It was the end of my third day at work and I realized I was dreading the walk home.
When I got there, I walked directly up the two flights of stairs to my room, trying to avoid a run-in with any of my eight roommates.
That became my routine for the next month.
Have you ever looked back at a time in your life and thought, “Why did I…How did I…What was I thinking?”
I had that moment at the end of last summer, while I reflected on the four months I had just experienced.
The story begins on April 29. Everyone remembers it as the day Prince William and Kate Middleton were married. I remember it as the day my adventure began.
I got a job as an intern reporter, working for Moncton’s city newspaper, the Times & Transcript. The contract began on May 2. Problem was, I didn’t have a place to live.
So, on the day the royal couple were wed, my aunt told me I needed to head to Moncton and get myself an apartment. I had scheduled a couple apartment tours and felt positive at least one would do. It was the first time I would spend a summer somewhere other than Fredericton or my home on Prince Edward Island. A piece of cake, surely.
Wrong. The best apartment I found was this ancient, three-story boarding home, with tacky furniture and chipped lime green paint. There were eight other people living there and my room would be the attic.
Desperate to find some place, I paid $300 for the first month’s rent and assured myself if I didn’t like it, I would move out after the month was up.
When I moved in, I was greeted by some of my new housemates. One, a gruff 40 or 50-something man who looked like he was still hoping to crack into the entertainment biz and become a rock star, helped me up the stairs with my suitcases. Another trailed behind us – a tall, balding person who had a man’s voice, but was dressed as a woman.
Scared and kicking myself for not having asked the landlord to meet these other tenants, I started to unpack.
The room was sub-par iat best. You could only stand in the middle of it at the peak, where the two sides of the roof met. The deep slanted walls meant crawling was going to be the main mode of transportation. A window popped open on one of the slanted walls. You could stick your head out and see some of the city. It made the room more cheerful, filling it with sunlight.
Lonely and frightened met with the normal anxiety of beginning a new job the next day, I cried. In the attic of a huge house filled with people I didn’t know, deep in the city of Moncton, I sobbed.
But the next day, I put my pride in my dress pants’ pocket and headed to work.
It was one of the best days ever. They started us on the day of the federal election and pushed us right into the action.
I remember the first weekend my best friend and roommate in Fredericton came to visit. When she saw the place and met the people I was living with, she looked at me like I was crazy. But I assured her I had the situation under control. I was looking at more apartments.
I found a great place, not far from the boarding house. It was completely renovated, with hardwood floors and new kitchen cupboards. One of the girls living there was looking for someone to sublet. The three other girls were two years younger than me, which was a welcomed change.
Once I moved in, I realized the situation wasn’t as peachy-perfect as I had hoped. All three girls had financial issues, causing a rift between them and the landlord.
And the the fun didn’t stop there.
While the apartment itself was quite nice, the street it lived on was not. When I told co-workers where I moved, they cringed. The street had a dangerous reputation. Again, I kicked myself for not doing enough research and just jumping into something.
Sure enough, a stabbing and a shooting occurred during my time there, almost right outside my door. I later reported on both.
I ended up in the apartment alone at one point. The landlord had evicted the three girls and an Asian student and a co-worker of mine moved in – I lived with 14 people in total throughout the summer.
Moncton is a city with a beautiful downtown core, but it sure has a lot of those infamous sketchy streets you don’t want to walk down alone.
It was the look on my friend’s face when she first came to visit that convinced me it wasn’t okay to live where I was living.The only thing I could do was not let the constant problems and disruptions get to me. Things weren’t going quite as smoothly as I had wanted them to, but I still managed.
In the end, I did what I had to do, found the best solution and moved with it. Literally.
