I have been at the front door of many houses, but this little two-story home has my heart. It’s also home to four of the people I love most.

The beauty of a share house is in the name – share. There are few people on this planet who know as much about me as my housemates.

Our kitchen is shared; on good days, we watch one another cook vibrant meals and feel-good air fryer snacks. On bad days, we bond over our absolute lack of motivation – to cook, to open the fridge, to move our plates from the bench to the dishwasher.

Our couch is shared. It’s so heavily shared that we’ve already had to reconstruct part of the wooden frame. And I love that, because it means our couch is rarely empty.

Our balcony is shared, though less-so in unison. We tend to go there one by one in moments of solitude. Most of us have cried there (unless I’m projecting.)

At the risk of listing every room in the house, however, I’ll arrive at the front door step.

This is where we enter.

I didn’t know what would happen to me when I first used our front door step.

We all walked in through the styled wooden door – all five of us – and collectively shuddered at the paint hue. (Is it good or bad that I forget the colour?)

At the time, I knew two of the four girls very well and two of them very vaguely. I felt quite nervous around the latter and worried they’d find me distant or bland.

Two years later, I consider them all my family.

This is where I died.

Or I thought I did. I felt as though death would certainly be an improvement.

It’s bizarre to remember now. Carefree, I was playing (and losing) Mario Kart on a sunny November afternoon (on that couch we had to repair.)

As far as I knew, he’d be arriving any minute and staying for the weekend.

I’m here. Can you meet me downstairs?

It was bad news. You don’t realise people can leave – and will leave – until they do.

I collapsed at the time. I collapsed for a long time. Now I walk over the doorstep and the memory doesn’t follow me in.

This is the source of my daily joy.

I have a favourite sound. It’s the jingle-twang-clunk of the front door being unlocked and opened; someone’s coming back home.

If it’s Geremy, I know she’ll flop down on the couch and I’ll swivel my chair around to debrief our days. I will laugh more in those five minutes than I have all day.

If it’s Hannah, the house will instantly fill with a calm, steady energy that says everything is going to be okay.

If it’s Cassia, I can tell before she even reaches the top of the stairs. No one has a vibrancy quite like hers and it’s contagious and radiant.

If it’s Kenny, I watch for her expression as she reaches the top step. We share some significant parts of our innermost personality; often, our moods either run parallel or complement one another. When she arrives home, I all at once feel at home.

We have others who share our doorstep. Zach is boyfriend to Cassia but best friend to us all. Kirralee has a bright spark that told me I would love her from the moment we met.

When Karina and Twistie come to work, study, or ignore the real world, our home seems fit to burst with joy.

I got so goddamn lucky.