Our First Apartment
So, I stopped going to the doctor. I started working on putting weight back on. I stopped letting my family see when I was upset or struggling.
And Ernie and I started planning to move in together.
The most difficult aspect of us planning this move was the distance. We lived over three hours away from each other. We both had shitty low-paid jobs at the time. So we were like, how does one of us move to the other without finding a new job? How does one of us find a new job BEFORE the move? Neither of us had careers yet. We couldn’t apply to a job and be like “cool, I’ll start in a month or two. I just have to move first.”
We started trying to figure out a halfway point that each of us could theoretically travel to while we ironed out the moving details. One of these halfway points was a rural town in Massachusetts that was only an hour bus ride from him and two hours from me, BUT only forty minutes from my mom’s house. I asked her if I could stay in her spare apartment until the move. That way I wouldn’t be driving over four hours every day until then (my plan was to find a job in this new town). She said yes, with the agreement that I helped her out with her farm.
Yeah, the woman had a farm by then. She always was one to just up and do whatever struck her fancy in the moment, throw a bunch of money and time into it and then get bored with the whole operation. That was what was happening with this farm. She had a whole chicken coop, a bunch of ducks and geese, some turkeys, and two goats. My younger sisters were both teenagers at this point and still living with her, so after Mom had gotten bored with the farm, they’d taken over the chores. The month that I wanted to move into her place would coincide perfectly with my younger sisters leaving for New Jersey for the summer to see their dad. So my mom acted like this was perfect. If I would help out with the chores on her farm, she was happy to have me stay there.
My sister Mary and I were very close around this time period. So much so, that she came to Boston with me and hung out with me and Ernie several times (one of my favorite memories here is one day we’d been walking around for ages and I was tired of carrying my massive purse, so I asked Ernie to carry it. Then Mary asked he’d carry hers too. And Ernie did because he’s the biggest pushover sweetheart. So Ernie just spent the rest of the day carrying around two giant purses).
Mary told me that Mom was acting happy about the idea to my face, but behind my back was ranting about how I’d pressured her into letting me stay and how she didn’t know how she was going to deal with having me around again. She was saying stuff like, “The second she gives me a problem, I’m putting her out! I’m not dealing with her again!”
And to my face, she had voiced none of these concerns. And I definitely hadn’t pressured her. I’d been embarrassed to ask in the first place. I couldn’t believe she was acting like this. I had thought we were finally in a good place…
That situation was the beginning of the end for my relationship with my mom. I realized she and I would never be in a good place.
I was angry and wanted to confront her. I realized I couldn’t. Any emotion I showed her, she would use against me.
She and my sisters came over to my grandparents house for brunch not long after this.
I didn’t talk much to my mom. But as I passed her in the kitchen, I flippantly said, “Never mind about me staying at your house for a few months. I’ve thought about it and don’t think that would be a good idea.”
She stared at me like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.
Eventually Ernie and I found a place that worked. I had switched jobs and started cashiering at a Home Depot in Nashua (right on the mass border). 40 minutes from Nashua was a little rural Massachusetts town. This town had a commuter rail that went straight to Boston. It was perfect. It was affordable. Neither of us would have to switch jobs.
Ernie and I moved into this little studio apartment about a year after we’d started dating. The bed was next to the front door. There was a tiny half wall separating the kitchen from the bedroom/living space. It was certainly cozy.
The town was beautiful and our landlord was great. He was very proud of keeping the lawn looking beautiful. There was a giant bush covered in flowers outside the door. We were allowed to grill in the little patio area outside. Ernie got really into grilling. He got his friends into it too and they would all have a blast outside in the summer dousing the charcoal in lighter fluid and then cooking burgers over the roaring flames.
I applied to a four-year school. I’d decided against a career in Human Services. I was going to be a journalist.
I started at Bridgewater State University.
I was so proud of myself. I hadn’t been hospitalized in years. I was completely off all medications. I had a nice man who loved me and we were paying for an apartment together. I was two years away from getting a Bachelor’s degree.
But this is when I lost it again. This is when my emotions went haywire and poor Ernie had to deal with so much more than a kind person like him should ever have to.
Still, there were good times too. Like I bought us a tiny little desk Christmas tree because it was all we had room for. We hung lights around it and that was our first Christmas together. We went for walks. We drove past the horse farm down he road and Ernie would wave at the horses and once one of the horses whipped his head back and forth and neighed and that made Ernie laugh a lot.
We lived there until Ernie got a job at the same Home Depot as me, and then we moved to Nashua.
