#but i see it as a disabilty ribbon

[our-transgender-experiences]

so, yesterday, i got a pride flag ribbon pin thing!! its my, 3rd? pride related item (i have a rainbow keychain and had another identical ribbon, which i lost)

it was shaped like the disability ribbon, which i didn't like, so now its a weird little bow

[zonkutonshorrifyingpeenie]

C/TW for financial abuse rant plz scroll past if you don't want to see it

My parents were always strapped for money. By my twenties the house was working off of dad's paycheck and TWO disability pensions (both mine, and mother's) and yet somehow we could still barely afford anything.

The homeloan was refinanced several times, we barely if ever went out to do anything, family holidays just didn't exist 99% of the time. It was always hammered into my head that we never had any money.

I never let myself bring up anything that needed replacing until I absolutely definitely did not have a choice anymore. For years I worked with a zombie laptop, slept on a dead mattress that had springs poking through and digging into my back, and lived on a ruptured metal bedframe that sliced at my leg every time I woke up. But I never said anything because we were broke.

Three quarters of my own disabilty pension went straight to the family funds without me even seeing it. And if I ever asked what it was being used for, I was usually answered in an increasingly aggressive tone. So I stopped asking.

I was often told I was "helping pay" for things that benefitted me in absolutely no way with money that was technically being stolen from me, now that I think about it.

Our poverty didn't stop the house from being riddled with random useless crap, however.

Because, we were poor... Unless it came to something that mother wanted.

Piles upon piles of random fabrics, wool, spindles, sewing threads, ribbons, design books, custom wooden weaving stands, and a whole bunch of other junk that was rarely if ever touched littered the house. Like, literally littered it.

There were entire sections of the house you just could no access because of all the things mother had shoved into them.

We were poor, mother wasn't.

There was so much junk in the house that it bled into my own spaces. I don't think I ever lived in a room that wasn't filled with shit that wasn't mine.

But that's a rant for another post.

Right up until I fled, I had absolutely no control over my own finances. They weren't even going directly to me. They went to mother's account first, and then to me. Even when I started receiving NDIS payments as well.

Everything went to mother's account.

Thankfully when I fled, a decent amount of the money she stole away was transferred back to me.

But I had no control. And every time I tried to coerce some control back, I was essentially bullied into giving it back up again by the time the conversation finished.

I had no say in where my money went, what it was used for, who it went to, or anything like that. I usually wasn't told, anyway.

Mother often cited "juggling" funds around her twenty asinine and redundant bank accounts. I still don't understand why anyone would have more than a main and a long-term save. It doesn't make sense.

And even when she tried to "teach" me about banking, she tried to force me to make my accounts like hers, and casually dropped a story about trying to kill herself in the middle of it. So it was a pointless effort.

In that house, most of my (what i could keep, anyway) money went towards drugs and alcohol, which kept me in just enough of a dissociative state that I could get through the day. It definitely was not good for me though.

When I finally got myself to leave, it was almost debilitating having complete control and access to my own pensions, and I'll admit I went a bit ham on it for a while.

But at least I knew where my money was going and what it was being used for.

Eight months later, I'm still poor as shit. But at least I'm less poor than when I was having all my money stolen from me with aggressive non-answers being given to any questions about it.