In college, undergraduate, after my Freshman year, my best friend from middle school and three young women all talked me into renting a large house—-the 5 of us. The dorm fees were like $2000 a semester then but you would get all of that back and we were often between the group of us subletting during breaks——at say $200 a month per person, it would be a no brainer to chip in (and receive the dorm fees back as a reimbursement from our tuition fees.) A hunting we went for a 5 bedroom house. It sounds unusual but not so much in Buffalo so eventually we came upon a listing in the downtown area of Buffalo. Think of it like close to midtown if it were Manhattan, less than a few blocks.
Two bedrooms downstairs, three upstairs but as soon as we went in——I had a weird feeling. Which was weird for me to have such an immediate weird feeling. I actually said so and suggested we look elsewhere—-after all we were agreed on a August/September move in so we had 2 more months time. But the other 4 liked the house.
Two of us stayed in the city over the summer break working and I got sick. So sick my parents flew up to take me back to NYC/Pennsylvania and there was a brief questioning of time would I, should I return to Buffalo?
But I prevailed so my mother came with me, helped me pack up my dorm room and we arrived in August to the new house. No answer and the keys didn’t work. We knocked and waited and waited and knocked, but to no avail. Tried calling my roomies in town but they weren’t there. So we put my things in storage and went back downstate.
After a few back and forth calls to the landlord, turns out my “friends’ had moved into the house and were actually inside of the house with the blinds drawn, refusing to let me in. They had decided to nix me out of the house deal because of my getting sick. Of course I was crushed. I had been friends with 3 of them for over a year and 1 of them for multiple years……but my mother offered that if I could work it out, this might be the time to find my own place?
I drove up (I had my own Bronco) one Saturday, apartment hunted all day—-found a 1 bedroom, a few blocks away from campus, in a 4 apartment house, signed the lease, and drove back to Pennsylvania/NYC (we lived between the two.) in 24 hours. Went back, moved into my swanky 1 bedroom ($350 a month with a garage space for my Bronco—-huge place, clean, bedroom big enough for my king sized bed.)
Went back to school.
The group avoided me, until finally my best friend broke the ice and told me the above.
Okay…..when people tell you or show you who they are, believe them. I avoided the group.
It turned out that there were a multitude of ways to get cash funding/grants as a student, living on your own—-so my mother’s huge contribution gift to me was she and the landlord negotiated separating the apartment rent and the garage rent—-she paid the $50 x 12 months=$600 and the school grant covered the $3600—-rent having to meet $300 limit for an individual (ironically—-it was the friend of one of the 3 women who told me about this grant as how she’d gotten her first place.) Plus I got back my dorm fees AND a living expense of about $200 a month, plus I was secretly working—-I’d basically gotten sick from exhaustion from working 5 separate part-time jobs—-I got it down to 2. So I was peaches.
Time goes on, classes go on, life goes on and I’m in my first swanky bachelor pad—-honestly, I had so much free cash—-yes, I was buying steak and lobster at Tops supermarket and wheeling it home. I was 23 then, but I’d been working and doing domestic chores since a teen, hadn’t gotten to school until 21, so I was more accustomed to living alone, on my own than dorms or roommates.
I told my longer term friend that there was something wrong with the house, that the energy in it was wrong——and I was sort of happy I wasn’t there. She reported back that as soon as all 4 were in, the fights began. They’d all been close for years before I even got to the school and now they were in hellacious fights—-they were all my age or older—-to the point of violence. This went on for a year until two of them broke the lease and left, another moved back into the dorms, and my friend moved into another house. None of them spoke to each other again—-I learned from one of the 3 years later—-she said she had voted against ousting me and admitted it was a mistake, and detailed all of the fights. The four of them never reconciled. But they had all weird feelings, heard weird noises, slams and crashes in the house.
I told her, the exclusion was shitty but I had gotten an immediate vibe that the old rickety house—-though large—-had deep negative energy and perhaps, just perhaps—-when you do shitty things to people, negativity exacerbates in some spaces? I of course said this from my 2nd swanky bachelor pad in Buffalo—-bigger than my first, that after careful thought I suggested I would take some time to think about allowing my friend to move into. lol
I’d only felt that way about a couple of other places, one positively—-the house my mother and I picked out as a 2nd home in PA—-as soon as we went in and looked at it—-I said it felt like “it had been built with love”. Turns out the house had been rebuilt and renovated by a couple especially to enjoy with their 19 year old daughter during school breaks, she died a few months before our visit in a car accident, so heartbroken, they decided to sell the house. But the realtor remarked in shock—yes, it was built in love like I had said.
I could also tell when something was constructed with antipathy, negativity, darkness. I avoided that group/that house and ironically years later would end the friendship with my best friend and throw her out of yet a 3rd swanky pad—-in NYC—-with a dining room AND a working fireplace!
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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