend, but it felt like something was preventing me from feeling completely happy. I couldn’t pinpoint the feeling I was having; I just didn’t feel content. If I could use a word that describes how I feel 99% of the time, I would say content. Even when I’m sad or angry, I am very content when it comes to my life, no matter what the current circumstances. But I didn’t feel that way that weekend.
The feeling didn’t go away when I was back in school on Monday. I went to class and went through my usual day, but I couldn’t get rid of the feeling I was having that weekend until I got back to my dorm and realized what it was.
I felt lonely.
To you context, I have to tell you about a conversation from a few months before. A family friend of mine (she’s like my big sister) had just graduated college and she was telling me about how much anxiety she was having about grad school applications.
Then she mentioned, “My depression has always manifested itself in anxiety.”
I thought for a second then said, “My depression has always manifested itself in loneliness.”
I had zero friends in elementary school. I was a huge nerd and I was bullied a lot, but that didn’t matter because I had really great friends outside of school and my two best friends in the world, Afnan and Deya. We went to different schools, but we talked and played all the time. We’re basically family. In third and fourth grade, my two best friends in the world moved to Bangladesh. And I had no close friend to talk to.
I didn’t realize I was depressed until middle school when I finally felt truly happy and had people that I could trust with all of myself. (Good friends make everything better). It was one of those, “Oh, It’s not normal that you felt that way!” moments.
I had always considered that circumstantial depression. I thought I felt lonely because I was actually alone at the time. My dad told me he was also depressed when he was younger, so it wasn’t a new phenomenon to me. It’s just that I hadn’t felt almost a depressed in almost a decade and I was so young that I sometimes feel like it was all in my head.
But there I was, surrounded by some of the people I loved most in the world. And I felt lonely.
I just started crying and texted my best friend Stellah asking if I could come over and talk. Knowing that she wouldn’t reply for a while, I sucked it up, got dressed and went to the gym. When she texted me back, I was running on the elliptical and tears started running down my face thinking about all the stuff I had to tell her.
After working out, I drove straight to her apartment. After hugging hello and sitting on the couch, I started off by saying, “Fair warning, I’m going to cry when I start talking,” and then immediately burst into tears.
I told her everything I mentioned above about how I had been feeling those past four or five days and how lonely I felt despite how great everything was going.
She responded, “Triasha, you’ve just been through a drastic life change. It’s okay to feel this way.”
I’ll be honest.
I wanted to punch her in the face. (Sorry Stellah.)
I already knew that! I was kind of hoping she would tell me something that I hadn’t thought of already, but I did feel better. Having someone validate your feelings and the logic behind them really helps.
This entire conversation lasted three minutes tops. We spent the next two hours talking about regular stuff like politics and the environment. Normal stuff.
And I haven’t felt lonely since. This got me thinking that maybe depression never goes away. It’s just dormant for a decade then hits you like a ton of bricks.
My point here is that you can’t expect to adjust to your new life without a hitch. Things certainly would’ve been different if my family had visited in September instead of August, but that’s not what happened. I barely had a week to adjust, but I think I would’ve felt off that month anyway after moving out because I never thought about what I was feeling. Just not to the same extent because I wouldn’t have had so much on my mind.
//Leaving My Special Needs Sibling
There is going to be another blog post specifically about this. Today’s post was specifically about what it’s bee like for me to move out in general. Not what it’s been like for my family.
Without going into so much detail, I’ll tell you that it’s been so hard. I feel so guilty all the time and I miss my brother so much. I can talk to the rest of my family on the phone, but Mysoon can’t talk to me. He doesn’t even hold the phone.
And he’s so sad every time I leave. He can’t tell any of us how he’s feeling or how lonely he is without me. Yesterday, he held on and hugged me for at least 30 seconds, which made me and my mom cry because he never holds hugs for very long.
I think I’ll write about this topic in December after the semester is over so that I can write about how my family has adjusted to everything over a longer period of time. Stay tuned.
That’s it for now. I’ve written 3,000 words on this topic. That hasn’t happened in a while. My next blog post will be my dorm room tour. I just took the pictures today and the post should be live sometime this week. Until then…
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What was moving out like for you?