Megan's Departure
So on Saturday October 24th Chris and I learned that Megan is moving back to Virginia. We had heard a rumor about it from Cory the previous weekend, but had forgotten to ask Megan what was going on with it. We were both shocked and to be honest, pretty pissed. Chris is supposed to be Megan’s best friend and yet Megan had already given her two weeks notice to Notify MD, arranged for an interview back in Virginia, and spoken to her landlord about opting out of her lease early. She had taken care of every step necessary for her to leave and hadn’t even mentioned any of this to Chris or me. I mean what was she going to do, get to the last day and be like oh yeah by the way I’m heading home to Virginia tomorrow forever. Or even better maybe Chris and I could have had the honor of finding out through a Facebook status announcing that she was back in Virginia.
She tells me that it’s for two primary reasons. The first: financial. The second: mental/emotional well-being. Financially, she says that her current plan is to move back home to Virginia for at least November and December. She has a possible interview at a call center much like Notify MD, and hopes to quickly secure a job. She says that her primary problem is that in order to move on to the next step in her life she needs to complete the final course for her bachelors degree. However, in order to do that she needs to register for it this next semester, and in order to do that she has to first pay off her $2,000 dollar debt from the previous year to UMF. Unfortunately, without a roommate she has been unable to save any money to put towards that debt since she has been paying the full $700 dollar a month rent ever since July. Her original plan was to save that $350 a month for July, August, September, October, November and December, totaling in just over $2,000 to pay off the debt and then begin her class in January. However, since she wasn’t able to do that she plans to move home where she has no bills for those two months and save that $2,000 in Virginia. Then she can acquire an apartment and take her class.
Emotionally, she tells me that she is just plain worn out. Ever since Justin moved out on July 1st she has been struggling month to month to month for July, August, September, and October. She barely makes enough money to pay her rent, bills, and food, much less save any money for the class and also for the upcoming loans payments she may have. She also says that her parents have been pressuring her a great deal to come home if she couldn’t find a roommate, and that between the stress of eeking her way by every month and her parents she just feels very defeated, like she needs to just take a break, have a change, and do something productive for at least a couple of months. She also told me that she is very upset about being nearly 24 years old with no prospects for a relationship. Cory, who she likes much more than a friend and we all think feels the same about her, refuses to commit to any kind of a relationship, and refused - despite all of our urging - to try to find a job around here and move in with Megan, thus kick-starting his life and allowing her to remain around here. Whereas, she tells me that a guy in Virginia, Steven, is desperately fond of her and would be willing to commit to her immediately. Thus, a collection of various factors are tugging her in different directions and making her feel like she needs to just change something.
When I heard about the situation I talked to Chris about it and we discussed options for Megan and ways that we thought we may be able to help, and we came up with a great solution. Megan’s primary problem it seemed like on both the financial and emotional fronts was her inability to attend UMF this Spring to finish her degree and her parents constant bugging of her about that. Thus, we decided that since Chris is going to be getting roughly $2,000 dollars in surplus financial aid this Spring Semester, we would simply pay off Megan’s debt with that, allowing her to register for classes, then after she had registered for classes she could take out the financial aid she needed to pay for this class AND $2,000 extra to pay Chris back a few weeks later. This way everyone wins! I went to Megan to discuss it and initially she was optimistic, but then a day or two later she had changed her mind. She told me that she really felt like she needed a change for the emotional reasons, and I told her that I thought she was making a serious mistake.
Financially at least, her moving out of her apartment early meant that she forfeited her entire $1,000 dollar security deposit to her landlord, AND she still has to pay Justin back the $500 that he originally put in. Plus, by leaving Notify MD prior to working there for two years she sacrificed the Match-Your-401K policy that Notify MD has whereby any money you put into the 401K there is matched by the company if and when you work there for two years. She is staking her entire plan on an interview at a call enter in Virginia that wasn’t even assured.
Emotionally, I also pointed out how I believe the pros outweigh the cons of staying. Her primary emotional issues were: her distress over not finishing her degree so that she could move on; her parents pressure over her not finishing her degree; her weariness from eeking her way by month to month; and her stress over being nearly 24 with no romantic prospects due to Cory’s stubborn refusal to commit and her lack of romantic feelings for Steven. However, by following Chris and my plan the first two of those - which she says are the biggest - would be fixed. She could get her degree AND get her parents off her back by simply accepting Chris and my plan for UMF. Plus, she could also potentially fix the third reason because she could always take out not only enough financial aid to pay us back and for her class, but she could ask for say…..two months rent as well when calculating how big of a loan she wants to take out. That would allow her to NOT have to eek her way by month to month anymore; and that would be worst case scenario in which the combined efforts of her, Chris, and me roommate hunting for her failed. But I think that there would be a very good chance of us getting her a roommate by January because in a college town like Farmington the three junction points throughout the year for apartments are really June 1st, September 1st, and January 1st, the months when the Summer, Fall, and Spring semesters begin.
So all in all the pros of her staying definitely outweigh the cons, but she still left. The worst part is that she acknowledged that every point I made was valid, and that logically and rationally it made far more sense for her to stay here, yet she was still leaving because “she had made a decision and just wanted to stick to it.” So in other words, she knew it was better and she was wrong, but she was just too stubborn or too scared to retract that decision and stay. Well whatever. It’s her choice of course, but it affects more than just her.
I can describe this news in one word for us: disastrous. It is disastrous to Chris and me in multiple ways. For starters, Megan was our only remaining “core” friend left up here. By “core” friend I mean that she was the only one who consistently and reliably hung out with us every weekend; that we could trust with the care of the dogs when we left; and that we could rely on for occasional financial assistance or the use of her car in times of need. After Neil and Scott left I used to say that only Matt, Megan, and Justin were our “core” friends although only Matt and Megan were ever truly reliable. However, now that Megan will be leaving it we are losing that last “core” friend, and the person we relied on for all of the things I mentioned above.
The second and perhaps worst part of this is the social aspect. I’ve thought a lot about my the “college era” of my life, by which I mean the time period from September 2002 when I began college until now and probably until September 2010 when I begin Law School (hopefully). Although I am no longer attending school I still classify this time period as falling into it since I am living in the same town, doing practically the same activities, and hanging out with the same people we always did, plus I haven’t moved on yet to a “career” or the next step in my education. I divide this era into two parts: part one is the part that occurred from the beginning of my college time until May of 2006 when I marched, and when Neil and Scott left. Part Two begins in September 2006 when Chris and I made the decision to return to Farmington to complete courses and obtain additional degrees that we felt were necessary or at least beneficial to our graduate level studies. The “crew” that we hung out with when we came back began as me, Chris, Matt, Justin, Megan, and Andrew. However, shortly after that I reconciled with Johanna and she brought Colleen along with her. We still had frequent visits from Neil and Scott that year. This “crew” has remained essentially the same over the last few years with the only difference being that first we lost Matt in May 2008, and then we lost Justin, Colleen, and Johanna in May 2009 although we had really lost Johanna and Colleen several months earlier after the Feb. 7th fight. However, even this year we had still maintained the basic social structure that we had had for the past few years, simply with fewer people. We had Friday night parties at our place, Saturday night parties at Megan’s. Megan picked Cory up and he stayed with her for periods of 2-3 weeks here and then went home for 2-3 weeks. Andrew and Isaac came by usually at least one night of the week, and thus at times we had as many as six people here partying with us; seven since Andrew started bringing a friend of his named Paul a few times.
However, with Megan’s departure that basic social structure is destroyed. Not only the loss of Megan herself accompanies this, but much more. Cory will no longer be coming down pretty much at all. Chris and I are not really close enough with Cory necessarily as we are with Matt or Scott to have him stay here, although we may very well pick him up for at least a weekend or two in the near future: we’ll see. Don’t get me wrong I like Cory a GREAT DEAL; more so than most of the others I have hung out with much of the time up here. He has more integrity and a consistent philosophy on friendship with Chris and me than most of the others. In addition to the loss of Cory, we almost certainly will lose Isaac. Isaac really only came over to visit on Saturday nights at Megan’s place since it was more spacious, and now with her gone and her apartment no longer an option I’d be surprised to ever see him. Finally, with Megan gone, Cory never here, and Isaac almost certainly never here I can guarantee that Andrew will want to come over much less, since with ONLY me and Chris that really isn’t much of a party.
So like I said overall it is a disaster. Disastrous for the loss of our one reliable friend for the dogs, money, her car and other such practical matters. But more importantly, disastrous for us socially. I feel the worst for Chris. Megan was her one true friend up here for years. She won’t admit it because she doesn’t want to appear “weak” but she was very hurt over what happened last year, over Megan’s refusal to be supportive of her and the mean things that she and Justin said and that she let be said about us. Although I have had many issues with Megan over the years, there is a part of me that wants so badly to say to her: Don’t go. Please don’t go. It will ruin everything. It will be the full and final end to whatever life we had left up here. To whatever friendships and fun we had up here until we finally have to move on to the next step in our lives. I don’t want it all to end. I wish I could do anything to stop it. To bring Scott, Matt, Justin, Colleen, and even Johanna provided we got along back for years more. To have fun with no responsibilities once more. I wish. But at least with Megan here things were still alive in a partial form of what they used to be. They are not as fun as they used to be, but they were still there. Now they will be gone.
Chris and I did everything we could to stop her aside from pleading, but it won’t work. She won’t listen and she won’t change her mind. The only hope we have is that Megan at this point says that she is planning to come back here in January. She believes that she can secure an apartment for January. I have my doubts about that, although I have already spoken with Foothills Management, the company that Chris and I rent from, and they said they have at least a couple of 450 dollar efficiencies opening up on January. Plus, Chris said she wants me to check into any two or three bedroom apartments that are opening up then and possibly the three of us could take one of those. I doubt that will happen though. I really don’t want to move when Chris and I have so little time left in Farmington. Plus, I have grown too used to living just Chris and me, and I don’t think Megan would be the ideal person to live with since she is such a hypersensitive person that I worry the animal abundance would drive her nuts. We’ve also rented out a Storage Unit from Foothills Management where we stored most of Megan’s apartment stuff in the hopes of adding yet another incentive for her to come back.
Well whatever. It just sucks overall. I wish that Megan had changed her mind, and I hope that she is willing to come back in January and at least take an efficiency, because then she would have the place to herself and she could have Cory come back down to visit again. I would say that that is an almost equally great fear of mine. The fear that even if Megan comes back, it won’t be nearly the same as it was. Right now she has a big apartment with space to play beer pong and have Cory stay over without upsetting a roommate. But if she comes back and moves in with someone that roommate will probably not be comfortable with Cory coming to stay over for weeks at a time. I probably wouldn’t if I were a stranger roommate. So all in all, things are fucked up and Megan’s departure is really just the end of the end. The end of the Farmington lifestyle that Chris and I have had for the last few years, and the true end of an era. How depressing. I knew that I was leaving after this year and it would have been easier to simply move on to the next step in my life when I was going right from here to there, but now Chris and I have to find stuff to do with ourselves for the next 10 months before my law school will begin, when we thought we’d have Megan, Cory, Andrew, and Isaac around, plus a couple of more visits from Matt and Scott hopefully.
She tells me that it’s for two primary reasons. The first: financial. The second: mental/emotional well-being. Financially, she says that her current plan is to move back home to Virginia for at least November and December. She has a possible interview at a call center much like Notify MD, and hopes to quickly secure a job. She says that her primary problem is that in order to move on to the next step in her life she needs to complete the final course for her bachelors degree. However, in order to do that she needs to register for it this next semester, and in order to do that she has to first pay off her $2,000 dollar debt from the previous year to UMF. Unfortunately, without a roommate she has been unable to save any money to put towards that debt since she has been paying the full $700 dollar a month rent ever since July. Her original plan was to save that $350 a month for July, August, September, October, November and December, totaling in just over $2,000 to pay off the debt and then begin her class in January. However, since she wasn’t able to do that she plans to move home where she has no bills for those two months and save that $2,000 in Virginia. Then she can acquire an apartment and take her class.
Emotionally, she tells me that she is just plain worn out. Ever since Justin moved out on July 1st she has been struggling month to month to month for July, August, September, and October. She barely makes enough money to pay her rent, bills, and food, much less save any money for the class and also for the upcoming loans payments she may have. She also says that her parents have been pressuring her a great deal to come home if she couldn’t find a roommate, and that between the stress of eeking her way by every month and her parents she just feels very defeated, like she needs to just take a break, have a change, and do something productive for at least a couple of months. She also told me that she is very upset about being nearly 24 years old with no prospects for a relationship. Cory, who she likes much more than a friend and we all think feels the same about her, refuses to commit to any kind of a relationship, and refused - despite all of our urging - to try to find a job around here and move in with Megan, thus kick-starting his life and allowing her to remain around here. Whereas, she tells me that a guy in Virginia, Steven, is desperately fond of her and would be willing to commit to her immediately. Thus, a collection of various factors are tugging her in different directions and making her feel like she needs to just change something.
When I heard about the situation I talked to Chris about it and we discussed options for Megan and ways that we thought we may be able to help, and we came up with a great solution. Megan’s primary problem it seemed like on both the financial and emotional fronts was her inability to attend UMF this Spring to finish her degree and her parents constant bugging of her about that. Thus, we decided that since Chris is going to be getting roughly $2,000 dollars in surplus financial aid this Spring Semester, we would simply pay off Megan’s debt with that, allowing her to register for classes, then after she had registered for classes she could take out the financial aid she needed to pay for this class AND $2,000 extra to pay Chris back a few weeks later. This way everyone wins! I went to Megan to discuss it and initially she was optimistic, but then a day or two later she had changed her mind. She told me that she really felt like she needed a change for the emotional reasons, and I told her that I thought she was making a serious mistake.
Financially at least, her moving out of her apartment early meant that she forfeited her entire $1,000 dollar security deposit to her landlord, AND she still has to pay Justin back the $500 that he originally put in. Plus, by leaving Notify MD prior to working there for two years she sacrificed the Match-Your-401K policy that Notify MD has whereby any money you put into the 401K there is matched by the company if and when you work there for two years. She is staking her entire plan on an interview at a call enter in Virginia that wasn’t even assured.
Emotionally, I also pointed out how I believe the pros outweigh the cons of staying. Her primary emotional issues were: her distress over not finishing her degree so that she could move on; her parents pressure over her not finishing her degree; her weariness from eeking her way by month to month; and her stress over being nearly 24 with no romantic prospects due to Cory’s stubborn refusal to commit and her lack of romantic feelings for Steven. However, by following Chris and my plan the first two of those - which she says are the biggest - would be fixed. She could get her degree AND get her parents off her back by simply accepting Chris and my plan for UMF. Plus, she could also potentially fix the third reason because she could always take out not only enough financial aid to pay us back and for her class, but she could ask for say…..two months rent as well when calculating how big of a loan she wants to take out. That would allow her to NOT have to eek her way by month to month anymore; and that would be worst case scenario in which the combined efforts of her, Chris, and me roommate hunting for her failed. But I think that there would be a very good chance of us getting her a roommate by January because in a college town like Farmington the three junction points throughout the year for apartments are really June 1st, September 1st, and January 1st, the months when the Summer, Fall, and Spring semesters begin.
So all in all the pros of her staying definitely outweigh the cons, but she still left. The worst part is that she acknowledged that every point I made was valid, and that logically and rationally it made far more sense for her to stay here, yet she was still leaving because “she had made a decision and just wanted to stick to it.” So in other words, she knew it was better and she was wrong, but she was just too stubborn or too scared to retract that decision and stay. Well whatever. It’s her choice of course, but it affects more than just her.
I can describe this news in one word for us: disastrous. It is disastrous to Chris and me in multiple ways. For starters, Megan was our only remaining “core” friend left up here. By “core” friend I mean that she was the only one who consistently and reliably hung out with us every weekend; that we could trust with the care of the dogs when we left; and that we could rely on for occasional financial assistance or the use of her car in times of need. After Neil and Scott left I used to say that only Matt, Megan, and Justin were our “core” friends although only Matt and Megan were ever truly reliable. However, now that Megan will be leaving it we are losing that last “core” friend, and the person we relied on for all of the things I mentioned above.
The second and perhaps worst part of this is the social aspect. I’ve thought a lot about my the “college era” of my life, by which I mean the time period from September 2002 when I began college until now and probably until September 2010 when I begin Law School (hopefully). Although I am no longer attending school I still classify this time period as falling into it since I am living in the same town, doing practically the same activities, and hanging out with the same people we always did, plus I haven’t moved on yet to a “career” or the next step in my education. I divide this era into two parts: part one is the part that occurred from the beginning of my college time until May of 2006 when I marched, and when Neil and Scott left. Part Two begins in September 2006 when Chris and I made the decision to return to Farmington to complete courses and obtain additional degrees that we felt were necessary or at least beneficial to our graduate level studies. The “crew” that we hung out with when we came back began as me, Chris, Matt, Justin, Megan, and Andrew. However, shortly after that I reconciled with Johanna and she brought Colleen along with her. We still had frequent visits from Neil and Scott that year. This “crew” has remained essentially the same over the last few years with the only difference being that first we lost Matt in May 2008, and then we lost Justin, Colleen, and Johanna in May 2009 although we had really lost Johanna and Colleen several months earlier after the Feb. 7th fight. However, even this year we had still maintained the basic social structure that we had had for the past few years, simply with fewer people. We had Friday night parties at our place, Saturday night parties at Megan’s. Megan picked Cory up and he stayed with her for periods of 2-3 weeks here and then went home for 2-3 weeks. Andrew and Isaac came by usually at least one night of the week, and thus at times we had as many as six people here partying with us; seven since Andrew started bringing a friend of his named Paul a few times.
However, with Megan’s departure that basic social structure is destroyed. Not only the loss of Megan herself accompanies this, but much more. Cory will no longer be coming down pretty much at all. Chris and I are not really close enough with Cory necessarily as we are with Matt or Scott to have him stay here, although we may very well pick him up for at least a weekend or two in the near future: we’ll see. Don’t get me wrong I like Cory a GREAT DEAL; more so than most of the others I have hung out with much of the time up here. He has more integrity and a consistent philosophy on friendship with Chris and me than most of the others. In addition to the loss of Cory, we almost certainly will lose Isaac. Isaac really only came over to visit on Saturday nights at Megan’s place since it was more spacious, and now with her gone and her apartment no longer an option I’d be surprised to ever see him. Finally, with Megan gone, Cory never here, and Isaac almost certainly never here I can guarantee that Andrew will want to come over much less, since with ONLY me and Chris that really isn’t much of a party.
So like I said overall it is a disaster. Disastrous for the loss of our one reliable friend for the dogs, money, her car and other such practical matters. But more importantly, disastrous for us socially. I feel the worst for Chris. Megan was her one true friend up here for years. She won’t admit it because she doesn’t want to appear “weak” but she was very hurt over what happened last year, over Megan’s refusal to be supportive of her and the mean things that she and Justin said and that she let be said about us. Although I have had many issues with Megan over the years, there is a part of me that wants so badly to say to her: Don’t go. Please don’t go. It will ruin everything. It will be the full and final end to whatever life we had left up here. To whatever friendships and fun we had up here until we finally have to move on to the next step in our lives. I don’t want it all to end. I wish I could do anything to stop it. To bring Scott, Matt, Justin, Colleen, and even Johanna provided we got along back for years more. To have fun with no responsibilities once more. I wish. But at least with Megan here things were still alive in a partial form of what they used to be. They are not as fun as they used to be, but they were still there. Now they will be gone.
Chris and I did everything we could to stop her aside from pleading, but it won’t work. She won’t listen and she won’t change her mind. The only hope we have is that Megan at this point says that she is planning to come back here in January. She believes that she can secure an apartment for January. I have my doubts about that, although I have already spoken with Foothills Management, the company that Chris and I rent from, and they said they have at least a couple of 450 dollar efficiencies opening up on January. Plus, Chris said she wants me to check into any two or three bedroom apartments that are opening up then and possibly the three of us could take one of those. I doubt that will happen though. I really don’t want to move when Chris and I have so little time left in Farmington. Plus, I have grown too used to living just Chris and me, and I don’t think Megan would be the ideal person to live with since she is such a hypersensitive person that I worry the animal abundance would drive her nuts. We’ve also rented out a Storage Unit from Foothills Management where we stored most of Megan’s apartment stuff in the hopes of adding yet another incentive for her to come back.
Well whatever. It just sucks overall. I wish that Megan had changed her mind, and I hope that she is willing to come back in January and at least take an efficiency, because then she would have the place to herself and she could have Cory come back down to visit again. I would say that that is an almost equally great fear of mine. The fear that even if Megan comes back, it won’t be nearly the same as it was. Right now she has a big apartment with space to play beer pong and have Cory stay over without upsetting a roommate. But if she comes back and moves in with someone that roommate will probably not be comfortable with Cory coming to stay over for weeks at a time. I probably wouldn’t if I were a stranger roommate. So all in all, things are fucked up and Megan’s departure is really just the end of the end. The end of the Farmington lifestyle that Chris and I have had for the last few years, and the true end of an era. How depressing. I knew that I was leaving after this year and it would have been easier to simply move on to the next step in my life when I was going right from here to there, but now Chris and I have to find stuff to do with ourselves for the next 10 months before my law school will begin, when we thought we’d have Megan, Cory, Andrew, and Isaac around, plus a couple of more visits from Matt and Scott hopefully.