Help a Black, Trans Woman Poet Return to Security

Hey y’all — Updates —

   Not long ago I was the victim of a vicious assault. I had to pick me up, crying “They attacked me again.” My head was split open (I needed sutures) and left for red (I needed stitches) and open (I needed staples). Please help me to get out of New Orleans and to a REAL city (Los Angeles or New York City) as quick as I can. I need to be where it’s safe to be all of me: black, queer and a trans woman.     

    On top of this, I’m living in an unstable dysfunction with a mother, tho I care for her, cares on a short leash. These videos (after the photo) give evidence. 

Hey y’all — the Video —

Hey y’all — the Short —

The immediate ask for me: 10k+ Debts, Psychiatric Bills (transitioning), Storage

(moving out of transphobic home).

The long-term ask for me: 15k to secure my own Housing & Daily Living, but busing services for pet cat, Trouble

Hey, y’all — the Narrative —

Trouble

It’s the poet, Rickey Laurentiis, whose last few years have seen incredible odds. I’ve got to get me and my pet, Trouble, out of this transphobic environment as quick as possible, lest my own mother manipulate the facts and reality (as narcissists do) to lead me back to the psych ward or worse, with the help of the police! But If we’ve been friends for long, you know I’ve come to ask you for help before.

My life these the last few years, since transitioning to a black trans woman, has been a series of crises, one after another. These have come as a series of blows, both financial and psychological, and have culminated in brute violence met upon my person, the reason I maintain a preliminary diagnostics with chronic PTSD.

Violence

We just in this world don’t know how to treat each other right! Even my mother’s returned the swing to me, and has labeled me in the eyes of friends and family as a brute. And these brute allegations and that violence came at a cost—losing work (wage), losing security (storage), & literally losing my mind (medical).

Literally, all of 2023 saw me in a tour of some four, now five, psych wards! As late as March 2nd, 2024 my mother called the paramedics on me — because it’s the only thing she knows to do, once shes’s escalated the extreme, highest levels!

And I wonder, this can all happen to me, a poet with graduate education, then what about the next black trans girl without even knowledge of this — GoFundMe?

More pain

Here is where I repeat myself. Thru the greater part of 2022-2023 and even for a spell this year, I’ve been managing increasingly frequent psychiatric episodes, leaving me unable to work. Instead I was locked, detained from my own management, and placed in cold, lifeless facilities where my very gender, if not dignity, was always the butt of a joke; I was demeaned, degraded & hardly given true help. Do you know what that’s like? But I landed there due in part to gaslighting from my family, who refuse to take the her trans daughter seriously, to accept she may be right about her life, to accept they’ve abandoned her now and times before, or even to facilitate necessary conversations between herself and the rest of her family.

For all of this, I have slipped partially from my mind, thrown to psychiatrist’s plastic care, and had to myself yank my mind back. I was was at a times catatonic -depressive some days, couldn’t literally or forgot how to speak or chew; other days all I could do was pace, manic, the floors. And even thru this my family’s given only superficial help; tho I am forced to love them, their transphobia is the reason I keep nearly cracking up—given again my mother called the cops on me each of those five times, restarting my process. It’s as if I have no mother, I have…

excerpt

And I have accrued tremendous trauma, from physical, emotional and psychological pain.

More Violence

Above, you can see what they would have beat me to, a person with Chronic Post-Traumatic syndromes: and who hires that? And for all those hospital trips, for all that lack of wage, I’ve accrued bills, & bills cost money. I have no where, yet, to go.

Our Shed

All this time, I’ve had “all my stuff” — that is, all my earthly goods, my apartment furniture, my BOOKS, etc, just my life, y’all — stuck in storage, as my debt collected. And it’s time to go. Tho all that time I’ve been at least thankful to sleep under my family broke roof — but look at the condition of it, a relic since Ida!

A patch job on the roof

So, this GoFundMe is, in part, towards help by my family stay dry, but helping me get out. I’ve accrued all this debt, medical and other, that has only steadily risen even as Ive tried managing it, & all of this to a nearly insurmountable tune of $15k or more. Now I need your help.

Our Shed, Contd

Because there’s no way for me to begin to pay all this back while unemployed — yet working. And I’ve asked my family for four years to help me build or locate more appropriate storage for my things, and they’ve each time ignored my request. They don’t think me worthy of my stuff, they barely wanted to be around me. I am constantly the blame for all problems; I’m constantly “crazy,” my own brother left my eye bloodshot — but the problem is I heal.

And I write. Did I mention I write? And I have worked towards at least that. Those who donate will have a smile in my heart, a public thank you and, of course, the soonest chance at pre-ordering my book. And perhaps a dedicated poem? Please donate! Anything is appreciated.

I am black & trans & a woman—the trifecta of a certain kind of agony but also a certain form of glory. I deserve more than a decent, but a life in which I thrive! Please help me get there!

Cheers, graces and God bless!

Rickey Laurentiis