Who’d want to share a house at uni?

I’m living on my own this year.  And it’s the best decision I ever made. Living with other people sucks.

Let’s face it, you only wind up living with other people out of some ridiculous need to prove that you actually have friends.  Christmas arrives and you latch desperately onto the first three people you meet before anyone thinks you’re a loner.  It’s just like lunchtime in Mean Girls.

And if by any chance you actually do like your flatmates, that’s not gonna last.  Pretty soon they’ll be asking you to help clean the kitchen or bathroom or dust the leaves of the house plants.

Friendship is ALL about social validation

When I come home, I just want to have a cup of tea and put my feet up.  But those tossers that people decide to live with always have some inane chatter to spout, “How was your day?”  and “Join us for dinner?”  Like, I clearly hate your odious company.  Leave me the heck alone!

You have to put up with those little annoying things that make you want to pluck out and eat your own eyes.  Like god-awful Miley Cyrus/Kanye West music blaring out of someone’s speakers because they fancy themselves a DJ.  Or super-loud laughing whenever the TV goes on.  People should really learn to laugh in silence.

Sure, I have to pay thousands more in rent, but I’m convinced it’s way cheaper than people stealing all my food.  And I know I won’t have to pay for someone else to deep condition their hair in 8,000 litres of water.

A 32-person student house: hell on earth

But the biggest problem is how well your housemates know you.  I mean, they see every damn thing.  Like the ONE time your towel fell in the shower and you had to hot-foot it back to your room starkers.  Yeah, they snapped a picture of that.

The fact is, friends are best kept at a distance.  However Rachel-and-Monica you are right now, you’ll eventually have a fight or you’ll grow out of your childish bonding over One Direction.  But if you’re a strong and independent woman like me, you’ll know that you don’t need them for some completely silly form of self-validation.

I was raised to believe in success.  Nobody’s going to look out for me, so I’ve got to look out for myself.  If everything goes to plan, I’ll have a top job in the city within a few years.  And with that great power, comes great risk.  I just can’t afford to have old chums from my embarrassing uni days dishing the dirt on me to the tabloids and ruining my rep.

Living on my own is great.  I can keep the leeches who call themselves my ‘friends’ at arm’s length, and when things go wrong and I end up drowning my tears in a bottle of Jack, no one’s going to see it.  Or upload a photo on Facebook.