beneath my skin... i'm screaming
okay, so let's take this story way back...
in one of the last entries i made before i quit journaling, i talked about how i had moved to flint and met up with a girl named amber (paige) and became good friends. i ended up moving into a 5-bedroom house with her and her boyfriend, which was a "rent to own" type agreement they got into. i was pretty much their tenant, not on the lease and just paying them cash. the landlord lady was definitely a scam artist, she had us sign all these contracts and i don't think half the shit was even legal. the house looked fine if you walked through it and looked around, but little did we know there would be tons of problems. plumbing was fucked up, upstairs bathtub was leaking into the family room below, the roof was fucked and we thought it was gonna cave in on us, the heat didn't even work upstairs, and we all got sick from the black mold in there. the house had been foreclosed on and was sitting around for a while but i'm pretty sure it's illegal to be the landlord of a place and not do anything to fix these problems for people. even if it's rent to own. anyway the house ended up being shut down when the health department discovered the black mold, cuz that shit is dangerous and can actually kill people. i think we should have sued this lady personally!
luckily i had already moved out by the time the health department came. why? well here's where the drama comes in. i was still dating jeff at the time, and he came from canada to flint every weekend to see me. when i moved in with paige and jason, he came to visit me there too and got along well with those guys. when the factory where jeff worked at shut down and he lost his job, he was there all the time except when he had to go back to canada for something. he was starting to really bring me down at this point because his car was fucked up and he had no money, so i had to spend hundreds of dollars to fix it for him before the damn thing fell apart in the middle of the road. at the time i had spent a lot of money trying to help fix the house, and i spent a lot of money on weed and smokes because everyone in that house bummed from me! not just paige and jason but all of jason's hooligan friends, bigtime. they even ate my food, food that i bought and didn't get to eat a single bite of! everyone walked all over me and i hated the out-of-control situation. i always saved the most money and was the most responsible when i was by myself and had my own place. i ended up getting in an argument with jeff and breaking up with him because i was pissed at having to spend half my savings to fix his car and he was just a big moneypit, even when he had a job. like i could give him a million dollars and in a week he'd be broke asking me for more help. he would have NEVER helped me as much as i helped him. if my car was about to break he'd just be like "oh sorry to hear that, wanna buy me dinner?" hahahah. basically jeff was much more like a child than a man, not someone who was there for me. but at the time i was dumb and we were attached.
anyway one night paige and i invited this guy named ben over to our house, this stoner kid from the club who was there all the time and super cool. we all hung out and then paige and jason went to bed, and ben didn't have anywhere to sleep because jason's stupid friends were sleeping on my futon that ben was supposed to sleep on. so we just laid in my bed and fell asleep... and nothing sexual happened whatsoever. a week later jeff comes over and we end up getting back together (cuz i was stupid)
and jason pulls jeff aside and tells him that i've been dating other guys and that i had another dude in my bed and he supposedly heard moaning noises coming from the bedroom and the door was closed. BOLD-FACED LIE.... the door was wide open the whole time and all we did was sleep! he completely fabricated this shit just to start drama, cuz nothing happened at all. so of course jeff flips out on me and accuses me of lying to him and cheating, and he leaves and goes back to canada. then i flip out on jason, calling him a liar and threatening to beat his ass for making jeff hate me. then of course paige and i end up hating each other because i'm flipping out on jason (her bf) and starting shit with him. why would jason lie and cause all this drama? well, because he was an asshole loser that had been starting shit with me for a few weeks prior to this and he most definitely wanted me to move out. i had an argument with him like the day before this, so he wanted revenge on me. i was starting to stand up for myself, and i had purchased a mini-fridge and put it upstairs in my bedroom so him and his friends couldn't eat all my food. i tried to sit down and talk with those guys about how i didn't wanna share all my stuff and i was sick of the mooching. i was going broke living there! he copped an attitude like i was being the bitchy one and was like "fine then, you're not allowed to use my computer to get on the internet anymore" and i was like "okay, you can't drive my truck anymore and you'll be stranded then" and basically i just didn't get along with him because he was a dickhead moron. and a peice of shit that didn't have a job and totally used paige for her money. so of course when i tried to put my foot down with him and his loser friends, it pissed him off. i ended up leaving the house in a rage and abandoning all my stuff, not knowing what the fuck they were gonna do with it. i drove to canada to talk to jeff and let him know that jason was lying and i would never in my entire life cheat on someone. yes, we were having problems and i did break up with him, but i would never just jump into bed with some dude and then take jeff back and never tell him- that's wrong.
so it took me a little over a week to shop around and find a new apartment. i found a cute one-bedroom and my parents actually drove to flint so that they could help me move all my shit from the house and prevent any drama from happening with the idiots when i went back. there were some things missing that i'll never get back, but for the most part i got all my stuff. i moved into my own apartment AGAIN, learning a valuable lesson not to ever trust roommates! that house was a big mistake. jeff and i were on good terms and back together so he was always there with me at the new apartment. he didn't have a job to go to in canada anymore, so he just lived with me and i took care of him. i kinda felt sorry for him because he had nowhere to go and had lost his apartment in canada, so i just kept supporting him and we were able to be together 24/7. he knew he had to go back to canada and find a job again, because he wasn't an american citizen and couldn't do jack shit as long as he stayed with me. but he made the choice to sit back and do nothing and let me take care of him. he was depressed... and like i said, i felt sorry for him. it wasn't his fault he lost his job. i supported jeff for about a year and a half. i paid for every single thing and he borrowed a lot of money too, which of course he'll never pay back. there is one very big reason why i've been stripping for 3 years and don't have a penny to my name... jeff.
jeff and i were together for 3 years. i met him right before i started dancing. everything in my life got fucked up when we broke up, but it had to happen. he couldn't live with me and do nothing forever, and i couldn't support him forever. the very last straw that caused our breakup was when i found hidden folders on his computer with pictures of naked girls, some of the girls i actually worked with and had hung out with before. he got the pictures of them from www.dejavu.com and saved them, not to mention he had gigabytes of other porn videos that were mostly "teen porn" and featured girls who looked like they were about 14 years old. it was seriously fucked up. we had a huge fight and he went back to canada. when i was by myself i got super depressed, suddenly having nobody at all. this girl i knew needed a place to live so i told her she could stay with me rent-free, since i had extra room and i knew she was broke and in a bind. of course she ended up eating all my food, smoking all my shit, and using me just like my previous roommates had. i also met a guy named matt who i hung out with for a month or so, and he wanted to be my boyfriend so i gave him a chance even though i had just come out of a 3-year relationship. i figured maybe i could date someone responsible for once and finally get over jeff, but matt ended up using me too. you will notice a pattern in my life- i get used by EVERYONE. because i am a generous person and i have sympathy for people, and i was too naive to realize that people are only out for themselves.
it's unfortunate that over the years that i danced, i made less and less money. i used to make between 200-400 bucks a night and only worked 3-4 days a week. at this current time, i would be lucky to even hit 100 bucks. a lot of dancers are having sex with a guy for that amount of money, which is extremely pathetic and the reason why i can't even make that now. the clubs have gotten so bad that the majority of guys coming into them just expect sex. i've had guys go off on me in a fit of anger, threaten me, and even complain to the club manager that they gave me money and i only gave them a lapdance. isn't that what you're supposed to get in a strip club??! dancing is dead just like the economy and honestly if you don't plan on turning into a hooker you are better off making minimum wage at mcdonalds, it would probably be more money than most nights and waaaay less bullshit. i had to leave my apartment a year ago and move into my moms house an hour away from flint because i just couldn't make the money to support myself anymore, when i used to have money pouring out my ass. i was back at square one again it felt like, and i didn't wanna be there with my mom so i stayed with various friends and people i knew in the flint area and would be gone for 4 days out of the week working at the club still trying to make money and give my mom some rent, barely having any cash left for myself and doing a lot of driving. i had spent all my money buying a new car, then the car kept breaking and cost me over $1000 to fix. there were points in time where i was just stranded, had no money, and didn't know what the hell to do. it would have been nice at that point if jeff could have paid me back some of the money he owed me, but that's a dream. i learned that if you lend money to someone, you better make sure you are financially in a position to do so because most people aren't going to pay you back and you might really need all that money in the future and wish you didn't kiss it goodbye.
my last option about 5 months ago (october 1st, '09) was to say fuck michigan and move down south where the economy is better. i wanted to start a new life and be by myself with nobody to fuck me over and no distractions. i didn't want to quit dancing and be completely broke, i wanted to have money saved up so that i didn't just waste 3 years of my fucking life for nothing. i wanted to live somewhere warm and save money and finish my school so that i could get a degree and be able to get a job anywhere! i busted my ass trying to save up enough money to take the trip to south carolina, and there were a lot of obstacles to get there. i took off with a guy friend of mine, who protected me the entire time and drove me around. i looked up the most badass strip clubs i could find on the internet, mapquested them, and we went there. i worked for 2 weeks at a club in charleston and made $800 in one night. it was an extremely classy club, it was incredibly busy and there was no prostitution going on because the bouncers watched everything like a hawk and there were cameras. it was the best strip club i've ever worked at in my whole life, nothing like the ghetto shitholes in michigan where anything flies. going to south carolina was one of the coolest adventures of my life. i highly recommend going to folly beach if you are in the charleston area.
so why didn't i just stay in south carolina, keep dancing, save money, and go from there? who in their right fucking mind would ever return to michigan? well, a girl that's been dancing for too long and is so sick of the party environment that all i wanted was to take a chance to breathe. i haven't had a place to go since i was 19 years old. is running away to a different state really the answer? would i rather just work at mcdonalds, go back to school here in my little redneck town, and forget about everything? am i okay with knowing that i wasted 3 years of my life supporting other people, getting used, stressing the fuck out, and i'm back at square one anyways? this is the thing that's hard to let go of and accept. all of the depression i'm feeling right now is due to a buildup of failures. sometimes you get to a point in your life where you have no clue what you're doing anymore, you don't know what to do or what direction to go in. you just want to do what's right- but you don't know what that is and nobody else can tell you or help you with it. the confusion is internal and writing in this journal right now is a way for me to get it out and make some sense of it.
i don't have any friends left, not a single person i wanted to keep in my life. i honestly feel like 99% of people in this world are fucked and would be nothing but a bad influence on my life. it's a good feeling to help people but when you are in a tight situation and you need help, are those same people willing to help you? when it comes down to it you can always tell who your real friends are. it is more than just attachment and having a good time together. real friends care about your well being. so maybe all my internet friends here on livejournal were my real friends the whole time.
this entry has completely tired my mind out, so i'll continue the saga of crazyness tomorrow... i can't catch up on every single thing in one day or my brain's gonna explode!
in one of the last entries i made before i quit journaling, i talked about how i had moved to flint and met up with a girl named amber (paige) and became good friends. i ended up moving into a 5-bedroom house with her and her boyfriend, which was a "rent to own" type agreement they got into. i was pretty much their tenant, not on the lease and just paying them cash. the landlord lady was definitely a scam artist, she had us sign all these contracts and i don't think half the shit was even legal. the house looked fine if you walked through it and looked around, but little did we know there would be tons of problems. plumbing was fucked up, upstairs bathtub was leaking into the family room below, the roof was fucked and we thought it was gonna cave in on us, the heat didn't even work upstairs, and we all got sick from the black mold in there. the house had been foreclosed on and was sitting around for a while but i'm pretty sure it's illegal to be the landlord of a place and not do anything to fix these problems for people. even if it's rent to own. anyway the house ended up being shut down when the health department discovered the black mold, cuz that shit is dangerous and can actually kill people. i think we should have sued this lady personally!
luckily i had already moved out by the time the health department came. why? well here's where the drama comes in. i was still dating jeff at the time, and he came from canada to flint every weekend to see me. when i moved in with paige and jason, he came to visit me there too and got along well with those guys. when the factory where jeff worked at shut down and he lost his job, he was there all the time except when he had to go back to canada for something. he was starting to really bring me down at this point because his car was fucked up and he had no money, so i had to spend hundreds of dollars to fix it for him before the damn thing fell apart in the middle of the road. at the time i had spent a lot of money trying to help fix the house, and i spent a lot of money on weed and smokes because everyone in that house bummed from me! not just paige and jason but all of jason's hooligan friends, bigtime. they even ate my food, food that i bought and didn't get to eat a single bite of! everyone walked all over me and i hated the out-of-control situation. i always saved the most money and was the most responsible when i was by myself and had my own place. i ended up getting in an argument with jeff and breaking up with him because i was pissed at having to spend half my savings to fix his car and he was just a big moneypit, even when he had a job. like i could give him a million dollars and in a week he'd be broke asking me for more help. he would have NEVER helped me as much as i helped him. if my car was about to break he'd just be like "oh sorry to hear that, wanna buy me dinner?" hahahah. basically jeff was much more like a child than a man, not someone who was there for me. but at the time i was dumb and we were attached.
anyway one night paige and i invited this guy named ben over to our house, this stoner kid from the club who was there all the time and super cool. we all hung out and then paige and jason went to bed, and ben didn't have anywhere to sleep because jason's stupid friends were sleeping on my futon that ben was supposed to sleep on. so we just laid in my bed and fell asleep... and nothing sexual happened whatsoever. a week later jeff comes over and we end up getting back together (cuz i was stupid)
and jason pulls jeff aside and tells him that i've been dating other guys and that i had another dude in my bed and he supposedly heard moaning noises coming from the bedroom and the door was closed. BOLD-FACED LIE.... the door was wide open the whole time and all we did was sleep! he completely fabricated this shit just to start drama, cuz nothing happened at all. so of course jeff flips out on me and accuses me of lying to him and cheating, and he leaves and goes back to canada. then i flip out on jason, calling him a liar and threatening to beat his ass for making jeff hate me. then of course paige and i end up hating each other because i'm flipping out on jason (her bf) and starting shit with him. why would jason lie and cause all this drama? well, because he was an asshole loser that had been starting shit with me for a few weeks prior to this and he most definitely wanted me to move out. i had an argument with him like the day before this, so he wanted revenge on me. i was starting to stand up for myself, and i had purchased a mini-fridge and put it upstairs in my bedroom so him and his friends couldn't eat all my food. i tried to sit down and talk with those guys about how i didn't wanna share all my stuff and i was sick of the mooching. i was going broke living there! he copped an attitude like i was being the bitchy one and was like "fine then, you're not allowed to use my computer to get on the internet anymore" and i was like "okay, you can't drive my truck anymore and you'll be stranded then" and basically i just didn't get along with him because he was a dickhead moron. and a peice of shit that didn't have a job and totally used paige for her money. so of course when i tried to put my foot down with him and his loser friends, it pissed him off. i ended up leaving the house in a rage and abandoning all my stuff, not knowing what the fuck they were gonna do with it. i drove to canada to talk to jeff and let him know that jason was lying and i would never in my entire life cheat on someone. yes, we were having problems and i did break up with him, but i would never just jump into bed with some dude and then take jeff back and never tell him- that's wrong.
so it took me a little over a week to shop around and find a new apartment. i found a cute one-bedroom and my parents actually drove to flint so that they could help me move all my shit from the house and prevent any drama from happening with the idiots when i went back. there were some things missing that i'll never get back, but for the most part i got all my stuff. i moved into my own apartment AGAIN, learning a valuable lesson not to ever trust roommates! that house was a big mistake. jeff and i were on good terms and back together so he was always there with me at the new apartment. he didn't have a job to go to in canada anymore, so he just lived with me and i took care of him. i kinda felt sorry for him because he had nowhere to go and had lost his apartment in canada, so i just kept supporting him and we were able to be together 24/7. he knew he had to go back to canada and find a job again, because he wasn't an american citizen and couldn't do jack shit as long as he stayed with me. but he made the choice to sit back and do nothing and let me take care of him. he was depressed... and like i said, i felt sorry for him. it wasn't his fault he lost his job. i supported jeff for about a year and a half. i paid for every single thing and he borrowed a lot of money too, which of course he'll never pay back. there is one very big reason why i've been stripping for 3 years and don't have a penny to my name... jeff.
jeff and i were together for 3 years. i met him right before i started dancing. everything in my life got fucked up when we broke up, but it had to happen. he couldn't live with me and do nothing forever, and i couldn't support him forever. the very last straw that caused our breakup was when i found hidden folders on his computer with pictures of naked girls, some of the girls i actually worked with and had hung out with before. he got the pictures of them from www.dejavu.com and saved them, not to mention he had gigabytes of other porn videos that were mostly "teen porn" and featured girls who looked like they were about 14 years old. it was seriously fucked up. we had a huge fight and he went back to canada. when i was by myself i got super depressed, suddenly having nobody at all. this girl i knew needed a place to live so i told her she could stay with me rent-free, since i had extra room and i knew she was broke and in a bind. of course she ended up eating all my food, smoking all my shit, and using me just like my previous roommates had. i also met a guy named matt who i hung out with for a month or so, and he wanted to be my boyfriend so i gave him a chance even though i had just come out of a 3-year relationship. i figured maybe i could date someone responsible for once and finally get over jeff, but matt ended up using me too. you will notice a pattern in my life- i get used by EVERYONE. because i am a generous person and i have sympathy for people, and i was too naive to realize that people are only out for themselves.
it's unfortunate that over the years that i danced, i made less and less money. i used to make between 200-400 bucks a night and only worked 3-4 days a week. at this current time, i would be lucky to even hit 100 bucks. a lot of dancers are having sex with a guy for that amount of money, which is extremely pathetic and the reason why i can't even make that now. the clubs have gotten so bad that the majority of guys coming into them just expect sex. i've had guys go off on me in a fit of anger, threaten me, and even complain to the club manager that they gave me money and i only gave them a lapdance. isn't that what you're supposed to get in a strip club??! dancing is dead just like the economy and honestly if you don't plan on turning into a hooker you are better off making minimum wage at mcdonalds, it would probably be more money than most nights and waaaay less bullshit. i had to leave my apartment a year ago and move into my moms house an hour away from flint because i just couldn't make the money to support myself anymore, when i used to have money pouring out my ass. i was back at square one again it felt like, and i didn't wanna be there with my mom so i stayed with various friends and people i knew in the flint area and would be gone for 4 days out of the week working at the club still trying to make money and give my mom some rent, barely having any cash left for myself and doing a lot of driving. i had spent all my money buying a new car, then the car kept breaking and cost me over $1000 to fix. there were points in time where i was just stranded, had no money, and didn't know what the hell to do. it would have been nice at that point if jeff could have paid me back some of the money he owed me, but that's a dream. i learned that if you lend money to someone, you better make sure you are financially in a position to do so because most people aren't going to pay you back and you might really need all that money in the future and wish you didn't kiss it goodbye.
my last option about 5 months ago (october 1st, '09) was to say fuck michigan and move down south where the economy is better. i wanted to start a new life and be by myself with nobody to fuck me over and no distractions. i didn't want to quit dancing and be completely broke, i wanted to have money saved up so that i didn't just waste 3 years of my fucking life for nothing. i wanted to live somewhere warm and save money and finish my school so that i could get a degree and be able to get a job anywhere! i busted my ass trying to save up enough money to take the trip to south carolina, and there were a lot of obstacles to get there. i took off with a guy friend of mine, who protected me the entire time and drove me around. i looked up the most badass strip clubs i could find on the internet, mapquested them, and we went there. i worked for 2 weeks at a club in charleston and made $800 in one night. it was an extremely classy club, it was incredibly busy and there was no prostitution going on because the bouncers watched everything like a hawk and there were cameras. it was the best strip club i've ever worked at in my whole life, nothing like the ghetto shitholes in michigan where anything flies. going to south carolina was one of the coolest adventures of my life. i highly recommend going to folly beach if you are in the charleston area.
so why didn't i just stay in south carolina, keep dancing, save money, and go from there? who in their right fucking mind would ever return to michigan? well, a girl that's been dancing for too long and is so sick of the party environment that all i wanted was to take a chance to breathe. i haven't had a place to go since i was 19 years old. is running away to a different state really the answer? would i rather just work at mcdonalds, go back to school here in my little redneck town, and forget about everything? am i okay with knowing that i wasted 3 years of my life supporting other people, getting used, stressing the fuck out, and i'm back at square one anyways? this is the thing that's hard to let go of and accept. all of the depression i'm feeling right now is due to a buildup of failures. sometimes you get to a point in your life where you have no clue what you're doing anymore, you don't know what to do or what direction to go in. you just want to do what's right- but you don't know what that is and nobody else can tell you or help you with it. the confusion is internal and writing in this journal right now is a way for me to get it out and make some sense of it.
i don't have any friends left, not a single person i wanted to keep in my life. i honestly feel like 99% of people in this world are fucked and would be nothing but a bad influence on my life. it's a good feeling to help people but when you are in a tight situation and you need help, are those same people willing to help you? when it comes down to it you can always tell who your real friends are. it is more than just attachment and having a good time together. real friends care about your well being. so maybe all my internet friends here on livejournal were my real friends the whole time.
this entry has completely tired my mind out, so i'll continue the saga of crazyness tomorrow... i can't catch up on every single thing in one day or my brain's gonna explode!