It must have been a day before Christmas while me and my family were out of town visiting some family in Grand Junction when I received a text message that caught me way off guard and made me panic a bit. I did not respond to it in any form. And then New Year's Eve came and me and my kids were now spending time with my best friend and her loved one in the mountains outside of Manitou Springs. I got another stream of messages.
Yes. My roommate who my children and I had been living with for 6 going on 7 months, whom I had previously known at my last apartment as a good friend to me and my children...had just come onto me...during my 30th week of pregnancy. Mind you, before I even made the decision to move back out to Colorado and have him as my roommate, I made it EXTREMELY clear that he was my friend, that I trusted him to respect me and my children, and that I would absolutely not move into an apartment with him if he wanted to be anything more than friends. So yes, I was very naïve. Very, very naïve. And still, I was shocked and incredibly hurt. He was, at one time, the one person in my life where I was physically living, that I trusted. That reminded me I wasn't alone. That I felt safe around. That I could trust him to be around my CHILDREN which was one of the biggest deals for me EVER.
I declined politely, calmly, nicely. Left it at that, but knew I needed to get outta there and into my own space where I could feel comfortable and safe with my kids. I needed to move while I still had the time. I had been prepping myself for a VBAC and it felt like bootcamp. There was so much happening in my life and it just felt like I had zero time to catch my damn breath. The last thing I wanted to deal with was this. What ticked me off too was the fact that he waited until he knew that my and my boyfriend were done. Sigh. I was feeling like a damned fool.
When the kids and I got home from our little family holiday, I went straight to the leasing office to speak with the manager. A lovely lady. I told her the situation to which she was also appalled, and asked her if there were any one bedroom apartments that I could transfer over to. She looked at me with dismay and folded her hands on the desk. "I'm afraid even if we did, you wouldn't be allowed to transfer." I looked at her with confusion. "Why not?" She looked over at her computer and printed out our ledger. "Roommate has not made a single payment since August. You guys owe just under $13,000." And she slipped the ledger over to me. "I am so sorry, Sage. I wish there was a way I could help you with this." I was starting to cry. "The only you could try doing is get his permission to get your name off the lease." I cried harder. And internally, I was filled with rage. Simultaneously, I felt like the stupidest idiot in the whole world.
You see, once I became pregnant, and once I made the decision to keep this baby, and after almost losing the baby with, what they call, a "threatened miscarriage," it was a mutual agreement that I focus on the kids and making sure this growing baby stayed that way. Roommate said to not worry about a thing, as long as I brought food into the home, (which I clearly had the ability to), that I could pay him back down the line whenever I had the means, whether that was 6 months or 6 years from now. He had 2 jobs, one was under the table. So he definitely had the means to pay rent each month, which is the only reason I accepted his offer. I kept trying to find work from home, but no one wanted to work with my schedule with my kids.
And this guy. He just said, nope to paying a single cent towards rent. Leaving us both in HUGE debt, and the inability to look for another apartment. Long story short: I was stuck. And it was my own damn fault for thinking that he was just being a genuine, caring, supportive guy. This man, who was closer in age to my own dad. I swear, once men find out you had a relationship with an older man, they think you're just like, only interested in older dudes.
After finding out about the rent situation, I lost my shit. I wrote him a 5 page letter explaining in great detail, my hurt, my loss, my betrayal. The fact that he has now prevented me and my children from finding a place to live. The fact that we now owed the apartment $13k. And I had NO employment or means for income at all. The fact that I trusted him with my whole heart and how much he has hurt me, and in turn, my kids.
His response was shit. And because I turned him down AND called him out, Good-Guy Roomie turned Asshole Roomie. It actually got quite scary. Like I had no idea who I had really been living with this whole time...
At this point, as I got closer and closer to the end of the pregnancy, I was living in constant anxiety. The most anxiety I have ever felt in my whole life. On top of that, he wracked up another $6.5k owed. The apartment manager was doing everything she could to help me and my kids. Back in August, Roommate and I had applied for rental assistance for what I assumed would be for the month of August, since we needed help that month. Come to find out, months later, they had not yet approved the application. My best guess is that Roommate thought he could just apply for this assistance and that this assistance would magically pay a years worth of rent...and not tell me. (Even though he had every means to just pay for rent).
I had gotten ahold of the rental assistance program to see what my options were and also why nothing had happened since August when we first submitted. They said that the application had actually not been submitted, as in, he forgot to click submit when he finished signing everything. I don't know if you could tell from the texts that he sent me, but he loves his drink. My best guess is he had a bit too much to drink and just didn't finish submitting the application, and then forgot that he didn't finish.
Man, I sure do attract the golden ones, don't I?
I did everything I could to get get this application pushed through. And while dealing with the stress of me and my kids living situation and doing my best to prepare for labor, by the 2nd to week of January, yes, all of this happened from Christmas to the 2nd week of January, I received yet another text out of the blue that about dropped me to my knees.
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