So this is a long ass story but I figured contextual background might be needed.
The tl;dr? Here is my Ko-fi link and I am begging for anything to help me be able to afford rent at the end of this month. Why do I need help? Because my best friend/roommate had been using me for months and I blinded myself to that fact. Just let it keep happening until I ended up in this position. Now I'm alone and have a cat relying on me and am genuinely kind of terrified. I don't know what else to say other than I'm sorry but thank you for even clicking on this.
So after I moved down from Toronto to Newfoundland, I moved in with a friend of mine named we shall name Joan. Joan was my best friend and we got along really well. First birthday I had that wasn't a complete disaster was last year and with her. We went to get her ears pierced and got some weed and ordered some food and just hung out. But things started to turn pretty quickly.
This was her first time living in a place that wasn't with her parents and rather quickly it became apparent that she straight up was not equipped for living on her own. I tried to help out by talking to her and reminding her of things but nothing ever changed. Dishes would pile up leaving me the only one to clean them. Laundry would be left lying on the floor in the bathroom, in the hallway, in the living room, in the basement NEXT to the washer/dryer. Bugs were being attracted with fruit flies swarming the house at one point and all of that is just how she was treating the house. She seemed to expect me to just clean everything. She wouldn't do anything. She even asked me to start putting post it notes all over the place, which I did, but she didn't even listen to that. I split the sink so one basin was mine and one was hers. Hers filled up and I think she emptied it once.
But that, again, is just the house. She got a job when she moved in but quickly ended up losing it. She took on extra responsibility but instead of talking to her bosses about it early on she would just show up late and call in sick repeatedly. As the ASSISTANT MANAGER. I saw how stressed she was and told her repeatedly to just talk to them but she delayed it for so long that by the time she did they ended up firing her anyway for not showing up on time.
So she got another job elsewhere. It took some time because the job market is HORRIBLE on this island, I don't blame her for that, but that job didn't last long either. Her boss was terribly transphobic which had a big part to play in it. But after losing that job I'm not sure I ever actually saw her look for work. Instead, she started relying on her girlfriend in the US, another US friend and her mother for her income. Note that welfare exists. I was pushing her to apply for months but she wouldn't even start the application. She'd just come into my room crying saying how awful she feels for putting her girlfriend in this position to ask for more money for rent but wouldn't really do anything to change it. She also only ever really paid for rent after that point. There were a couple of times she paid for bills but never her full amount and I always hand waved off how much she did owe by taking the stress onto myself instead. I shouldn't have.
This went on for MONTHS. At one point the internet had gotten cut off because I was paying my half and she wasn't paying hers. A couple of very good friends of mine kept saying that she was using me but I kept ignoring it. Kept dismissing it. Kept saying she meant well but was in a bad position. After finally getting her to start the second welfare application (the first timed out after 30 days of her doing nothing with it), she starts working on it.
And then Summer happened here in NFLD. Wildfires exploded due to some screwy weather and one broke out dangerously close to where I and Joan lived. As a precaution, I sent her out to her hometown with her mother so that if an evacuation did occur I'd only have to worry about myself and my cat. Joan was all the way down for this and so was Joan mother and girlfriend. So was I. I wanted her to be safe. That was about halfway through August. The wildfire got close and quite bad but ended up being killed off by the exceptional work of the firefighters here in Newfoundland, especially the volunteer ones.
While out there, Joan said that all of her family members were in ill health and she was having to take on caretaker duties. After a week or so she tells me she also left some paperwork in town for the welfare application which has technically timed out again but she might be able to get a reprieve. I head up to the office and drop it off to be faxed in. When I get home we VC for a bit and she seems off but I chaulked it up to stress.
Later that night during a DnD session she knew about she sends me a message saying that, again, she will be unable to get rent to me. Now this had become a common occurrence. She was often late on rent, forcing me to either cover or ask the landlord if I could get a couple of days to pay the rest while she got it from whomever. But this was on the 26th of August at 10pm and she's saying she cannot get the rent at all. That she's going probably going to be needed at home (not even definitive) to take care of family and that I should just evict her and find another roommate. As if that's possible in that timeframe.
Stressed but caring about her I said we'd get through it, we'll figure it out. I just hammered her about calling welfare the next day. To double check if they can do anything to try and help. We spoke long about it after the session had concluded, a session I could barely focus on. Not a huge problem but I like my dnd. The next day I reminded her to call welfare and check on the status. Later that evening, at like 1530, she's sending me memes and laughing and I ask if she called welfare. She disappears for a few minutes and then says she just tried but her phone had gotten cut off and she'll fix it.
It was in that moment that everything clicked on how much I was doing for her. I was doing EVERYTHING in the house, EVERYTHING to keep the house and EVERYTHING to even push her to do the bare minimum of getting her own source of income. She was happier to leech off of me and everyone else in her life than she was to even call the government for what was effectively free money. I sent her a message as much the next day saying that she needs to come get all of her stuff as soon as possible, that I wanted nothing else to do with her ever again and that she no longer lived her. That she got the eviction she asked for. I said I didn't want to even talk to her unless it was about when she was coming to get her stuff and where I should send any mail. We set up a time for the next week and when she told me she was close I started bringing her stuff to the driveway. The only words spoken were "The bolts are in this pouch" and "Okay thank you". I then went back inside and she drove off.
It took days for me to clean up all the garbage that she had left behind. Longer for the dishes. What drove me insane was that during her time here I noticed that forks and spoons kept disappearing. I was also seeing them occasionally in the basement for no discernable reason. When she was gone and I cleaned everything, I noticed that out of 32 spoons and forks I had 9 and 12.
Nonetheless, the point of all of this is to say that she fucked me over. Hard. Only by the grace of friends that are a trillion times better than I am and friends I do not deserve was I able to keep my place. I cannot afford the rent on my own. I started looking for a roommate as well but during September in a University town? Most people are settling down already. I have had some people show interest for moving in on November 1st but that does leave an entire month where I cannot pay the entire rent. Where I can't pay the entire bills, granted that have gotten slightly cheaper with her gone.
I was already having to carry her a ton for months and now I'm having to carry all that extra weight too. I don't know how. I'm trying everything that I can to be able to afford rent and bills at the end of this month but considering the final bill of the month hasn't come in yet? A conservative estimate is that i'm about $1000 to $1500 Canadian short of what I need.
I don't know how to really ask for help in the first place. I have before and I felt terrible. Asking for help again after everything that Joan has done to me? I feel like her. Worse than her because I know what I'm doing after what she did to me.
If you can spare anything... please. I'm literally begging you. I am trying everything that I can and everything that I've got but what I have is extremely limited and my friends do not have bottomless pockets. They're humans with their own problems and lives and wants and dreams and hopes and utter nightmares in certain cases. So I don't know how else to say it other than just saying the word please. Writing the rest of this post was pathetically easy. While I can type north of 100wpm (not anything to boast about considering some of the shit I've seen people pull off) my ADHD riddled brain thinks way faster so it's usually a smooth typing experience. I have the thoughts well before the words appear so I can keep going indefinitely. But getting to this point and trying to think of how to word asking for other peoples money and kindness? I got nothing. Just please and I'm sorry. Also have nothing on how to end this... Just, again, that I'm sorry. But thank you for your time and I hope you have a FANTASTIC day no matter what happens. As long as you're not a transphobe then anyway. Sorry, even though I'm desperate? I don't want YOUR money.
Love everyone else and thank you for your time if you got this far. If you didn't, still wishing you well nonetheless. I write too damn much. <3
And here are some pictures of my kitty in the form of sleepy kitty, sneaky kitty, scritchy kitty (pic was taken like 2 minutes after sneaky kitty), and solemn kitty.
Edit: Uh.... it... it's been less than 24 hours guys... w... what? Thank you but what the fuck? Thank you guys so much... if any of you want to stop donating, by all means. Totally get it. I said $1000 but it is a conservative estimate. Between bills and rent and food and a few other things everything is still cutting it close but I feel bad enough asking for what I did. Anything will help so I'm not going to say no but what I've asked for has been fulfilled and I cannot thank all of you enough... thank you so SO much...
