Please Help My Family Stay Housed

My name is Sean Padilla; I'm the musical director of the Cocker Spaniels and the sole proprietor of Happy Nomad Booking. The drawing is a portrait that my six-year-old middle child drew of (most) of our family.

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read and/or share this GoFundMe. I’ve wrestled with launching it for weeks, if not months. Although this isn’t an unfamiliar position for me and my family, I’m in a very different situation than I was the last time I launched a GFM to save our housing.

My mental and physical health have collapsed under the weight of working two full-time jobs to support five people, while simultaneously being abused at home and online. For the last two years, I’ve been dealing with three crises that are inextricable from each other:

When @stopthebegging first made its presence known to us, I was about to start a job that paid significantly more than my previous one, and EAP was making major financial strides as a social media influencer. We were reaching the point where we could fully support ourselves and our children without anyone else’s help. However, it wasn’t enough for the people behind @stopthebegging to say, “Hey, give the crowdfunding a rest.” They had to also hack EAP’s website and social media over 50x, after which EAP no longer felt safe being an influencer. I had to return to freelance booking work for touring musicians to offset the loss of income, even though I felt (and still feel) that live music is a public health risk during an ongoing pandemic.

I’ve since had more jobs over the last two years than I did during the previous decade. I’ve either lost or left three jobs partially because of the time I had to take off to tend to our children while EAP was unwell. It’s difficult to be an AMAB person who prioritizes their family’s well-being in corporate environments, because men are expected to ignore their families’ suffering for the sake of the bottom line. I’ve told previous bosses, “It’s not ‘babysitting’ when you’re watching your own child,” and “I don’t want to bond with you about how annoyed you are with your wife.”

Meanwhile, @stopthebegging’s harassment continued. I have various screenshots and screen recordings detailing the IG account’s unhinged attacks and accusations, including insulting my and EAP’s creative endeavors; accusing us of faking our middle child’s literacy; accusing me of cheating on my ex with EAP; accusing EAP of cheating on me; and so on and so forth. (It should go without saying that none of this is true.) I now suspect that the people behind the account are part of an online community through which EAP and I first met. We left that community 11 years ago because of its increasing toxicity; the founders of said community are also responsible for a notorious celebrity gossip site. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them designated themselves as our paparazzi, then campaigned to “expose” us, as if we’re trifling celebrities with skeletons in our closets.

As I alternated between joblessness and overwork, in a country where healthcare is unfairly connected to employment, my family couldn’t maintain health insurance long enough for us to get the medical and therapeutic care we desperately need. Although I’ve lived in Charlotte for nine years, I haven’t developed a real social life, let alone any close friendships. I have one relative in Charlotte, whose help EAP has consistently refused. The combination of intermittent healthcare and general isolation has hurt us as a unit. It is often said that “it takes a village to raise a child”; EAP and I have three children but no village.

This is the most difficult part of the situation for me to admit: EAP has spent the last two years relentlessly instigating arguments that make me feel as if they’re pouring water on me while I drown. They simultaneously blame me for @stopthebegging’s existence and accuse me of prioritizing my jobs over my family. How do I avoid crowd-funding, though, if I can’t work? I’ve lost so much time that I could’ve spent making money through other means because I was trapped in circular arguments that never ended. My booking work, which I usually reserve for evenings and weekends, has especially suffered because of this.

On Father’s Day weekend, three days before I started my current day job, I had a nervous breakdown from feeling like I was simultaneously at war with online trolls and my spouse. I still can’t believe that I managed to mentally recover before my first day of work. At that time, EAP and I were three months behind on our bills; my car got repossessed the week before I received my first paycheck. Still, I kept pushing, I kept working, I started selling off my record collection, and I kept trying to maintain peace at home. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of weeks before the arguments resumed.

At the end of September, EAP and I received our third eviction notice in less than a year. That night, I asked them if they could brainstorm ways to contribute more to our household financially, because I was cracking under the strain of overwork. Their response was so hostile that it made me feel both physically and existentially unsafe. For weeks, I had to leave our house to get anything substantial accomplished at either of my jobs.

Since then, I’ve applied for rental assistance at five local non-profits. Three of my applications have been denied, and I’m in a holding pattern with the other three. I’ve already gone to eviction court but, because Charlotte’s court system is in shambles at the moment, no one showed up to the hearing. (The judge didn’t even have the case on his docket.)

[NOTE: Please read my November 5th update about the preceding paragraph.]

Even so, I’m not sure how much time that’ll buy me. The eviction could progress to a writ any day now. It’s bad enough that our leasing company doesn’t accept partial payments, but they also add the next month’s balance to our ledger during the last few business days of the current month. Even with my day job, which pays decently, I can’t book enough shows, sell enough records, or borrow enough money to cover our rental balance.

I can’t understate the toll this has taken on me. I’ve lost 30 pounds that I can’t regain. I wake up each morning with stress-related chest pain, and I cry myself to sleep each night. As I write this, the family’s checking account is $500 overdrawn, and there’s barely any food in our fridge. I cling to life because I want to raise my children, support the friends and relatives I care about, and eventually make more music. However, I can’t go on like this, and I must do everything in my power to change it.

I want this to be the last GFM I ever have to make for myself, and here’s how I plan to accomplish that:

I know that by doing this, I’ll open myself and EAP up to more scrutiny and harassment, as well as put the final nail in the coffin of our marriage. However, I must take these risks because our collective wellbeing is under siege. The trolls don’t just want us to “stop the begging”; they want to ruin our lives, and they’ve mostly succeeded. Regardless of our issues, I don’t want EAP to be homeless. We need housing in order for me to work, for EAP to find work, and for our children to continue their remote schooling; and I need to work in order for all of us to get the healthcare we need.

If I continue to suffer in silence, I will die. However, I also know that I can’t ask for help for the umpteenth time without telling the full truth of what has happened to me and my family. If I leave any blanks in the story, then the trolls will fill those blanks with lies. Yes, there are aspects of this story that I must keep private for my family’s safety, but there’s nothing I’ve written here that I can’t defend in court or before God.

Please share this GFM with your social networks if you feel compelled to do so. As of November 1st, our rental balance will be $10K - the equivalent of four months’ rent plus court fees. If my family gets successfully evicted, it’s not guaranteed that all five of us will have somewhere safe to go.

Life is getting harder for all of us. Please help if you can.