All by myself

My sisters had been my roommates for nine years. Was I ready to live on my own?

- DIANA AYDIN

I SAT AT ONE END OF MY COUCH WITH my dinner for one: toast with a bit of cheese. The sound of each bite—had I always chewed so loudly?—seemed to echo around my new apartment. I glanced at my phone. Nearly 8 p.m. I’d had a long day at my new job. I’d been looking forward to getting home. Now that I was here, though, I didn’t know what to do. Play music? Watch TV? Do some vacuuming? There was so much…silence. I set down my plate and picked up the phone. Should I text my older sisters, Kristin and Priscilla? “It’s too quiet. Please send help, stat!”

I put down my phone, knowing that request would never fly. I could imagine their reply: “You’ll get used to living on your own. Just give it time.”

It had been two months since the three of us had gone our separate ways.

If anything, I was even more lonely. My sisters and I had been roommates for nearly a decade in New York City. Sure, we’d squabbled over whose turn it was to load the dishwasher and take out the trash. But there was nothing like coming home from work to two people asking, “How was your day?”

Things changed after Kristin got married. At first, she and her husband, Ciaran, lived in the apartment with us. When our lease ended, they moved out. By then, Priscilla was getting married too. Our lives were clearly going in different directions.