Help May and Bear God Stay Housed

Hi everyone,

It’s tough to write a post like this again. Those who have followed me for years already know a lot about my story. I’m an author and freelance editor, with my first publication having come out in 2019. This is also around the time I began making mutual aid requests to help with costs of living. I’ve been really lucky to receive a lot of help from many supporters—including friends, other authors and peers in publishing, and members of the local and extended trans communities. I’ve had to largely rely on this support to stay housed and fed.

In 2020, I moved in with my partner, who I nickname “bear god” online to protect their privacy. This year involved a string of sudden crises for the two of us—highlights include two car accidents, surgery and physical therapy for me, and being forced out of our home without warning. I asked for a lot of help that year, and my community really came through for me.

These problems continued into 2021. I suffer from multiple disabilities—autism, ADHD, OCD, cyclical depression, and complex PTSD from childhood. All of these can easily impair my day-to-day functioning during the best of times. These were not the best of times. Bear god deals with similar disabilities. This, the pandemic, and our crises had already severely strained their search for steady work after recently graduating from college. We both struggled to find our feet again after being forced out of our home, only to soon find the home we’d moved into was not safe to continue staying in.

Autumn of that year saw us scrambling for a more tenable living situation before finally winding up homeless for several months. We thankfully were able to pay for an extended stay hotel room to keep a roof over our heads and search for a solution, in large part because of the aid we continued to receive from helpful friends and generous supporters.

Before summer arrived in 2022, we connected with a local trans woman friend of mine who happened to have a room for rent. We gladly took the opportunity, and just in the nick of time, because we were bleeding money and still limping from the upheaval of the past years.

For a while, we seemed to have finally gotten to shore. Our friend’s home has been the safest and most peaceful place either of us have lived for years. However, difficulties with earnings and finances haven’t let up. My partner continues to face barriers finding stable work, and my freelance business suffered greatly during the years we struggled with housing.

Now we have a new problem. The friend who houses us has run into financial crises of her own, including unemployment and debt, made increasingly severe by systemic transphobia and transmisogyny. She secured this house to help board trans locals who otherwise lack safe quarter. That definitely describes me and bear god, and the trans friends we live with—but enough waves have hit us and our friends that the housing situation we share is falling apart. In short, we all have to abandon ship.

This puts me and bear god once more into the position of trying to build a life raft out of resources we don’t have. We have a little time, but we’re not sure how much. This brings me to why I’m making this call for aid. I’m staring down the next few months and am honestly not sure if I bear god and I have what we need to get to shore a second time.

The goal I’m asking for help filling is meant to cover a few things. One is rent. We likely have a number of months remaining before we absolutely have to move. However, rent is going to be much higher than before, in large part because the friend housing us is no longer able to tank any of the costs like she had been. And frankly, I’m not sure where the money is going to come from. Business has been improving for me, but not enough to give me what I need to adjust.

Another is that we’ll need anywhere from several hundred to a couple thousand dollars to pay for a deposit on a new rental.

On top of this, we’ve had many problems with vehicles since 2020. Multiple accidents, replacements, and repairs have taken more than we were able to manage without mutual aid. Our current vehicle seems to be working for now, but it’s been touch and go as to how long that’s likely to last, and bear god relies on a vehicle to be able to work.

There’s another complicating factor. Much of 2022 was a blur for me. I was able to make money that year, enough to help with living costs once we finally became housed. It was enough that, due to our bleeding money and errors in my own bookkeeping, I owe something like $5,000 in back taxes. Thinking of how I’m going to cover that floods me with panic.

I’m asking for help with this because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to face all of this at once, while still doggy-paddling from the damage of the past few years. I needed so much help during those years. I’m immensely grateful for all my supporters have done for me and bear god, and it feels absolutely gutting to be back in a situation like this, asking for even more. I’m scared in a way I haven’t been since we were homeless—this exact crisis is what I’ve been bracing for ever since. I feel like maybe I’ll always be bracing for it, again and again, until the next crisis is our last, with no safe shore on the other side.

I look back at 2023 and still feel capable of hope. Despite everything, 2023 was one of the best years of my life. Many of my long-time followers know that I’ve struggled for decades with getting gender transition care. I was finally able to start in spring of 2023, and it’s improved my mental health so radically that it feels like magic. I’ve also had the chance to engage in intensive therapy for the injury of my complex PTSD, which was seriously compounded by our housing instability.

I want to live. I want that with a strength I haven’t felt for perhaps my entire adult life up until now. I’ve had a taste of what a safe, stable life might feel like. I have a vision in my heart of what life could be if we can make it through the storm again, possibly to a haven finally capable of enduring the waves. You all have been the miracle I never expected but always hoped for. It feels vain to ask, but I hope there’s another miracle left for us out there.

Thank you for reading, for whatever aid you can give, and thank you for caring. It quite literally means the world to me.