I'm going to update on the last six months.
This past summer, I got a letter saying there was a warrant out for my arrest. Yup. Thinking it must be some mistake or misunderstanding, I headed to the courthouse, where I discovered it was indeed not a mistake. But let me give you some background info.
When I was 18 my mom decided it was time for me to buy a car. I should've known she had an ulterior motive, as helping me is not something Joanna is inclined to do. First, she insisted we buy the car out past Towson, MD. About two hours away from where I lived, because she thought the banks would give us a better interest rate. At the time I was working as a lifeguard, making around $300 every two weeks. Knowing this would not suffice when buying a car, she forged a bunch of documents, and said I worked for one of her fake companies. She told me she would pay for the car payment each month ($331) if I paid for the insurance ($125). I have no idea why I believed her. This turned into her taking each of my checks that summer, which I guess was fine. I did, after all, have a new car. Except, she started taking my car whenever she wanted, and for days, and weeks at a time. So naturally, I stopped giving her each paycheck. She showed up one day and demanded my check. I gave it to her on one condition: that she pay $125 toward the insurance so it wouldn't get cancelled. Of course, she didn't. My insurance was cancelled. Then, she just took the car altogether. I tried to report it stolen, but the cops, as usual, were useless. They told me I couldn't report it as stolen because it was a family member. That I could only report it as unauthorized use. To do this I'd have to go to the station (with what car?) and pay a fee (with what money?). And that they couldn't do anything about it anyway. Cops in Montgomery County have very rarely helped me throughout my life. So, the bitch stole my car.
She drove around in it for at least a year. Never paying insurance and never paying a car payment. Do you know what the MVA does if you don't insure your car and don't turn in the tags? They charge you $7 a day. Thus, I now owe them thousands of dollars, ensuring I will never be able to have a car in my name. Anyway, the car was supposed to get repossessed. She was living somewhere in Redneck Town at this point and I wasn't sure of her address. I was constantly harassed by the repossession agencies. I'd explain the situation to them and they didn't believe me. What kind of mother would steal their daughter's car? Once I was able to provide her address, she hid the car at her friend Jimmy's house. All I knew about Jimmy was that he was a nice redneck my mom probably slept with for favors, and his last name. My boyfriend at the time me figure out his address so we could stop being harassed by the repo agencies. He found a website that would provide us his address if we payed some amount of money that I can't remember. So we did. And the car was recovered.
Now, I'm at the courthouse, and they tell me that the car company has sued me for the money for the car and the money it took to recover the car. That they'd sent me court dates and given me fair warning. I told the cops that I never got anything in the mail. Turns out they not only sent it to my mom's address, but they physically served her the papers. She just never told me about it. So here I am, about to be arrested and put in a cell because the bitch never even told me. Thankfully, the cop was nice and told me to call the car company's lawyer and work it out. And I did, for a little anyway. I started paying them off monthly. Until it became too much and I got a couple months behind. Then, this past November I got a letter saying they will start garnishing my wages. They didn't say how much and they didn't say when. Today, December 23rd, I found out. They're taking around $240 from each paycheck. Which is a lot when you don't make that much in the first place, are 23 and living on your own.
BUT, I am trying my hardest not to let it ruin my Christmas spirit. Plus, I'm still really fucking lucky. I know if I really need help there is always my dad, there is my amazing boyfriend and there is my ex boyfriend turned best friend. It could be a lot worse.
But still, what a twat.
The other significant event that happened is that she signed her portion of the house over to me. Not before sufficiently destroying the property. All the "fixing up" she did, and hired other drug addicts to do just demolished the house. She tore down the downstairs kitchen and hired her pill-head friend to put up a wall in the center of it, "a seventh" bedroom. There is still no ceiling. All of the doors are broken. There is paint on the wood floors. The railings on the deck are falling off. She got high and applied so much paint to the walls that they are now lumpy. Trash everywhere. Syringes littered throughout the house. Oh, and she hasn't paid the mortgage in four years. We owe them $75,000. But, I applied for a home loan modification yesterday, so hopefully that works out. All I want to do is get the house in livable condition and rent it out.
She currently believes that the mortgages company actually owes her $400,000. How, you ask, when the house isn't even worth that much? Yeah, I don't know either. But this is how the minds of drug addicts work. I only even began talking to her again so she'd sign the house over to me. She kept talking about how thankful I should be that she's giving me a house I can rent out for $6,000 a month (what??) and not have to pay a mortgage on. Yes, she really believes the mortgage does not need to be paid. It's shit like this that makes me hate drug addicts, the way they think. They're so ridiculous.
So, that's that. It's two days before Christmas and I still could afford presents this year. So it's not so bad. I'm going to Panama next month with Scott, so it's really not bad at all. Sure, I'll be making less than $1400 a month and I'm not really sure how that will work out. At least I'm not homeless. Anymore.
