Drama Drama Drama

My two best friends are also my roommates. We've all been best friends since we were twelve, which astoundingly was fourteen years ago now. I don't have any sisters, but these two friends we'll call them Amanda and Lindsay have been sisters in my life. We've known each other through first loves, first marriages (for one of us), through middle school, through high school, through parents splitting up, through college, through starting careers.

Through all of this we've had very little drama. I remember once when I was sixteen and had my first serious boyfriend Amanda was mad at me for about a month because she felt like I was always ditching her. Her dad locked us in a room at church and said, "you two, work this out, because you are friends for life." He was right and we did work it out.

Life changes and people grow up and get married and move on. I have been really happy for Amands who has recently fallen in love (I should remind her how I'm handling this much better than she did my serious boyfriend I had at 16). I know she really wants all of this to happen. So much so, that I think I haven't noticed that something else is going on with her. I just have been assuming that she is really in love and happy, but tonight I got a wakeup call that something else is going on.

Our lease is up on October 1st, so we have almost exactly two months to sign a new lease or to move out. We've been holding off on a decision because Lindsay, who recently got divorced and moved into the office, was looking for a job in town that couldn't start until she graduated nursing school next month. Well, she found a job, so we were all planning to meet to talk about what we want to do with the October lease.

Tonight I asked Amanda as she was on her way out the door to work what time we were going to meet tomorrow. "I don't the time," she said, "but I have no new information."

"Amanda, in two months we either have to move out of here or we have to sign a new lease. I am fine with whatever we want to do, but I don't really want to have 31 days to plan financially, find a place, and time to move. Plus, Lindsay is planning to stay and she needs to know what her options are."

Then, she was obviously upset and said she's not officially engaged and she didn't know when she was starting graduate school. The thing is that she's not planning to get married until May no matter what, and she says she will not consider moving in with her fiance before they're married. She wants to move out on her own to see if she can make it with no roommates and no boy before she is married. All that is fine, but she was saying that she didn't know if she wanted to move out at all now because of school and not being engaged. She was getting so upset as she was telling me this.

"Amanda, I am not trying to tell you what to do. You should do what you want to do, but not as your roommate, but as your friend, I don't see your logic. I understand you are stressed that things are up in the air, but you can stay here until you get married or if you don't you can stay as long as you want. I just don't see why you're putting all this added pressure on yourself. Why don't you just stay here until you get married, and I'll find a new roommate or we'll figure out what to do with the last four months of our lease?"

Well, then she says nothing. Nothing. I have never had a conversation in my life with Amanda like this. Seriously, it was still 20 minutes until she left and neither of us said a word. I got the idea that I better drop this conversation, but not before I realized there was a lot more going on than I thought. I don't really understand why she just wouldn't tell me. Whatever it is I wouldn't judge her and I would help her.

The thing is that with family sometimes you don't want your family to know about whatever mess you're in because you know that they will know that you were raised better than whatever your choices that got you into the mess were. I think that something like that is going on with her. What, I'm not sure, but I am far more concerned with that than the eminent surprise move that may be happening for some or all of us in a couple of months.