Living alone with five other people

I supposedly have five roommates that live with me in the apartment I've been subletting this summer. But more often than not I feel like I live alone.

At one point there occasionally lots of people moving in and out of the apartment. But then people fell into their routines in which they avoided every one else's routines. Things were occasionally happening in the apartment but my interaction with any of this activity was always a quick walk through on the way to my room as I changed and left again. I occasionally hold those distracted conversations with my roommates that are the product of a near collision in a hallway. Beyond that and the occasional distracted conversation held as I run through the repetitive momentum of my morning routine with my roommate who seems to always be at his computer organizing spreadsheets or watching telenovelas.

All of it lacks substance though. It's never that we particularly want to talk or be friends. It is much more often that we just happen to exist in the vicinity of each other and pleasantries remove a little bit of the loneliness. However I don't think the pleasantries really remedy any of the loneliness. Often at night in the tiny closet of a room that I live in behind the kitchen it feels as if I'm living alone because I generally have not the slightest idea as to whether or not anyone else is actually in the apartment.

After a while you come to accept that you're alone in all of it. I stopped really caring about the fact that my roommates have a terrible penchant for leaving dishes in the sink. It really bothers me that they do this but I see them so seldom that there's really no way for me to actually express this. After a time I just became resigned to the fact that things happen in the apartment when I'm not here and there's nothing I'm going to really be able to do about them besides using an aggressive system of neon stickers to mark my food in the fridge.

I'm pretty sure two of my roommates have moved out. Though they said they coming back at some point. Another "rage-quit' the apartment after the internet went out too many times and was replaced by someone I only saw here twice. For the most part I just avoid being in my apartment because nothing particularly good happens here besides me lying in bed reading or listening to npr while I eat breakfast at the tiny table in the kitchen.

This place has been a strange first foray into apartment living and I'm not going to miss it but it was an experience to say the least.