My last post ended when I arrived in York and arrived at my new home. The house was beautiful with a good amount of space. It has a basement, first floor, second floor and finished attack. At the time I had no clue what the attic looked like because there was somebody else living up there. One of my cousin's best friends also needed an escape from NJ so they allowed her and her daughter to live with them. Unfortunately that situation turned out to be horrible. She promised to help with bills and chores and wound up making both things worse. Her and my cousin weren't even speaking when I got to the house, and I could see that it was definitely time for her to leave.
I would be sleeping on the couch since someone was occupying the attic. I did not mind at all because a comfortable couch was better than a park bench or a sidewalk. The situation in NJ when I left was horrible, so there was no place for me to go. My uncle apparently got drunk and decided to tell my family that I stole money from him. He is living in my grandmother's house. I would go there a lot because I could charge my phone on her porch and had a bathroom to use. So my uncle's money went missing and he accused me because my great uncle told him that he saw me go to use the bathroom. He called me and asked me about his money, and I told him I wouldn't take money from him no matter what my situation was. I guess he didn't believe me because he told me that me and my boyfriend weren't allowed to come over there anymore. The same day my grandmother berated me about using her porch to charge my phone without asking, so that was my queue to get the hell out of the area. The whole world was coming down on me it seemed. A day or two later my uncle called to apologize because he found his money. I didn't speak to him directly but he left a voicemail on my phone. By then, my feelings were too hurt to respond or call him back. Between him and my grandmother I decided that I wasn't going anywhere near that house anymore. He was not the first family member to accuse me of stealing something that I didn't take. That situation left me with very few options, so the feeling of being completely alone in the world was starting to settle right in.
Unfortunately when I got to my cousin's house they had no cable. Boredom is not good for me. My mind never quite settles down enough for me to get the rest I need. There also was no internet, but we could always steal it from the neighbors until they caught on. My initial days were spent trying to find dvd's to watch, or books to read, or people to text. I woke up with my cousin and helped her out in her shop. When I wasn't busy I was crying. I do not like to cry in front of other people, so I'm good at putting on the best real/fake smile I can muster and then completely break down when nobody is looking. Most of the crying came late at night. I was in a strange new place, I had to leave my children in NJ, I had left my boyfriend in NJ and wasn't even speaking to him at the moment, and it seemed like nobody else in the world cared about where I was or what I was doing. I had a prepaid phone that was always running out of minutes, so it was difficult to stay in touch with the outside world. Thank god for google voice. My AT&T phone that was out of commission was a droid phone so I downloaded the google voice app and got a telephone number from them. At least I could talk to people as long as i had wifi. Couldn't make calls, but I prefer texting anyway.
About three days went by of that routine (and also the secret routine of harrassing my boyfriend's family members to find out where he was) until I was finally able to get in touch with him. He still had an attitude and had no idea that I was now 160 miles away...this was going to be a very interesting conversation. I don't remember exactly how, but I finally got in touch with him. We were arguing/texting for a while and I finally told him that I moved away. He was very hurt and upset, but I told him that didn't mean I wanted to break up. I knew we were mad at each other at that moment, but I figured we should think about what we wanted for the future before deciding to end things. If he was willing to move where I was, we didn't have to break up. The relationship with my boyfriend has always been simple, yet complicated. I found myself wondering what was going to happen to us, and knowing that if we broke up I would be crushed. I loved him very much and did not want to lose what took such a hard time to find. Unfortunately the task at hand was not a simple one, we both had major attitude problems at the time and neither one of us wanted to budge. I got to the point of not wanting to talk to him because I was just sick and tired of arguing. Not to mention that I knew that I would never move back to NJ, so if he couldn't decided to move away, we had no future. Dropping all of this on him while he was still mad was a terrible idea though, but I didn't think it could be avoided.
I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I decided that the only place to start was with a job. I set out going to every store and website I could think of to find out if they were hiring. I did so many job applications that I was tired of typing and writing my name. No job was beneath me though. I applied for McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's and every other job I could find. Big jobs and small jobs, no matter how much they paid, all received applications from me.
I also decided to find something to believe in. Not necessarily find something to believe in, but some positivity to focus on. I had already believed in a lot of things, but sometimes it is easy to lose sight of those things. So every Sunday I attended church with my cousin, her husband and their baby. My adorable baby cousin. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the services and joined the church the first time I went to a service. It felt good to be there and I felt like this decision could help change my life around. It also reminded me of a church that I used to go to in NJ and I realized how much I missed going to that church. Some of the people there are truly amazing.
On the homefront there was unfortunately nothing but drama. The girl occupying the attic must have forgotten that you are supposed to respect people that allow you to share their roof. She was very rude and inconsiderate in the things that she did and I could sense that things would be coming to a head very soon. I was getting very annoyed at the situation but tried to stay out of it because i have a very bad temper. I was trying to change the negativity inside of me instead of unleashing it on people in my new home. So I sat silently and listened to the drama unfold. Sometimes I wanted to take action, but most of the time it wasn't needed. Basically the girl never washed dishes, never bought food for the house, never paid any of the bills she was supposed to pay, was never home with her daughter (my cousin's husband was dropping her off and picking her up from the babysitter) and never asking permission to have her boyfriend AND his kid over for the weekend. She was making the house uncomfortable for my cousin, which I did not like at all. I do not think it's right to make other people uncomfortable in your home, but I think it's even worse to make the person who's home it is uncomfortable. Well, one day the tenant came home and decided to have a very loud and disrespectful conversation about my cousin with her husband. I decided to go upstairs and tell her to shut the hell up and have some respect, but my cousin stopped me before I could get to the third floor. She would take care of the problem on her own. I respected that and went back downstairs to try to think about something else.
The next day I found out that my cousin had basically told her to pack up her crap and get the hell out. She also told her to figure out another way to get her child picked up and dropped off, and another babysitter for the nights. This did not go over so well with her and she decided that she was going to go to my cousin's shop to confront her. Why oh why did this have to be a day I decided to stay home and do job appliations?? I was just figuring out how long it would take me to walk there when my cousin's husband called me. He told me what was going on and begged me not to get involved. He knows how my temper is and figured things would get seriously bad if I got involved. Being respectful of the people I lived with I told him that as long as she didn't lay a finger on my cousin, I would stay out of it. That was an agreement he said he could live with. Things got slightly worse before they got better, but two days later the girl and all of her stuff was gone. The house was finally at peace. Now I could really settle in and try to get comfortable. Of course, starting from scratch is never really peaceful or comfortable...
Monday, October 31, 2011
Life after Greyhound...
Hello again. I've been dying to get back to writing, but of course this snow storm did a great job of knocking out my electricity. Two days with no heat, no stove, and nothing electric. I had to escape to the library to get some heat and Internet. Anyway, my saga continues...
So my long ride on the Greyhound came to an end at the York bus station. I got off the bus, grabbed my bags and waited for my cousin to come and get me. I looked around and didn't see anything spectacular. There was a guy that I was sure was a bum sitting outside, unused train tracks behind the bus station, and a stadium right next to it. I stood there listening to the music on my phone wondering where the hell I was. LOL.
It took my cousin about ten minutes to come and get me, and I was very relieved when she pulled up. I got in the car and greeted her. We don't hug because she isn't the hugging type. She is a great person, she just isn't very affectionate. I have no idea what we said to each other because my mind was racing. I was here and on my way to her house, so there was definitely no turning back. Even if I wanted to turn back, there was no place to turn back to. My boyfriend's car broke down so I couldn't get back and forth to work anymore.
It was a great job too, well kind of great. Great compared to nothing at all. I worked in the warehouse at Novartis Pharmaceuticals doing the glamorous job of counting pills that were sent back by doctor's offices. I was hired for data entry, but since it took them so long to provide log in information for the computers, I spent 3 or 4 weeks counting pills everyday. Before that job I hadn't earned a paycheck in about eleven months so I didn't care what I had to do. They were paying me $14/hr and I would do what they asked me to do. I was also homeless (a status I was used to after about two years of being that way), but my cousin told me that me and my boyfriend could stay with him in Newark, NJ until we got on our feet. He had a 1 bedroom apartment with no electricity, but it was better than sleeping in the car. We could figure out a way to stay cool, eat and see at night. For a while it was working out, but we knew we had to get the car fixed soon. It just wasn't driving right. It took a very long time to pickup speed, we had to change the front right tire every week or so, and something was killing the battery.
When the car finally broke down we were going to visit my grandmother in Plainfield and it broke down right in front of her apartment. In some ways I considered us lucky. We could have broken down in the middle of the highway with nobody to call and nowhere to go. Well, I called my job (or maybe emailed) and explained that my car broke down and I had no way to get there until we got it fixed. I asked if they could give me a few days to get things straightened out. The plan was to get the car towed to my mechanic and pay him slowly to fix things one by one...until we realized that the alternator died. I have a friend that knows cars very well and he came to look at it and told us what the problem was. The bigger issue was the make of the car. Volvo. There are a lot of people that either do not like to, or do not know how to work on Volvos. Also, it was expensive. I forgot what specific day it was, but the car just happened to break down on Front street. Which is the street that the 4th of July parade goes down, which meant the car had to be moved ASAP. It was a couple of days before the 4th of July. We used either my mom's or my grandmother's AAA and got the car towed to the shop. My friend and her boyfriend came to pick us up. Being with them turned out to be great. We went to the beach for the 4th of July and had the best time. I didn't know at the time, but that was my last hurrah in NJ. I will post pics later of my final days in NJ.
So here I was, in York, Pa. Thinking about all the things I just wrote about and wondering how my life got so messy. Of course, I knew the answer to that question. We always know the answers to questions like that whether we want to admit it or not. Bad choices combined with constantly trusting the wrong people. Unfortunately, sometimes the wrong people shared the same blood as me. I tried my best to turn my mind to the future, to stick to my goals and get myself together. Nothing would stop me from accomplishing my goals, I knew that, but I couldn't completely focus just yet. There was a lot of unfinished business swirling around in my head. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry until I fell asleep just to wake up and cry more. But I was in front of my cousin and getting ready to go in the house and see her husband and her son. There was no way on earth I was letting any of them see me that way. So I put on my best smile and tried to begin my new life.
We got to my cousin's house and it definitely does not look like NJ. She lives on a block of row houses. Those are not very common in NJ. Her house is almost right in the middle of a small one way street. There is nothing really spectacular about the outside of any of the houses that are on the street, but when we go inside I see that the inside of her house is beautiful. When you walk in you look to your left and see the dining room. If you walk forward you can either take the stairs up to the second floor or slightly turn to your left and go into the living room. They had a nice 32" flat screen, a book case, a coffee table, and two black couches in the living room. Very nice. Through the living room and in the back of the house are the living room and the mudroom. I have no idea what a mudroom is but that is what my cousin called it. LOL. It looks like an extension to the kitchen that is used for storage. Also, there is a door to the backyard and another door to the basement. I did not see the basement right away. I did put my things in the office on the second floor. The second floor had the baby's bedroom, the master bedroom, a bathroom and the office. The office could have been a third bedroom if they wanted it to be, but my cousin has her own baking business so of course they turned it into an office. I was liking what I was seeing so far. A nice comfortable place I could really call home until I found a home of my own.
Unfortunately my time on the library computer is up. I cannot wait to either go to work or get some electricity. Well, I will be writing again soon. Stay tuned...
So my long ride on the Greyhound came to an end at the York bus station. I got off the bus, grabbed my bags and waited for my cousin to come and get me. I looked around and didn't see anything spectacular. There was a guy that I was sure was a bum sitting outside, unused train tracks behind the bus station, and a stadium right next to it. I stood there listening to the music on my phone wondering where the hell I was. LOL.
It took my cousin about ten minutes to come and get me, and I was very relieved when she pulled up. I got in the car and greeted her. We don't hug because she isn't the hugging type. She is a great person, she just isn't very affectionate. I have no idea what we said to each other because my mind was racing. I was here and on my way to her house, so there was definitely no turning back. Even if I wanted to turn back, there was no place to turn back to. My boyfriend's car broke down so I couldn't get back and forth to work anymore.
It was a great job too, well kind of great. Great compared to nothing at all. I worked in the warehouse at Novartis Pharmaceuticals doing the glamorous job of counting pills that were sent back by doctor's offices. I was hired for data entry, but since it took them so long to provide log in information for the computers, I spent 3 or 4 weeks counting pills everyday. Before that job I hadn't earned a paycheck in about eleven months so I didn't care what I had to do. They were paying me $14/hr and I would do what they asked me to do. I was also homeless (a status I was used to after about two years of being that way), but my cousin told me that me and my boyfriend could stay with him in Newark, NJ until we got on our feet. He had a 1 bedroom apartment with no electricity, but it was better than sleeping in the car. We could figure out a way to stay cool, eat and see at night. For a while it was working out, but we knew we had to get the car fixed soon. It just wasn't driving right. It took a very long time to pickup speed, we had to change the front right tire every week or so, and something was killing the battery.
When the car finally broke down we were going to visit my grandmother in Plainfield and it broke down right in front of her apartment. In some ways I considered us lucky. We could have broken down in the middle of the highway with nobody to call and nowhere to go. Well, I called my job (or maybe emailed) and explained that my car broke down and I had no way to get there until we got it fixed. I asked if they could give me a few days to get things straightened out. The plan was to get the car towed to my mechanic and pay him slowly to fix things one by one...until we realized that the alternator died. I have a friend that knows cars very well and he came to look at it and told us what the problem was. The bigger issue was the make of the car. Volvo. There are a lot of people that either do not like to, or do not know how to work on Volvos. Also, it was expensive. I forgot what specific day it was, but the car just happened to break down on Front street. Which is the street that the 4th of July parade goes down, which meant the car had to be moved ASAP. It was a couple of days before the 4th of July. We used either my mom's or my grandmother's AAA and got the car towed to the shop. My friend and her boyfriend came to pick us up. Being with them turned out to be great. We went to the beach for the 4th of July and had the best time. I didn't know at the time, but that was my last hurrah in NJ. I will post pics later of my final days in NJ.
So here I was, in York, Pa. Thinking about all the things I just wrote about and wondering how my life got so messy. Of course, I knew the answer to that question. We always know the answers to questions like that whether we want to admit it or not. Bad choices combined with constantly trusting the wrong people. Unfortunately, sometimes the wrong people shared the same blood as me. I tried my best to turn my mind to the future, to stick to my goals and get myself together. Nothing would stop me from accomplishing my goals, I knew that, but I couldn't completely focus just yet. There was a lot of unfinished business swirling around in my head. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry until I fell asleep just to wake up and cry more. But I was in front of my cousin and getting ready to go in the house and see her husband and her son. There was no way on earth I was letting any of them see me that way. So I put on my best smile and tried to begin my new life.
We got to my cousin's house and it definitely does not look like NJ. She lives on a block of row houses. Those are not very common in NJ. Her house is almost right in the middle of a small one way street. There is nothing really spectacular about the outside of any of the houses that are on the street, but when we go inside I see that the inside of her house is beautiful. When you walk in you look to your left and see the dining room. If you walk forward you can either take the stairs up to the second floor or slightly turn to your left and go into the living room. They had a nice 32" flat screen, a book case, a coffee table, and two black couches in the living room. Very nice. Through the living room and in the back of the house are the living room and the mudroom. I have no idea what a mudroom is but that is what my cousin called it. LOL. It looks like an extension to the kitchen that is used for storage. Also, there is a door to the backyard and another door to the basement. I did not see the basement right away. I did put my things in the office on the second floor. The second floor had the baby's bedroom, the master bedroom, a bathroom and the office. The office could have been a third bedroom if they wanted it to be, but my cousin has her own baking business so of course they turned it into an office. I was liking what I was seeing so far. A nice comfortable place I could really call home until I found a home of my own.
Unfortunately my time on the library computer is up. I cannot wait to either go to work or get some electricity. Well, I will be writing again soon. Stay tuned...
Friday, October 28, 2011
My first blog
Hello everyone. My name is Kera. This is my first attempt at a blog, and honestly I have no idea how to do this. Many people have told me that I should write about my life because of all the crazy things that I have been through, but I never took the chance to do it. I decided that now was a good time. I think that reading my story could possibly be a testimony to someone out there that needs to know that things do eventually turn around. I want to say thank you for anyone that is reading this, and I hope you find it interesting. I am hoping to make some friends and inspire some people, but who knows...
I guess I will start off by writing about my relocation. Three months ago, on July 6th, I made a very unexpected and abrupt move. I packed up a very minimal amount of items and moved from Plainfield, NJ to York, PA. My life before that had been in complete shambles. I had been homeless for about two years (for reasons I will explain in later blogs), unemployed, and desperately hopeless. I didn't know what I was going to do. I called my cousin (God bless her) and asked if she could get me a ticket to York ASAP. The next day I was on a Greyhound riding toward the unknown. I left behind the majority of my family, my two beautiful children (for reasons I will also talk about in another blog), my boyfriend, my best friend and all of my possessions (which wasn't very much to begin with). This journey for me was a very sad one. I had no idea where my life was going, and where ever it was going, I had no idea how I was going to get there. I was a lost soul.
The Greyhound stopped in Philadelphia, a place I had surprisingly never been to, so I decided to take advantage of being in a new place and walk around a bit for my 30 minute layover. I hurried to find a Philly cheesesteak and took pictures of anything I found interesting. I take pictures of lots of things because I love to have memories I can look at. I decided to use the 6 hour bus ride as time to reflect on what I've done and think about goals I wanted to accomplish in the near future. I decided that my first order of business when I got to York was to find a job. I hadn't been working in a year (besides a three week stint at Novartis Pharmaceuticals that ended abruptly when my boyfriend's car broke down) so I was very anxious to find any work I could. Also, I was not eligible for unemployment or public assistance so I had literally no income.
The day before I left I sold my car (that was broken down and only worked for three days when I purchased it) for $200. I hated to sell it because my mother and boyfriend bought it for me, but I couldn't do anything with it being so far away. I decided that would hopefully get me through the next couple of weeks until I could get some income. Nobody in NJ knew that I left besides my best friend and her boyfriend. My boyfriend and I had gotten into a stupid argument so he didn't even know that I left. I knew that would be a very interesting conversation to have later on.
During my ride, my feelings constantly changed. I went from excited, to nervous, to sad, to depressed, to expectant, to anxious. There were many more feelings jumbled up in there and I was so on edge that I could not even sleep during the ride. Luckily Greyhound buses have built in wifi, so I could use my phone (that was of course turned off because I couldn't pay the bill). I spent most of the time texting my friend or on facebook. I was moving that nobody knew me in. A place that I was a complete stranger and outsider and at the time I had nothing to contribute to society. I felt like a complete and utter failure. A loser. Lower than low. I didn't even feel like I deserved the chance I was given by my cousin and her husband because I should have made better choices in my life. It was too late now though, I had made a decision and I was damn sure going to stick to it...
Unfortunately it's just about time for me to leave work...I will write again very soon. Until then, be blessed.
I guess I will start off by writing about my relocation. Three months ago, on July 6th, I made a very unexpected and abrupt move. I packed up a very minimal amount of items and moved from Plainfield, NJ to York, PA. My life before that had been in complete shambles. I had been homeless for about two years (for reasons I will explain in later blogs), unemployed, and desperately hopeless. I didn't know what I was going to do. I called my cousin (God bless her) and asked if she could get me a ticket to York ASAP. The next day I was on a Greyhound riding toward the unknown. I left behind the majority of my family, my two beautiful children (for reasons I will also talk about in another blog), my boyfriend, my best friend and all of my possessions (which wasn't very much to begin with). This journey for me was a very sad one. I had no idea where my life was going, and where ever it was going, I had no idea how I was going to get there. I was a lost soul.
The Greyhound stopped in Philadelphia, a place I had surprisingly never been to, so I decided to take advantage of being in a new place and walk around a bit for my 30 minute layover. I hurried to find a Philly cheesesteak and took pictures of anything I found interesting. I take pictures of lots of things because I love to have memories I can look at. I decided to use the 6 hour bus ride as time to reflect on what I've done and think about goals I wanted to accomplish in the near future. I decided that my first order of business when I got to York was to find a job. I hadn't been working in a year (besides a three week stint at Novartis Pharmaceuticals that ended abruptly when my boyfriend's car broke down) so I was very anxious to find any work I could. Also, I was not eligible for unemployment or public assistance so I had literally no income.
The day before I left I sold my car (that was broken down and only worked for three days when I purchased it) for $200. I hated to sell it because my mother and boyfriend bought it for me, but I couldn't do anything with it being so far away. I decided that would hopefully get me through the next couple of weeks until I could get some income. Nobody in NJ knew that I left besides my best friend and her boyfriend. My boyfriend and I had gotten into a stupid argument so he didn't even know that I left. I knew that would be a very interesting conversation to have later on.
During my ride, my feelings constantly changed. I went from excited, to nervous, to sad, to depressed, to expectant, to anxious. There were many more feelings jumbled up in there and I was so on edge that I could not even sleep during the ride. Luckily Greyhound buses have built in wifi, so I could use my phone (that was of course turned off because I couldn't pay the bill). I spent most of the time texting my friend or on facebook. I was moving that nobody knew me in. A place that I was a complete stranger and outsider and at the time I had nothing to contribute to society. I felt like a complete and utter failure. A loser. Lower than low. I didn't even feel like I deserved the chance I was given by my cousin and her husband because I should have made better choices in my life. It was too late now though, I had made a decision and I was damn sure going to stick to it...
Unfortunately it's just about time for me to leave work...I will write again very soon. Until then, be blessed.
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