#i lost people this year. and my job. and my car. and my health insurance.

[inkskinned]

i don't want to celebrate but i know this body is an animal that i must tend to like a cow. i put on jazz music and rub my hands down my fur and sometimes brush out the tangles. the cowbody is splotchy and angry and grows horns and always walks too heavy. it is sometimes very hard to love a cowbody. it is hard not to envy the fox or the crow.

i don't want to celebrate, this was a terrible year and i accomplished nothing.

i put coffee on the stove though. i made my bed. i handmade all my christmas presents this year, and it made my mom happy. i don't cry every day anymore, just some of them, and it's not as violent. i finally made something recognizable as bread.

we are supposed to celebrate sometimes, because it is important for the animal body to feel joy, even for manufactured reasons. i hold garlands and feel raw and sullen. i want to spend the party with my eyes closed, just breathing. this was a terrible year, and took too much. in the span of twelve months - my life, slashed in pieces. from half-full to bottom-of-the-cup.

i am going to bake a lot of cookies. i am going to make champagne punch. i am going to show the cow of my body to an empty field and tell her - it's not much, but. this is how i will love her today, when i do not want to. i will put a bell on her and hold her. we are celebrating that i finally learned how to knit, and am very bad at it. that i walked my dog in dark woods and watched the seasons pass. that i made myself a good meal once in a while. we are celebrating nothing but the sun, the grass. the ever-lovely wide night sky.

for now, i guess. we celebrate that we did not die.

[garbageconnoisseur]

Urgent - Homeless LGBT couple needs help!

Hello everyone.

I'm sure you all have heard this before but we are in dire need of some help right now. Some unforeseen event has just undermined our effort to look for stability outside the city we spent our last 3 years homeless in. After making it out and looking for work/housing these past 4 months, we are now being forced to travel back or risk losing our biggest life line (our car) along with several minor issues we've been trying to work around (to no avail). As before, we desperately need help affording a motel room to stay in both before and after we leave, as well as food, medicine, and important bills we need paid to survive (Due to ongoing need, I will continue sharing this post for help for a few weeks after before updating our situation with a new on).

I am burnt out, mentally and physically and every day is nothing but pain and stress lately. We have been homeless for over 3 years and I lost my job in September so now we have nothing besides our car, and a few belongings we can fit in it. We are about to face another incredibly long drive and it has to be soon if we want to avoid our car being taken from us when we need it most. We are leaving February 15th and before that we need to get funding for an oil change, gas, food, and shelter, as well as more funds for a place to stay when we arrive in the city and for our car insurance which is also incredibly important for us right now. Any help is appreciated. I cannot do this alone and, honestly, I believe this is going to be our very last chance at trying to be okay. If my body doesn't give out from being constantly sick, my mental health might do the job.

Venmo: @garbageconnoisseur

CashApp: $garbageconnoisseur

Message for PayPal or Zelle.

(Please no hate and no unsolicited advice. If you can think of it, we tried it. If you're nasty, I don't have the energy to deal with you. Either way, I will block people who ignore this for my mental health sake.)

[lightofraye]

The Greatest Loss

I need to put a warning here, right now, for anyone that wants to read this. This isn't me being "woke" or "politically correct"; it's me being respectful that not everyone wants to read this kind of story. It's highly personal, and highly emotional.

It details loss. It details a lost pregnancy. Explanation of medical procedures. Biological mentions. Not everyone wants to read that and I am highly aware of it.

So consider this your first and only warning. If you are able to handle this, if you are able and willing, then by all means, read ahead.

But if not, I will not be upset. I understand not everyone wants to read about people's grief, of their loss.

For me... it's been 14 years of dealing with this grief, this pain, this loss. I will never get over it. My life has grown around this grief, has made room for it.

In such stories, there are lessons. Points we should all learn.

Because of length, because of details, I am using a cut.

October 6th is always a hard, painful day for me.

And yet, the events that led up to it began on the 5th, when I saw my social worker/therapist for our weekly meeting. She became very concerned at my state of mind, when I admitted my suicidal ideations were becoming worse, not better, despite the Zoloft and counseling and everything I was doing to stabilize my mind.

She decided that I should be hospitalized, but hesitant as to where I should go. Psych hospitals weren't really set up for pregnant women, especially one so close to the due date (I was due around the 15th or so). Regular hospitals weren't really set up for patients who had suicidal ideations. In the end, my social worker called my midwife and discussed it with her. In the end, they decided I would go to a regular hospital and be seen by a psychologist there.

Transportation became a bitch. My ex was at work at the time (the few times he had a job, I believe) and I was using my medical insurance's transportation. However, last minute scheduling was not their forte. I waited hours... and transportation never showed. In the end, my mother-in-law came and got me.

We went to the hospital and waited in the ER. I spoke to her about what was troubling me. For the last several months, my marriage was hell. The ex dropped the bomb on me: he wanted a divorce... and I was like 5 months pregnant at the time. It came out of the blue.

Then I found out my ex was cheating on me with his ex-girlfriend who, when I snooped on his laptop, basically admitted she didn't care about "that thing in her belly". The ex also tried to throw me out of the house. It was one of the few times MIL came to my defense. Since she'd been paying rent, she made it clear that I wasn't leaving the apartment.

So yeah... my mental state wasn't great. My health during the pregnancy wasn't either. I had been in and out of the hospital since the baby had been conceived, really. Severe morning sickness--hyperemesis gravidarum--was extremely taxing. I had no energy, literally. I lost weight, that's how bad it was. The slightest thing made me throw up. I had the slightest hint of vaginal bleeding for months, but the midwife dismissed it, saying it was normal. (It wasn't, in the end.) My anemia got so bad, I had to have iron infusions.

The ex didn't believe me when I said it was this bad. (My MIL didn't believe me either, and so the ex believed her over what he saw in front of him. It was a disaster, I swear.) So... he took it personally, and decided to cheat on me. Yeah, I know.... ridiculous.

Anyway....

The pregnancy took its toll on me. Mentally, physically, emotionally. The suicidal ideations, in the end, weren't active. It was passive. The whole "Let a car hit me, let me end up being hospitalized for months with someone else taking care of me for a while." Not "I have a plan to slit my wrist." sort of thing. (Yes, there is a difference.)

However, the whole talking to my MIL that night of the 5th of October, 2010, helped. I cried, we talked, I got it out. I purged, My social worker was awful. I didn't connect with her. I felt.... judged. I couldn't get comfortable with her to purge what was in me. But that night I did. I got stable. When the psychologist in the ER finally came to see me... he asked if I could be trusted to go home. I said "Yes."

This is where I felt... I wished I didn't. I should've stayed. They would've connected me to a baby monitor and they could've seen the fetal distress. They could've seen something was wrong and saved the baby. They would've.... he would've been saved. But I said I was fine.

I felt fine.

But....

But I was fine. I said I was okay. So they discharged me. It was like... 10pm or so. I was starving. I hadn't eaten since lunch, if memory serves. My MIL offered a late dinner. Stopped to pick up the ex from home and went to this very nice little place nearby. I had a very hearty meal and for once there was no marital stress.

We ate well, then went home. I was exhausted. Normally, after eating so much, I'd have to wait a while so I don't throw up from laying down. Pregnancy and all. But I was so tired I just collapsed. The ex opted to stay up, the jerk, and watch TV. I was so tired though, I didn't care. Just crashed.

Now... for those who have been pregnant before, I'm sure you can empathize with this. Toward the end of pregnancy, there's frequent wake ups with a bladder feeling full and crushed. I, before this night, had woken up frequently and felt like I had to go often--even if it was just a teeny-tiny trinkle.

This night, however...

This night, I didn't wake up for several hours.

When I finally did wake up, I was startled. I felt like my bladder was going to burst. When I saw on a clock nearby how late it was, I was stunned. It had been at least four hours. When I shifted and moved, I felt a trinkle and thought "Oh gods, please don't pee in your underwear!" I waddled as quick as I could to the bathroom, my sleep-fogged brain not catching onto the "wrongness" that hadn't dawned.

When I sat down, I saw it. The sleep-fog banished instantly. There, on my clean white underwear, was the shock of bright red blood. I gasped, and knew. Just knew.

It wasn't my water breaking.

My baby was gone. I just knew he was.

I felt my breath catch in my throat. I began to sob. I cleaned myself, saw the blood, felt it trickle away, and sobbed some more. My ex, still awake, stopped by the open bathroom door and looked at me. "What's wrong?"

"I'm bleeding!"

He ran back to the bedroom, grabbed his cellphone and called the midwife for the on-call. She happened to have been the one to be the on-call emergency. I told her what happened. She was certain it was my water breaking. I insisted it wasn't. She advised us to call an ambulance and head to the hospital.

The ex did that and got me a fresh pair of underwear and a pair of sweat pants. (I really don't wear much for pajamas--often a loose cami tank and underwear.)

The ambulance was just down the road. They arrived immediately. I put in an hygiene pad in my underwear to catch further blood and was placed in a gurney. My MIL was called and told to meet us at the hospital. My blood pressure was checked and was normal. I had no pain.

Since I had woken, I felt no pain.

We arrived at the ER and was sent to the labor and delivery floor. There, they took me to a room. My midwife met us there and she had a nurse try to use a doppler to find a heartbeat. No go. She tried to find it with a stethoscope. No go. Lastly, an ultrasound. No go.

Very calmly, gently, the midwife took my hand in hers and met my eyes with hers. "Raye, I'm very sorry. We can't find the baby's heartbeat. He's gone."

I broke. In that instant, I broke.

Letting me weep, she went to tell my ex and MIL. I heard the MIL weep. The ex came over to me a moment later and together, we held one another and cried. They gave us a few minutes to cry before informing us of the next step.

Ideally, the next step would be to induce. So that was the plan. They would give me pitocin to begin, and a cervical balloon to force my cervix to open up. However, when they insert that, a gush of blood came out. That worried my midwife immensely.

(Before I continue, I should add that my midwife was a certified midwife, supervised by a licensed ob-gyn. She worked out of a hospital. He too was there that day.)

Worried, she called the ob-gyn and spoke to him in a low voice. I overheard the words "blood" and him asking "Are you sure?" That's when I saw her lift the sheet from the ground to catch all the blood. It was soaked.

That's when he took over. I was to be given an emergency c-section. I was bleeding too much and they weren't sure why. Since they didn't want me to die while doing the induction, they were going to do the c-section and find what's causing the bleeding and stop it. He was going to do everything he could to preserve my uterus and ability to have more babies.

Then I was rushed to the operating room, given an epidural, and the procedure began. This is where it blurs in my memory, the epidural and exhaustion and grief graying out my mind.

Later, I was wheeled into a private room on the floor. I was granted a chance to see my lost baby. I was granted the right to have him with me the whole weekend. I held him, wept over his body, slept with him beside me. Beside my room number, there was a leaf with a water drop, a symbol to all who visited that this was a parent who lost a baby and to be respectful.

The ob-gyn told me once I was allowed to stay as long as I needed until I was ready to leave and face the world again. I had photographs of the baby taken. His footprints on a certificate. He was cremated. A memorial was held.

On the first year of his passing, my ex and I adopted a pair of kittens to help us grieve. We needed something living, babies, to help us. One of them is still alive. (Unfortunately, one of them passed while I was pregnant with my son; we're still not sure what happened to her. But her brother is still alive.)

It's been fourteen years now and I'm still shattered. One in four pregnancies result in a loss. Be a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or SIDs. We have pro-lifers/anti-choicers/forced-birthers worried over abortion instead of the losses of wanted babies... when medical science can't understand why this happens. It's frustrating as hell.

As near as any ob-gyn can tell, mine was over an undetected placenta abruption. I say "undetected" because my blood pressure was normal. There was no pain. None of the signs of a "usual" placenta abruption. Something that would've triggered a rush to the hospital. All except one, one that the midwife ignored: the spotting.

My son is my Rainbow Baby. A term intended for a surviving birth after a loss. Having him helped ease the loss somewhat.... but I will forever mourn the loss of my first.

I should've had two sons driving me crazy, day in day out.

[liminaltey]

Make a difference in a disabled woman’s life for the holidays? Read this:

I’m only $115 away from my goal!!!

Hi my name is Tey but I also go by Jas, I’m an unemployed autistic woman. I made a GoFundMe in an effort to obtain a bike, to aid in my independent traveling endeavors. I cannot legally drive, and even if I could I do not have the means to afford a car, car insurance and other car related expenses like gas. I cannot afford Uber or Lyft, and I can’t always afford the bus. I cannot rely comfortably on relatives or friends to take me places because they are their own people with their own agendas, and as mentioned previously I cannot afford to compensate them with gas money. I have been searching for a job for months and have had a couple interviews but they all have lead to nothing.

I have done much walking lately in an attempt to exercise my independent traveling muscles but it’s harder than I thought. Despite being young (24) I have dealt with foot related pain/ problems for as long as I can remember. I had surgery to address it at 9 or 10 years old. That did not solve everything of course. I used to sprain my ankles a lot due to them being unstable and floppy. I have lost feeling in my toes for weeks just from standing from working at Bojangle’s. I have an osteochondral lesion on my left ankle that may require surgery, and just two days ago I was diagnosed with a stress reaction on my right foot, a precursor to an actual fracture from all the walking I’ve done. I was also freshly diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

Having a bike would help me be able to travel more often, and further. My partner has a beautiful bike and I’d love to be able to bike ride alongside them on our city related adventures instead of lagging behind on my unreliable feet. See look at how pretty! It’s even more gorgeous in person:

I’d also really love to be able to take myself to my doctors and mental health appointments without begging my relatives to take me. I would like to be able to pick up my prescription medication, and do independent grocery runs. I’d love to be able to get out the house more often on my own terms rather than wait for someone to get into the “feel like going out” mood. I have depression, anxiety and other health problems both physical and psychological and I’m trying to actively overcome them. Biking is a good form of physical activity while simultaneously exposing you to vitamin D since it generally is considered an outdoorsy activity. I lack vitamin D.

So if you read all this, I adore you.

If you have the means to donate $1 I’d really really really really really really really really appreciate it, and if you can’t (I understand, my bank account closed itself because I’m that broke), reblogging would also be very very very very very very very very very very very very much appreciated!

I’m $115 away, it’s so close I can almost taste it (imagining that one Patrick licking SpongeBob popsicle scene)

Being $115 away means:

If 11 (and a half 🤭) people donated $10 the goal would be reached or 23 people donating $5, you get the picture

This is me if you care btw:

[pithypepper]

A little life update…

Hello Tumblr friends. (Are there any of you I can still call that?) I know it’s been months since my last post and I've ghosted y'all — please forgive me. My only explanation is that 2024 has been a sucky year. The TLDR is:

Dealing with dad's stroke

Hit a pedestrian

Saw a few shows and a couple of trips to see family

Laid-off and unemployment is laughable

New job scheduled to start after the first of the year

2-yr anniversary with BF, but not engaged

Perimenopause now full-on raging

Need to focus on health and wellness in 2025

The long of it is..

I started the year in the hospital at my dad’s bedside after he had an ischemic stroke, followed by a brain bleed cause by the medicine used to try to break up the clot that caused the first stroke. He's left the hospital but now lives in a nursing home for long-term care. He cannot walk or care for himself, his personality has shifted significantly, he has a modified diet due to limitations on swallowing, he's had his Medicare ID# stolen, and is generally not receiving great care from the facility, but our hands (his 4 daughters') are kind of tied because he is 3 minutes away from his wife and only one of us even lives in the same area.

Next year I'm sure we'll have more to deal with as his wife's memory is getting progressively, and maybe even concerningly, worse. Her mom had Alzheimer's, and my step-mom was regularly hit in the head by her step-dad as a child. On top of that, in the past decade she's had several decent head injuries. So we'll see what happens.

In February I hit and ran over an elderly pedestrian at a membership warehouse store with my car. She was hospitalized for at least a week with a broken leg, but I think she's otherwise ok? I was really terrified about what would happen, but she ended up settling with the insurance company and I was released from liability. It was very traumatic, (I'm sure more so for her!) but I had a couple of EMDR therapy with a counselor and it helped a lot.

Boyfriend and I saw a bunch of shows this year (favorite shows bolded):

Creed Bratton

John Crist

Stickmen

The Black Crowes

Mike Farris

Nashville Sounds baseball game

Angela Petrilli

Foreigner/Styx/John Waite

Asia

John Fogerty

Smashing Pumpkins

Green Day

One Vision of Queen featuring Marc Martel

Jukebox the Ghost

Lawrence

Beat (Vai, Belew, Levin, Carey)

We also took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit my mom and sister in July. Took in some historical stuff in Philly, took a day trip to see my sister in Connecticut, and went to Shady Maple Smorgasbord with my mom.

On September 29th, my boyfriend's mom passed away in TX, and on September 30th, I was informed that my position was being terminated in 6 weeks. We spent a week and a half in TX with his dad and brother for the funeral. (So grateful for bereavement and the ability to work from anywhere with that job.) She had Parkinson's, so her death wasn't unexpected, but the family wasn't expecting her to go so soon. My boyfriend had actually scheduled a trip to visit her just a week later and I'm heartbroken for him that he didn't have the chance to say goodbye in person. But if we're going to look at the bright side, his mom's health and weight had declined significantly, so at least his last memories of her are when she was a little bit more herself. Parkinson's is a terrible disease.

I wrapped up at my job a month ago but I had some savings which has gotten me through because TN unemployment is absolutely pitiful. And even better news, I signed an offer letter for a new job yesterday and it will come with an 11% pay raise over what I had been making, so all is not lost. I will say that my last job has been incredible - I was even outreached a month after being let go by the VP of Talent Acquisition offering to review my resume and help me with interview techniques. The people at that company really are some of the best.

Boyfriend and I passed our 2-year anniversary in November. It's kind of a big deal as it had been almost 20 years since my last relationship. I am hopeful for an engagement ring sometime soon, but (and I hate to say this) I don't feel solid it'll happen in the time frame I'd like, so I've been looking into apartments that are near the new job. If I don't move, I'm going to have at least an hour commute every day, possibly even an hour and a half each way. But I won't start looking until at least February/March. (Boyfriend and I do not believe in cohabitation before marriage.)

I haven't had a period since the end of July, so this is either peri- or full-on menopause. (Yes, I know I have to wait a full 12-months to be considered in full menopause.) It has come with not a lot of symptoms, but I have had some random joint pain (excruciating knee pain for about 6 weeks with no apparent reason for injury,) some mood issues, a few hot flashes. I did have a ghost period this month, which is an interesting experience. But I don't have a lot of complaints other than that.

My health could be a lot better, though. A couple of years ago I had lost about 60 pounds, and now I've gone and put it all back on and all the problems I had been experiencing have come back with it. I need to do a better job investing in myself and future. Hopefully having a job that has more structure in terms of location will be a help. (My last job had me working from home, from a hotel, and from the office depending on the week.) Routine is one thing that I know will help. Then I just have to find the will power.

If you've made it this far - wow! Thank you! Feel free to add your life updates (or not) in the comments. I have been sporadically getting onto Tumblr and lurking, but I'm sure I've missed a lot, too.

[politicallyestranged]

I know the hot button items are hard to ignore because they will impact either your own lives or those you know but I promise if we take care of 5 things you will see an impact.

1. Food - we need good food for our entire country. I dont care if they are jobless they need the same quality food.

2. Water - our drinking water needs to be filtered a different way and our country needs to invest in that for every single citizen. You will die without drinking water. If you do not have a populace then you do not have a country. You have no one to work for you.

3. Health insurance - theres many things we can do. A lot say we don't want to give it to the government because they will mess it up. Giving it back to the doctors wouldn't save the people from price gouging either. So we could make it a subscription thing. Different tiers covers different things and emergencies are covered by the taxes you pay to the government. If you don't have your health what life do you really have?

4. Taxes - refinanced all the way through. Stop with foreign aid. Thin the IRS by like 75% because its a set amount already calculated by what your job pays you. If you make 75,000 -125,000 then it is x% of that is already taken out and there is no other paperwork needed. Simple. You dont need to know every dollar in and out. You need to know what I made on the wages I exchange for social security. Anything else shouldn't matter. Vehicle taxes are a joke I shouldnt have to "register" my car every year you need to know how many vehicles I have that touch the road to know my contribution for upkeep you can mail me that. You can email me that. I can scan a QR code with my phone for direct payment. Quit playing. And for stolen purposes keep your paperwork on that vehicle until you sell it. The title would still work it just wouldnt go through the state it could be returned to the car makers. Who would probably turn it into a photo and a number identification for car and owner/owners that the police could scan from the owners device. Like its 2024 people! Or something else could be arranged to.

5. Economy - work = reward. We need a complete restructuring on currency. If you are working you should NOT have to ask the government for food. If you are raising your family there is no reason why it should take 2 people working all day everyday to pay for that household.

All of this is just thoughts on what I would do if I had the power to change things here in the US. These are the real core issues. Most of our other problems are rooted back to this. We should want all of our citizens to thrive and not just survive.

Once we took care of these things we could start to work on all the problems that resulted because of them. We aren't broken we have just grown. Our government isn't keeping up and I mean how could they when most of them should be enjoying time with their grandchildren at the lake. Our world has changed so much and they still want us to do things like its 1995.

Then everyone wonders why we feel so lost. We have outgrown our society construction. Its time to make major renevations but to better our country. Why would we not want better for ourselves, the people who live here with us, as well as whoever wants to peacefully visit our country?

[batmanschmatman]

Hello!! 1, 4, 10, 18, and 22 for the End of the Year ask game please 😊

ONE Song of the Year: My Spotify Wrapped claims for me it was the Placebo cover of Running Up That Hill, which is admittedly on almost every single one of my playlists, but I think it was actually Meet Me in the Woods by Lord Huron, because I listened to it a billion times while writing my NaNo project.

FOUR Movie of the Year: The Boy and the Heron, both because it was great and also it was the only good theater experience I had all year that wasn't a rerelease like Titanic and The Lion King lol, people at our home theater are very poorly behaved. ;;

TEN Something that Made You Cry This Year: LOL WELL I lost my job a couple weeks ago and that has been some VERY MIXED EMOTIONS including a lot of hysterical crying. It was an extremely toxic work place I was trying to get out of anyway (museum board full of old white men who hated me, boss is/was an alcoholic mean girl - no exaggeration, has driven home drunk from work lunches with her kid in the car and been blackout throwing up in her office after work events - who had a toady work bff who also hated me, no health insurance, making $26/hr despite having an MA and living somewhere where rents start at $2,000 a month) but my boss basically reamed me out right before Thanksgiving telling me I was the worst person ever, had a bunch of provably false claims about how bad an employee I was (never meeting deadlines, making other people do my work for me, never attending events or suggesting ideas for programs, all bullshit I had ample evidence to refute) and told me I could either quit now and be paid through February or be on like mega probation indefinitely, so I came back from the holiday like alright I quit, they're like cool actually this is a budgetary thing and not at all personal, we're SO SORRY this didn't work out also we can only afford to pay you through mid January, so now I'm unemployed applying to a million jobs and scared about money but also I'm free??? So there's been a lot of on and off weeping/grieving and it's kinda ruined the holidays for me lol. But also hopefully it'll pivot to a much better paying and stable job somewhere closer to home, so fingers crossed.

Don't get into the museum field, folks, it sucks here.

EIGHTEEN A Memorable Meal This Year: For Valentine's Day, @heystovepipeboys and I made a bunch of recipes from Last Dinner on the Titanic, which was SUPER FUN. I love historic cooking/baking and have had the cookbook forever, but had never made anything from it before and everything was INCREDIBLE. We made cream of barley soup, chicken Lyonnaise, chateau potatoes and asparagus, and then got eclairs from a bakery near us and the Harney & Sons Titanic tea blend, which is supposed to be similar to the special blend they served on the ship. We listened to period music the whole time we cooked and then we went to see Titanic in theaters for its anniversary rerelease.

TWENTY TWO Favorite Place You Visited This Year: hmmm very tough call. My parents very generously took the fam on a Disney cruise to Alaska this summer which was a childhood dream of mine, and wifey and I had an awesome trip to Old Sturbridge Village in MA for their Halloween event, which was probably the best Halloween themed thing I've ever done. They set up the museum with a bunch of themed performances by a bunch of traveling circus performers who are Definitely Not Vampires and everything was really spooky and fun. Would super recommend if anyone is looking for fun Halloween things to do in New England next year.

Thank you for the ask!! Hope you are enjoying a relaxing end to this weird year.

[danipedrosas-boatest]

Tw: mental health, depressive thoughts, rambles, rant

There’s a snowstorm right outside my apartment, and I haven’t been able to leave because it’s been nonstop snowing since last night. A lot of Colorado is covered in snow right now and we especially are here in the mountains. I have been left with my own thoughts and I can’t help but wonder what could’ve been.

I met with a therapist, one of the four I’ve seen this past two weeks, and he asked me if I had anything to live for and what I wanted to do with my life. I don’t really have anything. Everything I want to do is out of reach and won’t happen; I’m too ugly for anyone to ever love me, never mind getting married. I want to have kids but my mind is so fucked up they’ll end up sad like me too. I’m going to be mentally ill for the rest of my life and I honestly don’t know if I want to. I’m a history major who has lost all joy in studying because I’m going to have to make money off of something I love. I’m hopefully going to go to grad school but only because I’ve been told it’s the only way I’ll be able to get a job. I don’t want to do any of this.

He asked me, if I could turn back time, what I would want to be, and I said a race car driver. It wouldn’t matter what discipline it was in, I just wanted to drive fast cars. I had cars as a kid but I wasn’t really allowed to do anything else because they weren’t “feminine enough”. Even if I wanted to do something like karting or minimoto, I lived in too rural of an area and it cost too much money.

I am sitting here writing this and realizing just how little I have done with my life. Pedro Acosta and I were born on the exact same day in the exact same year yet I am calling my insurance company to see if they’ll pay for therapy in a different state and he’s a two time world champ racing in MotoGP. Gavi is a couple months younger than me and is already a star football player. Izan is two months younger than me and is a world champ. I look older for my age and people are surprised to learn I’m still a teenager, and I feel so insecure because I’m not supposed to look like this. I’m chicane yet I’m embarrassed whenever I speak Spanish because I’m not fully fluent and I feel like everyone is judging me.

I’m developmentally and socially behind my peers, the same age and younger than me. I can’t understand social cues, I mess up every relationship, I keep falling for people who I’ll never have, and I puke and starve to make myself feel better. I have no idea who I am and what I’m doing with my life.

So yeah, what snowdays do to a mfer.

[theatreslave]

Life Update

So I got fired today.

My entire life is in a spiral as I try to figure out what to do with my health insurance, debt, car payments, and finding a new job.

This came as a huge surprise and was devastating because I can truly say I loved that job and I thought the people there loved me.

4 years down the toilet and with no reason given.

Anyway,

I don't really know where I am emotionally. I'm definitely not great physically either.

So expect me to go through waves of interaction and just disappearing. I'm completely lost at the moment.

I have no will power to do anything. It took everything in me to apply for unemployment.

I honestly never thought I would leave that job so I'm heartbroken. But it just goes to show that the people you work with really aren't your friends.

I would love some words of encouragement if anyone wanted to spare some.

love,

@theatreslave/@namorslutfanfiction

[fahk]

middle finger to ...

I lost my state backed healthcare thanks to the luxury of making a little more than the state considers "poverty." Honestly, it was a long time coming but initially they laid off cutting people off due to covid. But now... that "covid is over"... it's time to cut the fat loose.

*eye roll*

In the State of Cali, where rent is above average batshit and gas is $5 a gallon, the state says $1,677 a month and below is poverty. And that's god damned right. That's the min you could get a shoebox to rent for and then there'd be literally nothing left for groceries, transit fuel, automobile upkeep.... or even a fucking car tbh, communication and internet, medication, sanitary care, job training, utilities, kids and/or pets, and the ever beloved avocado toast all the boomers love to complain about.

I now make enough for rent AND groceries so that means I don't deserve to take care of my health. And every boomer grinned in approval.

All jokes aside I am trying to find health insurance because I can't be off of it. I have hopefully benign tumors in my uterus from this past year. A currently benign titty tumor that needs monitoring. My heart is probably due for another halter monitor since covid fucked it up - and now there's a chance I'm borderline afib. Before, the cardiologist was like "It'S nO bIg DeAl. It'S jUsT PVCs." Except it's constant. And takes the wind out of my chest. So there's that. How is that jUsT pVcS? Then I have major inflammatory issues going on internally that require awful oscopy monitoring. In short, I have a combo of PTSD induced illnesses AND post-viral chronic syndrome and together these two umbrellas of hell are borderlining autoimmune illness x 3.

So no, I can't NOT have health insurance. Not an option. I'm just struggling and overwhelmed in picking something that isn't going to bankrupt me because every option is bat shit expensive, (just like rent), and then you get nothing for it. Just the "privelege" of having a $6,000 max. Like, what the fuck? At least I get a guaranteed roof over my head for the price of rent.

Can we set insurance execs homes on fire, please? And while we're at let's come for the hospital executives and greedy ass doctor's groups too. It's time for a great reset.

[chrissieshauntedbones]

This is not the slightest bit true.

Maybe for some corporate offices / corporate based retail chains & the like where you are just a number, then MAYBE this could be true... but in today's world, this doesn't seem to hold up, or, it at least hasn't been my experience.

I have worked in some form of management role between three different jobs over the course of 7 years prior to the car crash I had been in, back in 2023. When I had interviewed for each position prior to getting them, I had been my genuine and authentic self.

For context, I was an assistant manager, then was promoted to a store manager, and managed two different store locations for a retail CORPORATE store. I was, however, being underpaid, so I had requested a review and raise, and though my review went spectacularly, they could not offer me the pay I wanted, and I left to work in a Doctor's office. I got weekends off and had great health insurance, and the latest I would be home would be 7pm most nights vs 9pm, so it was a no brainer to leave.

When I worked in the Doctors office, I climbed the chain fast, and went from a front desk worker, to a site supervisor, before being promoted to the front desk manager for all SIX locations. A few months later COVID hit, and I lost a lot of my staff. I HAD to work, I couldn't afford to stay home... So, I got worn down real fast, and wound up butting heads with the practice admin. She was honestly awful. There was no way I could come to any sort of compromise with this woman, so, when I received a job offer from a friend, I left to work in a construction based field doing office work...

After 5 months in my most recent job i had been promoted to the office manager/service manager, then was relieved of the service manager position, but was given the sales manager title that way my skills could be better utilized.

In every role I applied for, I had been honest, polite, attentive, and I asked questions. I didn't try to pretend to be anything I wasnt, and wound up getting the jobs.

In these management positions, I was responsible for interviewing, hiring, and training new staff members, as well as doing my own job duties, which usually went hand in hand with whatever my team was responsible for.

In every field I had been working in, when I went to interview someone, depending on the role I was hiring for (receptionist, cashier, scheduler, customer service rep, etc) the criteria obviously changed slightly to fit the role, but overall, I looked for people who had experience with the position I was looking to fill, and I looked for people who could show an overall level of basic competency.

I also always looked for:

Empathy

Compassion

Kindness

Responsibility

A sense of humor!!!

The ability to work under pressure

The ability to work as a group or on their own

The ability to ask questions (you would not believe how often people are afraid to ask questions about all sorts of things in fear of being judged)

The ability to take constructive criticism as well as give constructive criticism

I actually called prior employers to confirm employment dates, and would just ask how they were overall. I never asked for specifics. Just how they were seen in their role, and if they had any issues that needed coaching, or caused write ups (it would not be held against the applicant, just so that way I could understand a separation from the previous job better).

I almost always hired people based off of their personalities, and their eagerness & willingness to work (as long as the experience was there).

I worked with my employees, and constantly trained, offered help and support, and did what I could for them.

I would always want someone to be honest with me at an interview, because spewing information at me isn't going to prove your ability to do a job or work with a team... It's just going to prove that you can read, which I suppose is important, but there are far more important qualities people have which make them valuable employees.

remember that interviews are not about giving a good and honest first impression that they'll carefully consider. interviews are about saying the special words and phrases they're looking for that give you points and when they tally those up whoever earned the most job points wins

[playgroundghosts]

Haven't been on Tumblr in a long time, update for my friends

Oooooooooooooof, the past year has been very traumatic for me but I might as well update people I guess. CW death (human and animal), trauma, family abuse, trust issues, etc?

In 2023, while I was living with my dad again, our home burned down. He unfortunately did not survive, "fortunately" Aki's own health was declining and I had to put her down months before it happened, although a friend moved in with us and her cat unfortunately didn't make it out. :'(

I'm still living with the same friend currently, and we adopted her cat's siblings (sister was already pregnant so now we have +3 kittens, so 5 cats, lol), legally my roommate's cats but I'm their uncle/grunkle figure, lol.

But yeah... my family's been absolute fucking shit, lmfao, my paternal grandpa (AKA my dad's dad) tried to scam me out of our home insurance money (contacted them while I was in the hospital with minor burns!!!) and he harassed me and tried to convince me to give him dad's car for free and shit, I even allowed him access to our shed (untouched by the fire) and he took shit that I asked him to take to my mom (my parents were divorced) and even changed the damn locks on the shed and cried that being near the burnt-up remains of our home was rough on him because he had COVID recently, fucking baby behavior when I LOST MY HOME, MY DAD, AND NEARLY EVERYTHING, FUCKING WOW???

Other relatives have been distant/don't reach out at "best", some of them have refused to help because "sorry, we don't have room" or pretend that they want to help but are conveniently always busy. I even had a memorial for my dad (which also included my younger brothers, who both died in unrelated accidents), I planned it weeks in advance to try to accommodate relatives that live out of state but barely anybody came fucking anyway. I asked my mom to do invites for her side of the family and she blatantly didn't invite anybody, and my dad's side of the family was being lazy as fuck too so I had to try to hunt down my dad and brothers' friends to try to invite. The only family that came was one of my uncle's brothers (who lived locally), my mom, and my little sister. At least plenty of my brothers' friends came, but I planned it for PEOPLE THAT AREN'T ME with not much help so thanks for flaking, everybody that didn't fucking come!

I'm very much done with my family except for my little sister, the rest of them are assholes that can go fuck themselves tbh.

I'm mostly back on my feet after months of having to wait for documents to be replaced, waiting for insurance stuff to be resolved because "scampa" (as my friends have been calling him) really delayed shit by trying to act like he was the point of contact when he wasn't even named in the policy or EVER a resident of our home, waiting for social workers only for them to repeatedly flake on me... I've gained some pretty bad trust issues after all this, ngl!

Our current home is a manufactured home that was meant to be a gift for my middle brother but when he died, scampa rented it out to some nasty hoarders that he knew and let it go to shit. He wanted $5k for it, after previously claiming that he'd give it to me for free, then upping it to $2k, to finally upping it to $5k. He acted like he would help clean and fix things up but when I found out about his insurance fuckery, he ghosted, fucking scam artist piece of shit. So I've been cleaning this nasty trailer, DIY fixing shit, and also tidying up the very-much-neglected-yard mostly by myself for the past year. (My roommate helps of course, but she works while I'm on disability so I'd rather not overwork her when she already has a "real" job, you know?)

Also been dealing with a lot of stress with therapy, lol... the psych place I was going to at the time of the fire was already kinda meh, the new psychiatrist there was constantly trying to convince me to go off more and more meds even after my fucking home burned down, so I tried switching to a new place. I tried the new place (Hegira in Michigan, fuck them) for about a month but it was impossible to reach my therapist, she cancelled our first appointment the day before and when I tried to reschedule after SHE cancelled, I was told (by office staff) that I'd have to wait a month, despite my trauma. I couldn't get in touch with her directly at all and my case manager even went on vacation and was also impossible to reach, it felt like bullshit. I asked if I could be reassigned to somebody else and they were difficult about it, and I'd constantly leave messages to different people and not get called back about it, and I had to repeatedly call the damn admission office because otherwise nothing got fucking done.

Finally found a different psych practice elsewhere, got a fancy PTSD diagnosis (yay...) and I was told that it sounds like I had PTSD from several incidents even before the fire (yay x2...), so I get to deal with the fun extra betrayal of "Hey wait, I asked several of my past psychiatrists if I could possibly have PTSD and they insisted on anxiety/depression!" :')

Now the Dump's been reelected and I've already been dealing with some anti-LGBTQ discrimination locally, lol. :') Yay, I love things getting worse!!!

I've been trying to reach out to the community a bit to not be a huge fucking shut-in, but I get randos in local Facebook groups calling me a groomer and shit, and group admins don't do shit despite this obviously breaking official group rules, yay. I tried reporting some people in one group (report to group admin, not report to Facebook) that claimed to have "no rules, but don't break Facebook TOS" and the (sole) group admin kicked me out for "trying to get the group in trouble" when... my guy... the people trying to get the group in trouble are literally the people accusing me of gross NSFW at playgrounds that you clearly want to fucking defend since you won't punish them, wtf? I even tried messaging the guy because hey, you'll boot me but not these people saying nasty shit? One other member even said that one guy who loved harassing me was saying nasty shit about his daughter so he blocked the loser. My message were completely ignored, doesn't even have the "NAME read this" thing at the bottom. Well, fuck you too, obvious MAGAt loser.

At least being a cat uncle (or grunkle, to the kittens) has been chaotic but in a good/fun way, we were gonna adopt the kittens out but we got too attached, lol. My roommate (trans woman) favors the 2 girl kittens and I (trans man) favor the 1 boy kitten, and he seems to favor me too, maybe because his sisters prefer their "grandma hooman" so he knows he can hog me, lol. My roommate's a few years older than I am (32 :'( ) so we joke that she's a hag since she's a 35 year old cat-grandma.

But yeah... not taking anybody's bullshit anymore, no more patience for that shit. Most of my family is MAGA scum anyway, can't claim that you're a good Christian when you ignore your homeless relative around Christmas (last year), fucking losers, lol. "We don't have room :'(" Bruh, I ran out of my fucking burning home with the clothes on my fucking back (plus my phone to call 911 and my glasses), way to fucking lie. The only thing that I could really salvage from inside our home was fortunately Aki's urn, I chose a metal (tin?) one so it was charred to shit and some of her cremains spilled out, but having at least some of her cremains is better than nothing. Everything else? My dad's car, the few things in it, and stuff that was in the shed. There wasn't much left outside but plenty was fire-damaged anyway, like the lids on our trash cans melted into the body of the cans since they were right outside the trailer.

And even with little that I DID have left, it's so fucking scummy that my scampa tried to beg for my dad's car (FOR FREE!!!) and try to get the insurance check, what the FUCK!!! Not only that but we were underinsured because dad hadn't updated the policy in years, so I got like $40k ($30k for cost of our trailer, $10k for property) and plenty of the money had to go toward cremating my dad, demolishing the old trailer, fixing this current hunk of junk up, etc so it's not like I'm suddenly rich now. Good to know that I'm worth scamming after the most traumatic time of my life, scampa! According to the insurance adjuster, our old trailer was worth more like $60k or $70k with all the modifications that my dad had made, like solar panels, a wood stove, etc.

Fortunately some local people donated clothes, kitchen stuff, etc for our "new" home, and we did a GFM to hold us over until I could get the insurance money (thanks a fucking lot for the delays, scampa!), although I feel a bit cross about certain people offering to help with things and then flaking hard.

It's also been really difficult cleaning and fixing this place up, like we were absolutely infested with ants when it got warmer in the summer and I hired a pest control guy after store-bought stuff, diatomaceous earth, etc weren't doing the job, his pesticides didn't do shit, lmfao. So I had to spend even more money to buy some stuff from online. Scampa didn't tell us that we had fruit trees outside and his gross tenants probably just ignored them with how nasty it was when we moved in. I had to yell at scampa to clean the damn fridge because it was full of moldy food. Like BRUH!!!

Also had plenty of shit break on us... like the washer/dryer that were here, so I used some of the insurance money to replace them. And certain things that I hired a handyman for, and he ripped us off by offering to come over on the weekend, not disclosing that he had a "time and a half" fee for the weekend, and then took fucking days to bring a receipt over which said why it was so fucking expensive. And our furnace stopped working recently so we had to get it repaired, even though we called a different company to inspect it months ago and he said it was fine, when this recent company said that it was poorly hooked up so it likely overheated and killed the motor.

I also tried to hire a family friend (friend of a brother) to do yardwork, paid him $100 upfront, we agreed on what would be done, and then he did partial work and said he was "done" and that I should "let him know if I have more work to be done" as if the yard wasn't covered in branches and weeds and shit. So I've been doing yard work myself every week or 2 (depending on how fatigued I am) to manage the trees (we have 10+) and other yard plants, I paid a different guy (way more reliable) to mow our grass while I was clearing the yard, until I could start mowing it myself to save money.

I've lost count at this point but I've filled over 20 fucking yard waste bags full of branches/sticks, plenty of which were already on the fucking ground before I started trimming the branches because they were out of control, and that's not even counting the actual garbage (non-yard waste) that I bagged up! Doesn't include all the clutter (mostly fucking trash) that was in the shed either! Took fucking months of doing "Tetris" with the trash can to get rid of OUR weekly trash plus the clutter left here, because we were already ripped off for the cost of the trailer, like we wanted to pay extra to have somebody haul junk out of here. Fortunately some of the clutter was salvagable so I left the not-obvious-garbage at the curb for randos to take.

Nosy friends are free to ask me for burnt home pics (RIP :'( ) or current trailer/yard cleaning progress pics, but I'd rather not post them publicly, I'm sure y'all understand. :')

Sorry for the rambling, it's... a lot, hahah, and I ramble anyway.

I was hoping to finally start T soon but I'm feeling hesitant with a possible Orange Man presidency on the horizon... With all the shit that I've already dealt with, I almost feel like I need to be more defensive and tell more people (in real life) to eat shit, fuck off, etc when they give me dirty looks or say rude shit tbh. Not like the people accusing me of grooming kids get fucking punished at all...

[purple-hel]

FML

It's been a really shitty year.

I lost my job in August and have gotten exactly ONE recruiter call since then, and no actual interviews. My uncle was helping me with rent, but he had to retire because his mind is slipping (which was a conversation I had to have with him because apparently his manager, an old friend of his, wasn't allowed to, so got ahold of me for the 'he's gotta retire or hes going to get fired and lose his pension and health insurance' convo.) So my uncle can't help me anymore cos there's a big gap between his last paycheck and his first pension payment, and even if he could help my lease is up end of july and the complex wants to raise my rent by like $400, which is somehow fucking legal.

And I have nowhere I can move, because I have 5 cats (plus another I should really take with me if I leave), only two of which will tolerate other people, the other 3 will only tolerate me (plus the 6th is mostly feral and won't even really tolerate me, but she's been SLOWLY warming up to me and two of mine are her clowder and I don't want to leave her all alone, so I need to be able to isolate her from all but 2 of mine if I leave and take her with me). So I'm going to be homeless I guess? With 5 cats? and no car? Which doesn't sound like something worth fighting to survive when I'm 42 and have absolutely no hope of things getting better.

I had planned to move into my mom's empty house, but that requires like $1000 for a dumpster to reach a marginally livable state (and I mean MARGINALLY) and me having the ability to GET THERE and clean. And I don't have $1000 OR the ability to get there, cos my car died; doubly so in fact, originally it was what I am pretty sure is a brake assembly issue, but when I went to start it yesterday to keep the battery from running down it wouldn't start at all, and not in a dead battery way but in a check engine way.

And then on top of all that, my uncle's neighbor has been seriously overstepping, pushing my uncle to do things like hire a CPA and hire people to clean out the house, which would be fine, except my uncle always loses paperwork, and the neighbor refuses to give contact info for any of the people, so now everything I had stored in my bedroom at my uncle's to keep it safe is probably gone forever-photos. prom dress. a summer camp tee shirt a bunch of friends signed. stuffed animals given to me by various people, including my father. And my uncle lost the paperwork from the CPA, told the CPA to send me a copy of the paperwork, and the CPA, a friend of the neighbor, is refusing, so there's a power of attorney that none of us know what actually covers, isn't that great?!

On the plus side my uncle is good with the idea of a conservatorship, so we just need to get that in place.

plus the 'the world is on fire and death cult capitalism sees no profit in saving it and the rapturists want the world to burn' shit we're all dealing with, and I am hard pressed to remember why I should keep breathing other than my cats.

Oh, yeah, plus fucking health bullshit. I'm now on the prescription anorexia shot (ozempic) which is (un)fortunately actually doing good things for my blood sugar, so I just have to deal with ozempic no appetite on top of ADHD no appetite. Except the past few weeks I've been so stressed the ozempic doesn't seem to be doing anything (or if this is my sugars WITH ozempic fucking gods I don't want to know what they'd be without it.) But not eating enough (a good day I can manage about 1000 calories across the day, which I try to weight towards protein) means not sleeping enough, which is NOT helping the stress levels, which means more cortisol ruining everything….

[sassypotatoe1]

This will be long and it won't look relevant most of the time, but bear with me please because the exhaustion and annoyance and inconvenience you'll feel reading it will give you a good idea of just a fraction of the exhaustion and annoyance and inconvenience homeless people feel.

Look I'm autistic and adhd and queer and chronically ill and physically disabled and a little bit clinically insane and I'm pretty often on the brink of fucking up my life and ending up homeless and unemployed. I have to be 6 times more responsible and 6 times smarter about my money and what I do than anyone I've met so far. I have to live with bigoted and abusive parents because I can't afford housing and food, nevermind housing and food and medical care.

I'm saving every bit of money I can put aside so I can have a big enough deposit, to reduce the amount I would have to get through a loan, to be able to get food and meds after my monthly down-payment on the smallest and most run-down apartment in two entire towns. There's one, and no one is buying it because the entire thing is the size of a small hospital room, and the linoleum tiles are peeling off and the kitchen cabinets are rotten because the boiler is housed above them and probably sprung a leak at some point.

One decrepit apartment available in two entire towns that I can't even afford yet because I don't have a big enough deposit. And I refuse to rent because that would come out to be about 3 times the monthly down-payment on this one rotting apartment and around 70% of my income. I've checked. I've been checking for years. All over the country.

It would be more sustainable and cheaper to put my furniture in self-storage and pay the daily fee for a bed, shower and food at the homeless shelter. I'm lucky, I have psychiatric medication that makes me stable and helps me regulate my emotions, and I spent my entire 4 years at university going to the free on-campus psychologist weekly to build good coping mechanisms that still fail me frequently.

If I end up unemployed? I couldn't get my psychiatric medication without a process I would not have the funding or capacity or ability to go through, just so it would be covered by the state. I wouldn't qualify for unemployment insurance because my current job doesn't do that, even though it's illegal, and without a school-going child, a formal diagnosis for my disabilities that my psychiatrist refuses to give, or being over the age of 55, I don't qualify for any sort of social grant. Even if I did, it's 2k a month, which is around a third of any sort of rent anywhere in the country. What about food? My medication? Gas to get to the state hospital?

If I'm outed to my parents and they kick me out or the abuse ramps up and I'm in active mortal danger because I decided to speak up against their bigoted bullshit views? My car is still in their ownership, and I can't get my fucking horn fixed, which means I can't put the thing through the roadworthiness test to put it in my name. So I have to bite my tongue and hide myself until I get the car in my name so I can actually get around. But what about gas? If I become unemployed I definitely won't be able to afford gas. Nevermind housing, nevermind food, nevermind medication.

The constant fear of becoming homeless and untreated and unfed and unemployed in a climate where every company complains that no one wants to work but no company is actually hiring anyone that does is what keeps me in line, very much to the detriment of not only my mental health, but my physical health as well. Did you know too much cortisol in your system can cause brain damage? Gi issues, a weakened immune system, joint pain, heart problems? I already have a mitral valve prolapse imagine what the constant stress is doing to it. Imagine what would happen if I lose access to my heart medication.

Now that you've read all that, if I lost my mind just a bit, quit my job, outed myself to my parents and ended up homeless without a car and without medication because the fucking stress of it all pushed me over the edge, would you still hold it against me even though it ended up being my own actions and irresponsibility that landed me in a position I can't escape from?

Would you be okay if you had all this pressure, all this responsibility, all this terror constantly on your shoulders literally physically making you sicker? You wouldn't. A baggie of drugs that will help you cope with the everything of it all for a couple of hours is 5 times cheaper than a bed and meal at the homeless shelter. When you have nothing, little food, no access to any sort of supportive services without having to pay for it with money that you do not have, and your health is shit, and you're queer and disabled, begging on the street corner is a higher priority than the boil on your arm because you can't wash yourself in the gas station bathroom now that they keep it locked.

You'll steal too if you just want some fucking food and money to spend on a second hand jacket at the church second hand clothing sale, if the church doesn't chase you away at the door. You'll assault someone for taking your shit too if you have so little shit to speak of. You'll take a shit on the fire station's front steps too if they spray you down with a water canon while you're sleeping in winter because you smell and you "look bad".

You'll smash and grab people too if they cuss you out for "not just getting a job" when you require an address, access to high speed internet, a registered bank account and need to look good and be clean to be let in the door for your interview.

Even if a homeless person is the epitome of a shitty person, there is always a fucking reason, and if you think something a homeless person does is morally reprehensible when they're doing it to survive, then you've got some skewed morals. Because someone being homeless without anyone helping them get off the streets? Not a single person? That's the truly morally reprehensible thing.

And yes it's technically not your responsibility to help them, or to care, and yes it's incredibly difficult helping most homeless people become housed and employed, especially if they're addicted to drugs, and yes they steal and break things and assault each other and get in fights with the cops because they burned their leaky tent and all their belongings, and yes they're rude! You would be too in those circumstances! And yes they sometimes seem like they don't want to be helped, because they're hopeless, they don't know how they would ever get into a better standard of living.

Many of them went through rehab, went through programs to get them employed, went through trouble to get housing, and it all fell apart anyway because helping them on the first step and expecting them to be able to build a life from rubble on their own with minimum wage after that is not effective. And no one is willing to go through the next few steps, through helping them acquire furniture, teaching them how to budget, file taxes, apply for a loan, through getting them in therapy and on meds to help deal with the issues that caused addiction to substances in the first place.

And many homeless people have said it, and I work very closely with organizations in town thar deal with the homeless as a community journalist, and I talk to them a lot and they all say the same to me, but if you want to help a homeless person, give. Them. Fucking. Money. There are 70 feeding schemes in a town of 70 000, with a low-ball estimate of 500 homeless people. The community policing forum wants the feeding schemes to close up shop because they believe that the homeless population is too well-fed, leaving more money for drugs. We're a poor town, and we can manage to feed more than 500 people every day of the week for the whole year with less than 1% of the town donating to these feeding schemes. They don't need food from you as an individual. They need money for clothes. They need money for shelters. They need money for a shower and access to employment assistance. They need money for transport to clinics, to the library, to the stores or churches for work-appropriate clothes. Yes, they'll use money on drugs, but if they get enough money they'll be able to secure housing, food, clothes, internet access, a job, a steady income, healthcare, their own transport.

So give homeless people money, what they do with it is none of your business, and advocate with local government or national government if you can for universal basic income. Some or other American city recently ran an experiment with ubi, most of their homeless people secured housing, more than half secured a job, and it cost the city less to give them ubi than it would to subsidize shelters, feeding schemes and rehabs.

So anyway no person deserves to be homeless everyone deserves ubi fuck capitalism have empathy and compassion for homeless people even when they commit crimes even if they ended up in that position due to their own actions and give them money.

i really really hate liberals who do volunteering for orgs that help the homeless and then write thinkpieces about how a lot of homeless people are very educated and hardworking and its not at all their fault that theyre unhoused like. even if ur hypothetical homeless person is addicted to every drug abused their whoever commited many crimes and their situation is every bit their fault. no one deserves to live on the street.

[cursed-umbry]

I've finally figured out whether or not I'd been doing the right thing or not. I haven't been, but I have the opportunity to start redeeming myself. Such opportunities in life are rare, and I'll try to make the most of it.

That's the short version. The long version is... complicated, as tends to happen with relationships between romantic partners or between relatives. The people involved other than myself are my mom, my dad, and my girlfriend. For further context, my girlfriend is MTF transgender, and she suffers from many of the mental health problems that can occur for trans individuals.

I live in Florida with my girlfriend currently, while Mom lives in Virginia (where I was born and have spent the majority of the 30 years I've been alive), and Dad, whose field of work is very specialized and thus he goes where the work is, is in Oklahoma.

My girlfriend lived in Florida before we ever had a romantic relationship and we were friends on Discord for years before we got together. She divorced from her wife to be with me after they'd fallen out of love, and I did my best to step up and support her long-distance while she was alone. Her bills would fall behind when she only had one income after the divorce, so I'd CashApp her. I helped her find a used car before the divorce was finalized because the one she was always driving belonged to her ex. Even made it to Florida for a four-day visit at one point. Eventually, I got the money put aside and took some time off, and I moved her in with my mom and me at the rental house we were in. Rent and utilities were supposed to be split, two-thirds for us and one-third for Mom.

We did okay living together, but Virginia took its toll on my girlfriend's mental health. She used to live with her dad some years ago until bone marrow cancer resulted in his death when she was 25. However, he was also the parent who made her feel like she couldn't come out as trans safely. She has mixed feelings about him sometimes, but ultimately, she knows he raised her and acknowledges his importance for her being who she is. All this to say that because the part of Virginia we moved into was where she lost her dad, she was more prone to being not okay when she was in that area due to the memories tied to many of its landmarks. Eventually, she outed herself to a manager at her job (on the premise that maybe that manager would keep it between them and not share that information with the rest of the management team) to explain her depression episodes, but that manager told the whole management team anyway. She felt she could no longer be safe at that job, so she quit.

After that, it was very hard for her to have a steady income. I make alright money, but paying all of her bills on my own wasn't going to be possible. She did Uber the rest of the time we were in Virginia, but rarely did she do enough Uber. Like, we would need for me to do Uber too since my job was three 13-hour shifts and I had four off days, my goal would be to make $300 on my Uber days while she shot for $600, but most weeks we came away with $450-600 put together. As we kept falling short, I would prioritize our car bills, our car insurance, her medical insurance, her medications, our storage unit bill, and her phone bill over our rent and our utilities (including my phone bill) since those two bills were jointly shared with my mom who makes a lot more money than me but who is also paying off a lot more debt than me. I kept telling Mom I'd pay her back. I knew what I was doing was unfair to her, but ultimately, we fell probably about $4100 short of rent and utilities over the course of six or seven months. While this was going on, we declared our intention to move to Florida so we could move in with my girlfriend's mom, so my mom was house hunting. Her intention was to use her retirement money to buy a property outright because her credit would no longer support a mortgage, but as my girlfriend and I fell further behind, that was eating into my mom's already limited house budget. She told me it had real effects for her trying to make offers.

I borrowed from my dad to fund the move to Florida. So now we sit $4000 in debt to my dad and about $4100 in debt to my mom, with the added wrinkle that Mom feels like I used her and trampled over her to get my girlfriend and me to Florida, but I try to defend that with the argument that there was a very real possibility my girlfriend would harm herself the longer we stayed in Virginia. Mom also has a lot of belongings to downsize, and I left all of that to her when I left, even though she's not so physically able anymore. She asked me to promise I'd come back to VA as soon as I could after moving to help her with the stuff at the rental so that she could move. She's bought a condo, so now she's paying to be at two properties at once, and she's stretched very thin.

I'm about to change jobs in Florida with a 50% pay jump. I'm interviewing today for this new job. If I had not found this new job and was thus going to stay at my current one, I was planning to use PTO to take a day off so that I could come back to VA for a few days and help Mom. Depending on whether or not I get hired, I might instead work the visit to Virginia into the gap between resigning from one job and starting the other. I view this visit to Virginia as an opportunity to redeem myself for taking advantage of Mom before we moved out. However, due to our dog, my girlfriend cannot go with me. It's the first time we might be apart since we moved in together. She's not taking it very well because I am her main support system.

She and I had a big conversation about this last night before bed to figure out all the emotions involved from both ends. I've been distant for a while since we got here, and I've been less attentive to my girlfriend than I should have ever let myself be. I believe that guilt for my actions in Virginia weighs on me, so if I can relieve that weight by helping that situation, I'll be able to be a better partner again. She is upset that I'm leaving her because I did at one point promise I'd never leave her behind again (after my four-day visit before she moved in with me), she's angry at my mom for not dealing with her stuff sooner, and she's scared of how she'll feel watching me drive off without her.

With all that said, I swore to her I'd come back more focused. I want to make the most of the help I can give my mom when I go back home so that this pain isn't holding me back or distracting me anymore. I love my girlfriend, but I love my mom too. I want to make things right for everyone involved.

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Spent a while today looking into more pain management options. I’ve definitely been doing better but cannabis costs a lot and the only formulation I can take and afford only kind of dulls the edge of it. Which is a lot, considering nothing has worked for me in years! But I feel like this could be better.

Mentions of needles and other medical stuff past the read more.

At a recent appointment I was advised to look into ketamine, which unsurprisingly isn’t covered by insurance (again) and there aren’t that many practices within a reasonable distance who do it at all. I had a brief discussion with someone in the health field who strongly implied that it’s possible to get ketamine infusions covered if your provider is willing to go to bat. So I decided today to send out some emails and see what I can fish up. I am not feeling particularly hopeful about this endeavor, but I suppose the worst they can say is no.

It was more emotionally taxing than I expected to sort through websites for pain management offices, because they basically just. Do injections now. Which I tried before, and wasn’t helped by noticeably. I’m kind of horrified by how villainized pain meds have become. I would love a fix to my underlying problems, but they’re genetic, so the best I can manage is dealing with the symptoms. Which so far has been a lot of things without a lot of results - PT, pool exercise, injections, off-label meds, and so on. A pharmaceutical solution would make sense in this instance, but there just isn’t one.

I just feel kinda lost. Like if I can’t get my pain managed better, and failing that I can’t get some form of disability assistance (which feels iffy even though I’m over here being visibly disabled) what on earth am I gonna do with my life? I have a lawyer for the disability stuff, thankfully, but the process could not be more nerve wracking. Or slow. I am terrified all the time about surviving. I mean, we are, for now, mostly thanks to the generosity of family, friends, and strangers. I feel lucky to have them, and guilty, and ashamed, and angry that the systems meant to pick up this slack just purposefully don’t work so other people have to do it instead.

Worrying about all of this makes me feel like the inside of my head is just full-chest screaming all the time. I want to yell forever and help is not coming and it feels very very bad. What is the point of struggling to find out what’s wrong with me, so I can understand why it’s impossible to work a normal job and why I can’t function, if ultimately someone can just decide yeah nah you don’t need help?

I just wanna draw my silly little pictures and sometimes participate in life with less pain. I want to have more energy so the day actually feels like a day. I want to work like I used to. I want to just jump in the car and drive and drive till I’m properly in the middle of nothing and scream until my throat hurts.

Ugh.