::Shebytches::

My friend, Sean was venting to me this week about lending his friend, Steve money. Steve is taking off down South soon and Sean is afraid that he will never see his hard earned cash ever again.

This reminded me of my second year of college… I met a few girls from my first year at residence and during the summer, we decided that it would be best if we all moved in together. Oh yeah, at the time it seemed like the BEST idea in the world. Three, young, single women on their own, living together in an apartment. What a blast it would be!!! However, things don’t always turn out the way you expected.

It was September-the busiest time of the school year- so, along with moving into our new apartment, we all had to organize our schedules and make sure that everything was okay with our classes.

By the start of the second week, we were getting ready to move in. My friend, Kandi was stressing out because she didn’t have enough money for first and last month’s rent. I just received my OSAP, so she asked if I could "LEND" her the money. I didn’t want to… I really didn’t. But, if we didn’t pay the whole price, then we wouldn’t have been able to move in. I gave her the $1000. It made me sick to my stomach because that’s a lot of money to me, but I did it.

It was only two days later, when Kandi came home from school and to tell me that she wasn’t enrolled in college. She was out of her program with no student loan and no job. She told me that she was going to get a job and work full-time, until she could figure out what went wrong.

Two months later, I had to pay for both of our October’s rent. Kandi still had no job and the money in my account was quickly fading away. I started taking the 20 minute walk to school to save money. I tried to do everything I could to save money, but it wasn’t working. It wasn’t until one night I went to the kitchen to find something to eat, only to find a tube of ketchup and a jar of pickles. There was nothing and I had to do something about it. Now, Kandi owing me $1,500… I was devastated.

I continued to encourage Kandi to get off her ass and find a job. And finally, it happened, she came home with the great news. She got a job working as a shooter girl at a local strip club. I didn’t like that fact, she working around naked women and dirty men, but I needed money.

She began paying me back, but it was $40 bucks here and $20 bucks there. Not in a big chunk of $1,500 like I expected. I had to start working to pay December’s rent because at the rate Kandi was going, I knew she wouldn’t be able to pay on time.

Weeks went by and there was only $500 more to go for Kandi. She came home late on a Saturday night with rest of the cash. By this time, my other roommate and I decided that we had enough of this. When I asked Kandi for the cash, she refused. She only wanted to give me half of it and wait until the following week to give me the rest. I couldn’t wait any longer. I took the rest of the money out of her hand and then, told her that she had to be out of the apartment before January 1st.

Some may think this was wrong of me to do, but I just wanted to do well in school. I didn’t want to have to worry about paying bills. Furthermore, I didn’t want Kandi to work at the strip club anymore. I wanted her to go home, to get away from the city. If I never lent her the money… we wouldn’t have to go through all the pain and struggling.

~The Journals of D…