I’m a firm believer that you never truly know someone until you live with them. Specifically, you don’t know your friends as well as you think until you live with them. In some situations, you get to know your friends better and your relationships grow deeper.

Case in point: my freshman living experience was amazing. I received random roommates and we really got along well and were very close. I’ve known many people who are best friends with their roommates, but I’ve also met many girls whose relationships have turned sour from living together. I can name you lists and lists of girls who are no longer friends because they have lived together, and though I never thought I’d be on the list, I am.

Last semester, after rooming with some of my freshman year roommates, the result wasn’t as favorable. The girls that I thought were my best friends turned out to be completely the opposite. I won’t go into specifics, but recently I found out about some hurtful things they had done behind my back. Unfortunately, I am not able to switch rooms for next semester, but imagine how Lauren Conrad would react if she had to live with Heidi Montag (again) and that’s how I feel about my living situation for the rest of the year.

Though this has been one of the hardest experiences I’ve ever gone through, after giving the situation a lot of thought, I’ve come to a major conclusion about roommates and friends in general. I would not take back what they did to me, even though it’s upsetting, because I can now see them for what they really are and that I had trusted the wrong people. If I hadn’t lived with them, I would never have discovered who they really were. And don’t think that I’m roasting everyone who decides to live with their friends, because that’s not what this is about at all.

I actually want to recommend living with friends. Sometimes this can have bad consequences, but at least you will know who she really is. I’d like to be idealistic and believe that most of the time, living together deepens friendships. As a toast to a new beginning in 2009, I’d like to offer advice to anyone nursing a broken friendship with a roomie, or a friendship on the rocks…if they have proved to be untrustworthy and more of a “frenemy” than a friend, let them go. Though this may be hard to do, you honestly will be better off later in life. After all, what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger.