Apartment Living

Well, I've been apartment hunting for a minute now. After budgeting my pay I can afford something for around $335 a month. So no, I am not going to be living in luxary, but I may have a place to call my own!

Now here is my dilemma.  To have roommate or not to have roommate.
My Plan A: Save up enough money to get my own place (no roommate) for the deposit and rent for a couple of months. Under my schedule, I was going to be moving out of my parent's in February. This would give me the time to get all the household essentials together without killing my bank account. I need furniture, dishware, cutlery, cleaning supplies, towels, etc.

Plan B: I think this was kind of thrust upon me and I am really leery about it. I was contemplating getting a roommate to afford a better place. I mentioned this to a coworker and now that she's having marital problems she's offering to be a roommate. The problems start with the fact that I don't know her very well. We get along great at work. I think we could even be friends, but I don't know how well I can rely on her. She is in a big hurry to get a new place, but she doesn't seem to realize how long the process can take. She wants to move tomorrow, and the place I was able to find will be ready the 15th. What is worse is that I don't trust her budgeting skills. She says that this week she can contribute $80 to the apartment. We need to pay a deposit, the first month's rent and pay to have utilities turned on, probably around $800 to finish everything up.
The only saving grace about this place is if I have to pay the full deposit and utility activation myself, I can keep everything in my name. I can even afford the full rent on my own. So, if she completely flakes on me, I won't be obligated to keep her around and can find a different roommate. 

Living on my own, I wouldn't have to rely on someone to supply the other half of the rent and utilities, if something went wrong it would be my fault, my failure. If I have a roommate, it would make things that much more affordable and make going back to school easier to pay for. It's just scary having to rely on someone else for so much!

Everything is happening much faster than I would have preferred, but it doesn't mean the end of the world. I think I can do this. I just have to take the bitch-slap life dealt me and go on.

The Ex

I’m newly single.

I met my first real serious boyfriend when I was away at college. Oddly enough it was a boy from home that I didn’t even remember adding to my Facebook. He began chatting with me while I was at school and when I came home for Winter break we actually met for the first time. I wasn’t stupid about it. We met in a very public place, I got myself there and home.

I don’t want to say that he was abusive because I feel it is a very serious accusation that should never be tossed around lightly. He never hit me, maybe it would have been easier for me to leave if that’s what he did. No, he fed into my insecurities, and exploited them.

Before we even met I told him up front that I was a heavy girl. He told me the usual line, “I just care about personality, and you’re nice and funny. I don’t care how you look.” Then the very first night I stayed at his place we were cuddling when he asked how I felt about losing twenty pounds. (At my heaviest I was 283 lbs. I am now 190 lbs) That should have been it for me, but I knew that I was unhealthy and I needed a change, so I justified it in my head as him caring about my well-being.

While I was at school, I became very depressed and homesick, I stopped going to classes and rarely left the room. I decided it was time for me to withdraw from my classes and come home. That’s the first time he broke up with me. I remember him telling him that I didn’t fit into his mind set as a proper potential life. He helps run his family business and there was no way he could be respected with someone like me in his life. And then he told me “It’s really a shame because I will never find anyone better than me.”

Once I was home, I began talking with him again and we started seeing each other again. He told me up front that we had an “arrangement” but he’d treat me like a girlfriend, but that’s not what I was. Another red flag. After a few months, I was losing weight (2-3 lbs a week) and getting comfortable. That’s when I made the proposal of trying again as his girlfriend. He basically laughed at me and told me not to worry about it that I wasn’t competition against any other the girls he have never met. But I couldn’t walk away from him at this point. I went right back to him.

Then he began actively looking for someone else. His sister suddenly fixed him up with a girl she went to college with. And he told me he was once again done with me. A week go by and he calls me with his sob story of how the girl stood him up, and avoided him and finally told him that she wasn’t interested. I felt bad, it’s a shitty way for anyone to be treated and so I went back.

And then it happened again, guy he was working for said he had the perfect girl to fix him up with. And he actually turned the guy down. I know what happened at this point. He had gotten comfortable with me.

He had started calling me his girlfriend, which is something he had done when we went to parties, because he said it was easier than explaining our situation and embarrassing me, but he had starting doing it around the people that knew us and knew what was going on between us. He never really discussed the change with me, so I had to assume that nothing between us had changed.

One night he told me about a girl he was checking out at lunch and was disappointed that I wasn’t so enthusiastic. He told me that he was always disappointed that I never liked myself. The next night he broke up with me saying that I held me back. That when I visited I never made him study for his GED or practice his essay writing. It was my fault that he had not accomplished any of his goals.

We kept talking as friends; he went to meet a girl one of his coworkers set him up with. She didn’t like him. And once again he turned back to me. I’ll admit that I wasn’t to tell him no, but I didn’t jump and say yes. And that shook him.

We talked for a few more weeks and finally I let him see some of the pain he had caused me. For two years he was the only person to call me up and ask how I was doing, I felt like he was the only friend I had left and I did value that friendship, because we did have fun together. He introduced him to dagorhir and boffer sport that included three day camp outs and late night parties. We shared a joy of gaming, I’m a PlayStation girl and he always had his computer games going. He taught me how to play League of Legends, he liked that I was a gaming girl. We shared anime and manga. I taught him how to make awesome sausage gravy and chicken Alfredo. We did smile together and have fun. And that’s why I wanted to keep the friendship, but when I was finally honest with him I told him, “You’re a great friend, but you were a shitty boyfriend.” He told me he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

I sent him a message on Facebook saying that I would still be his friend if he ever found himself in need of someone to talk to. All he sent back was “I’m done getting hurt by you.” Maybe I did something I didn’t notice. Some terrible trespass that I overlooked.  I want to ask him to sum up all these hurts, just as I did above, but that does seem callous. So I will let him have his pain and I will have the happy memories that we shared. The pain is a lesson and not something to cling to otherwise I will never move on and find happiness.

Greeting Readers!

My name is Brandi. 

You’re average Middle American young woman working to etch out her own life. I have my faults, I’ll be the first to tell you that, but I work hard to overcome them and find happiness in my life with what I have. I recently went through a break-up from a bad relationship. I grew-up enough where my ex couldn’t control me any longer and cut ties. One of my next few posts will go further in depth about that situation and everything I learned from it.

But now I want to focus on me and what I am doing now!

I am twenty-one and living at home with my mother and step-father. I am no-where close to where I thought 

I’d be back in high school. I am making progress to get back on track.

I am beginning to have goals and plans again!

I have a job and I am paying my own bills, which right now are only student loans and phone. It pained me every time I asked my mother or grandmother for money it keep my phone active.

I am in the process of going back to school, a local community college to salvage my GPA from my freshman year when I dropped out.

I am an artist and I want to keep that part of my life. I dream of having my work hang in a gallery.

I enjoy writing, I want to be published!

I want to take a solo trip to Ireland!

I’m getting a tattoo! It’s a beautiful Celtic-knot shamrock with the phrase “Tada gan iarracht”, which is Gaelic for “Nothing without effort.” I feel that sums up my life philosophy.

I am reconnecting with friends I had from high school and college and I am working at making new friends.

This all seems pretty random and lacking any continuity, and for that I apologize. I promise that my future posts will have more structure.

This is just meant to be an introduction to give everyone an idea of where I am right now. My next few posts will be brief histories to help you readers, know me and how I’ve gotten to be myself, now.

I really hope that sharing my thoughts and experiences will make me a stronger person and remind me of everything I have to look forward to.

BSM