Ben and I left Linda's in November after several attempts to leave, and several sessions of begging her for one more week. We decided to go to South Jersey since Ben's dad is there, and we thought, maybe... just maybe, he would help. He had said while we were still at Linda's that he would get us into an apartment and pay for it for three months. He went back on that, naturally. When we went down to Southie, he was such an asshole to Ben that he wound up breaking the pay phone he was on. We were fully on our own. We moved into a shitty hotel called Travel Inn in Vineland. We lived there for a few weeks off of money we had saved from our last paychecks, selling our Playstation2, and our entertainment system. When we ran out of money, we went to Ben's old bank to see if he could gain access to his trust fund since he's well over 18 now. We wound up with 700 dollars, which bought us another couple of weeks at Travel Inn and some decent clothes so we could go to job interviews. When that money ran out, we tried to make another withdrawal. The account now had 10,000 dollars in it, but the teller was slick - she noticed it was a guardianship account and refused access of the funds to Ben. We had about 20 dollars, and we spent it on taking a bus to Philly. We figured maybe we could stay with one of Ben's old friends, find jobs, and start a new life in Philly. t didn't work that way. We wound up spending the weekend homeless - me in a women's shelter, and Ben, while he registered at the men's shelter, refused to stay there after he saw what it was like. So he walked South Street while I tried desperately to sleep in the shelter with a scizophrenic freak sleeping in the room with me. We were dirty, miserable, and at the lowest place I think we've ever been. But we had each other, and that is what kept me going. At the end of the weekend, when we were told that because we aren't Pennsylvania residents, we couldn't stay in a Philly co-ed shelter, We sold all of our DVD's for 100 bucks, and went back to Vineland in the hopes that Ben's dad would help. Instead, he bitched us out for taking out the 700 dollars (which legally BELONGS to Ben, but his father has been using that account for personal reasons for god knows how long. Last Ben checked a few years back, there was 185,000 in there. All gone now.) and told us to get the fuck out of his sight. We haven't seen him since. He has emailed Ben, but he deleted them because he wants nothing to do with his dad anymore. After the blowout with his dad, we sat in Dunkin Donuts for hours, trying to figure out a solution. We had no one to turn to for help. We were stressed, freaked out, having crying fits - Ben felt guilty because he felt as though the entire situation was his fault and that he wanted me to go back to New Brunswick so that I would at least have a place to live. He was telling me that he's done nothing but hurt me and that he didn't deserve me. I refused to go. Not only because I love him and I wouldn't leave him, but because he was wrong. It wasn't his fault. It was no one's fault. We just came upon hard times and bad luck, and I knew if we were going to get through it, we would have to do it together. And that is when our luck began to change. We went to the movie theater in the hopes that they would at least hold on to our luggage so we wouldn't have to carry it everyfreakingwhere. And then we ran into Tom, and old friend of Ben's. I guess he was moved by our story, and while he said he couldn't help us with a place to stay permanently, we could stay at his place for the night, eat, and shower. Well, one night turned into one month, and by the end of it, Ben and I were going nuts because Tom's girlfriend's mother is a raving psycho and she came up with this cracked idea that I was spamming members of her family online with her AOL screenname. As it turns out, she was using the internet at a free internet cafe, and forgetting to uncheck the box that says "save password" so some idiot kid was doing it. But, she was convinced it was me, and kicked us out. But that very night, we ran into Bob, a very old friend of Ben's who he hadn't seen in a long time. He felt bad for us, and since his grandmother would be out of town for a few weeks, he invited us to stay. At this point, Ben had gotten a part time job at Burger King as the manager's assistant. However, he only kept it for a few weeks - he was getting like, three hours a week. So, we stayed at Bob's for a few weeks, continued looking for work, and when his grandmother came home, we moved back to the Travel Inn for another two weeks. Then we ran out of money again. We couldn't get jobs no matter how hard we tried. I got some odd jobs helping Bob's aunt clean a salon, but it was only 35 dollars each time I did it, which was once a week for three weeks. So, Terri said we could stay with her for a few days until Bob came back from his visit to New York. Her husband was not happy about that, but she didn't care too much. We still had to leave after a couple of days though. We went back to Bob's the day he came back from NY. His grandmother said we could stay for a few weeks. So, we did. And in that time, Ben got a job at the gas station where Josh works, and I got hired at Hot Topic as an assistant manager ( but I don't start for another few weeks - I'm going NUTS, I'm so psyched.) We moved back to Travel Inn for two weeks after we left Bob's, but because we moved in on a monday, and that's the same day Ben gets paid, but check out is at 11, and his check doesn't arrive until 1, and the bastards who own the place couldn't wait a few hours for him to cash his check, we had to leave in a permanent way. They were pissed at us anyway, because we set off the fire alarm a couple of times while doing spells in our room. Our friend Heidi just got a loan, and is looking for an apartment, She offered to let us come live with her, so we are doing that as soon as we can all get together to look for a place. For the time being, we're still in a hotel (Much nicer than Travel Inn, I might add) but that won't last for long. In other good news, I got a new tattoo of Delerium on my forearm for my birthday (Thanks Jarvis & RJ!) I got recruited to write reviews and articles and do graphic design for a new nationally published horror movie magazine, and I've been making rune sets out of clay that are actually selling. Wow. talk about a change of events. :) I had a wonderful birthday this year. I spent the majority of it getting tattooed, but i couldn't think of anything better - except that Ben finally told me that he loves me. It was very emotional; it hasn't been easy for him to come to grips with being with someone who really cares about him. "I love you" was a taboo thing for him with me because he had only said it to people he didn't love in the past. It made me so incredibly happy, because it made me fully trust him. I know now that I really am as important to him as he is to me. I think I always was, he just had a lot of trouble accepting that anyone could really and honestly love him for who he is, and not because of superficial reasons like all the others before me. And I finally came to accept what he said about his online flirtations - that it was all just a game, he just wanted the attention while simultaneously feeding them a bunch of bullshit - he wanted to hurt them because he had been hurt so much. I think he purposely went for girls who were cracked in the head, because he knew that under normal circumstances, they'd hurt him. He wanted to hurt them first. The only problem with it was that it was hurting me, and he had a hard time realizing that. But, he finally did, and things have been awesome between us ever since. It's kinda weird - when he swore to me not to pursue his twisted self destructive phase of messing with the minds of cracked goth chicks online, when our relationship really began to get stronger and more intense, that's when everything else in our lives started to crumble around us. And we made it through. We survived, and we struggled to do it. But we did it together, and it made our relationship even stronger than it probably otherwise would be as a result. For a couple who has only been together for a year and a half, we've been through more struggle than some couples who have been married for years have gone through. Some of it was because of depression, self-loathing, and self destruction, and some of it was because of bad luck, bad timing, and just... badness. But here we are now, in love, happy, and having a lot of positive changes happening in our lives. We now have a tight circle of close friends who not only love us as individuals, but as a couple as well. And that makes all the struggles worth it. Knowing that we're stronger as individuals and as a couple because of it all makes me feel so accomplished. And I'm reaping the rewards of being strong through hard times. (The spells we did didn't hurt, either.)
I have something kinda negative on my mind, though, and I want to spew about it. There's this girl Missy that Ben used to talk to. The first time i saw a picture of her on the computer at Dan's (back in the day, whoa!) I was instantly put off by her. I just had this feeling that she was a total cunt, and I couldn't see what would possess Ben to want to associate with her. I remember one night when we were still at Linda's, he was online late at night after I went to bed, and I snuck up on him while he was talking to her. when he realized I was in the room, he quickly shut down Yahoo Messenger and got all nervous looking. This was when I knew he was up to the badness again, and I got so fucking pissed off. The next day, he worked and I didn't. I got online, and I had Yahoo set up to log on upon connection. It logged on under Ben's ID because he accidentally told it to save his password. There was an offline message from Missy there, saying, "Hey, where'd you go?" So, I replied: "Well, see, the thing is, I had to log off kinda quick because my girlfriend walked in the room, and because i'm a complete asshole, I have to hide the fact that I talk to you online." Click, send, instant catharticism. Well, far as I know, she stopped contact with him after that. I, however, unable to ignore the green demon on days when I feel useless and depressed, managed to find her journal and website and look to see if she wrote anything about Ben there. All I found was a really lame poem. But despite the fact that there was no mention of Ben other than that, I read everything anyway. And I was COMPLETELY disgusted. My gut instinct from just looking at her picture was right- she's a heartless little bitch with nothing better to do that be an asshole to other people. She apparently has no friends because of it, and acts like she's proud of this fact. I got so disturbed and pissed off by the things that she wrote, that I wrote a scathing rant about it for my rantygrrl site. It made me kinda proud of Ben though, even though I hated him talking to other girls in a flirty kind of way, at least I found out later that he was doing it to be an asshole; to worm his way in and then snap them when they became really into him. So yeah, I was kinda proud of him for making one of his targets someone who is so very deserving of being completely dragged through the mud and having her heart torn out and stomped on. But, I went a step further and wrote that rant. I'm sure she's probably read it by now - I had Siobhan send her a note telling her to read it, but I have yet to hear from her yet. Her LiveJournal disappeared shortly after that, so I figure she must have deleted it so I would leave her alone. I also reported her to Livejournal because she posted some girl's fucking PHONE NUMBER on her journal. That's just not right. But I just can't believe she hasn't like, sent me a death threat or something. She seems like the type who can't take criticism or insults and would react in a really harsh way, but much to my immature dismay, I have heard nothing. I just hope she doesn't write to Ben about it. He knows I did it, and he even had a good giggle or two about it. But I doubt he wants to hear from her, and I doubt he wants the drama she would churn up. He'd probably just delete anything she sent him since he has a tendency to do that to emails from people he doesn't want to communicate with, but I would hope he'd let me see it first, at least. :) I've been feeling a little bad about it though, and it's only because I thought Ben liked her (a zillion months ago, but whatever.) I don't feel bad for the things I said about her because she needs a reality check, BAD. I doubt I did that for her, I mean shit, she's just barely 17, extremely immature and obviously bull-headed. But I feel bad because part of me feels like I did it out of jealousy. Maybe I did. I mean, I certainly wouldn't have found her journal if I hadn't been feeling jealous when I looked. But I wasn't feeling jealous when I wrote the rant. I was feeling rage at the fact that anyone could be so fucking mean and not care about anyone while at the same time being extremely narcissistic. I guess my brain likes to torture me sometimes, but now that I've gotten it out, I get it now, and I don't feel so yucky about it anymore.
I have her phone number and address if you want it, though. :)
Naw, just kidding. Well, not really, but I'm not going to stoop to her level and reveal her private information. I hunted for it because in a stoned enraged blur, I had the impulse to do everything to her that she has done to other people. And while that would be kind of fun, watching that bitch suffer, I don't really have it in my heart to do anything more than rant and hate her internally in the hopes that it makes her life suck even more. (Did I mention that I'm kinda powerful in the spellcrafting department? Muhahahaha.) However, I did make a concious (and written) decision to leave her alone from now on unless she gets up the guts to email me, or if she does something stupid like getting her ex boyfriend hacker after the theater's CPU.
Fuckin' A. It's nearly 6am. I am going to be wasted today. I can't wait to go home. I loved being here with Liam very, very much, but this apartment makes me so uncomfortable, and I miss my Big Brother Spike so much I could explode. Only a few more hours. Oh, and we'll be having salvia within the next few days. I can't wait. Spiritual journey, here I come, baby!