Settling in

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...