Longterm assault has led to the deterioration of my health.

My name is Kenn, and this feels like my last chance at help. I’ve been life-haltingly sick going on 7 years now, with several outside factors either exacerbating things or keeping me from getting treatment. The short version is, I did not ask for the things that happened to me that led to my health issues, I have fought like hell to stay afloat anyway. My whole life it has been my responsibility to fix the harm those people have done to me and I am at my limit.

Being habitually sexually exploited, threatened, and abused as a child and teen have caused me to develop chronic health issues that are ruining my opportunity to have the most basic of human comforts. I’m begging for help not for some great sum of money because things are hard but money enough to safely be able to take care of myself AND bills while I get my health figured out.

In my childhood I lost my trust, power, community, sense of self and my autonomy. In my adulthood I lost my time, health, stability, my home and any feeling of safety and its only getting worse because I can not afford to be this sick and pay my bills. **Now I’ve lost the ability to even eat.**

On all days that I'm able to I fill my time with work to try and make ends meet. I hold fundraising streams once a month to gather work to pay my bills, however it has not helped my health journey in a long time. I have an amazing community who does all they can but despite our efforts I am still deteriorating and it effects my finances and ability to work.

At this moment it would be much more helpful to receive donations admittedly, but I’ve always welcomed work. My goal beyond finding stability for myself and getting out of debt is to be able to help my grandparents who are not much better off than I am.

I grew up between a misogynistic southern Baptist family and an overtly sexual household. Ironically while I was exposed to things I shouldn’t have in the latter, the “Christian” household is where I would be habitually abused and blamed for it [I was 4 the first time anyone hurt me that way, and as young as 6 and 7 I was being scolded for making grown men uncomfortable, even having to apologize to one of my groomers for crying when he made a joke about me having a baby.]

I was regularly having my autonomy threatened with the hypothetical “baby or death” as a teen who had never had a consensual experience and I was refused privacy not only at home (at one point they took my room away and threatened to punish me if my brother woke up and saw me before I was dressed) but anywhere I went (they even had adults “watching” me at school).

They called me slurs, ‘evil’, a drama queen, refused me medical care [ex: countless times my cramps were so painful I couldn't breathe but was called an attention whore for it because my step moms weren't that bad. Years later when I told them I had endometriosis they acted like they'd been sympathetic all along.] if I was visibly sick I was punished for missing school by being dragged along to work with my dad. They lied to the people I would try to reach out for help to, accused ME of lying and isolated me from anyone who might be able to help. I think they genuinely believe they did nothing wrong because I regularly am reminded that “they do a little thing called forgive and forget”, which I assume is a threat based on the fact that I accidentally got child services called on them once, and in middle school a teacher realized what was happening but was fired for talking to me about it.

They sent me to a “military school” I only recently realized was just a smaller version of a school for “troubled teens”(aka send your kid here and we will abuse them into shape). My crime was failing 8th grade, being trans and “out of control” (I was desperate for help and no one would listen so yes you could call me troubled because I did not know what to do and I had no support outside of friends and a few teachers.)

When they kicked me out it was over leftover food [my father’s exact words were “you're nothing but trash and I want you out of my house], and from there until 2015 I was parent to my alcoholic mum and had started being harassed & cyber stalked by an ex friend. The latter ended with me giving up my following online and having to rebuild 2 years later. While there are plenty of stories that feel too personal to share as far as my mother goes, throughout my life She would [and allow others to] pressure me to drink or smoke or behave sexually, and leave me alone to let her friends hit on me and speak uncomfortably to me and then defend them (one of the men she still defends to this day because he ‘is like a puppy and would never mean to upset me’.)

I moved in with a friend in 2015 who, though we both struggled with our own issues and I hold no resentment, consistently broke my trust, refused to communicate, would rant about me to his family to the point of being threatened by them, and ignored boundaries with a “do whatever now, say sorry later” mentality that worked on me because I was struggling with anger from aforementioned issues & this person’s piling breaches of trust. For my own part, I had not come to terms with the abuse and it could manifest in controlling ways I'm not proud of and have since seriously addressed. That said, I didn’t understand that I deserved to have my boundaries respected especially ones related to my trauma.

I moved back in with my mum in 2017 and almost immediately became ill.

I was waking with such severe nausea, body pain and migraines that I was afraid to sleep, I couldn’t close my eyes anymore physically, I couldn’t look up, lift my arms or lay on my stomach without pain and fainting. Within a week I couldn’t walk without shaking, I was incapable of sprinting, running, jumping, or picking myself up off the floor. I could not bend down because I was unable to get back up. People would stare due to my tremors and there was nothing I could do.

It frustrated my mother and she was on her way out to live a life traveling anyway, so I was sicker than I’d ever known possible but still walking 40min each way to my job in Arizona heat to keep my head above water.

The first doctor I saw was a man who told me I was just an out of shape ‘female’ with bad anxiety. I need it understood I was 117lbs for years, extremely fit and all of my hobbies were athletic outside of art and singing. Running and dancing were daily activities.

I was **not** out of shape.

He eventually agreed after doing the same labs three times over a month and realizing I had absolutely no TSH in my system. I was sent to an endocrinologist and as I was 24-25 at the time I was on my fathers insurance and on track to Getting several preliminary treatments done before ultimately going in for an ablation. I called my father to let him know there was a chance it was cancer and I could use help paying for things.

His response was to jovially “hope I have fun paying his deductible” and then shame me for not being more adult about it when I started crying.

My grandparents had to beg my mum to come home and help me get to and from appointments to which she eventually complied for a few months until my ablation was done.

(This part is fuzzier due to a separate issue I was dealing with at the time so forgive me for things being spotty but I’m sure I can get proof if needed) a short time after she left she was t-boned and came to live with me again in a single room that had been converted into a tiny studio apartment [like Japanese studio small]. I gave her what savings I had to help her save her van (basically her house) and ended up having to quit seeing my doctors.

I had long since had to quit my job too due to fainting spells, and had nothing left when it came time to renew my lease. I ended up homeless from June or July 2018 to the first week of Covid lock down. While I was grateful that we were able to save my mum’s van to live in, it was not livable. It was moldy from condensation of us being in there and packed to the roof with her belongings- shared between me and Holly, her and her cat who I was badly allergic to, meaning breathing was an issue. I’ve had people tell me to be grateful for the van and I am, to the extend it is necessary. [ She and her cat LOVE van life and this was not the regular state of their home, to clarify. ]

My mother suffers with bipolar and a lifetime of her own traumas, some of which I have witnessed. I love her very much and can NOT handle seeing her hurt or sad, but she is not an emotionally available parent. I’m mostly at peace with this, But you can understand if she is harmful to me now she was worse in that van.

When Covid had not yet become a widely known issue, I made a trip to visit my dad (the Christian family) for a week to try and convince him to co-sign a lease so I wouldn’t be homeless anymore(most places here require at least 3000$/month income) from the moment I entered their house to the time I left it was like someone had ripped a vicious wound wide open.

my brother spent that whole week trying to keep me away from home and occupied. One of the first days he took me to coffee and told me he remembered everything and it wasn’t my fault, and that seeing what they did to me made him the person he was today. It meant so much to have someone involved at least acknowledge it was wrong, and it helped me accept I was not the monster they told me I was, which was something that had held me back from even believing my own memories and feelings. That is when I started fighting for myself and I have created two gofundme’s since 2019, the first accumulating 15,000~ and the second accumulating 26,295.

**I can not stress enough these are ACCUMULATIVE AMOUNTS. this is not money that I HAVE, this is money that has gone into rent, bills, doctors, moving to a cheaper place, medications, mobility aides, etc. it has gone to things that are necessary.**

I have not had a life of my own since 2017. I have worked tirelessly with measly breaks when I can’t take it anymore. My mental health is collapsing and it makes me ashamed when it shows. If I am not medicated, I am not even a person anymore- it feels like I am just the fear.

Any time I’ve started to see savings come together It all ends up going to the extraordinary taxes required as a freelance artist. The only reason I am not homeless now is that my mother has been able to co-sign for the last few years though she does not assist financially even when she’s here. My father only co-signed the first begrudgingly bc if he didn’t I would have no access to bathroom, shower or food during lock down without an actual home and I called him begging (he “prayed” about it first like a cruel and unusual cliffhanger) and then assured me I was on my own once the lease was up.

I’ve been barely scraping by between the work I get during the fundraisers and what little I have left in case I or Holly gets sick. I do not generally receive work outside of fundraisers and my body is now held back by fibromyalgia and a stomach issue I’ve had for almost a year and a half now with no answers.

An ultrasound recently showed there is barely anything left of my thyroid and my new endocrinologist tested for hashimoto’s again, and it came back negative- meaning a great majority of issues I’ve had doctors blaming my thyroid for are completely unrelated and caused by something else.

**My confirmed diagnosis’s are:**

Endometriosis

CPTSD

PMDD

Graves’ disease

Fibromyalgia

Severe eye damage & scarring

Grave’s disease Eyes

**Testing for:**

IIH

Lupus

**Unknown issues:**

Rapid muscle atrophy

Sudden weight gain/incapable of losing it despite not eating or attempted exercise

Fainting

Tremors

Intense pressure in head

Lymphnode infections

Swelling [head, neck and jaw is the most disruptive]

**New:** [under 2 years]

Constant Hair-trigger vomiting/ gagging

Constant bathroom urgency

TOTAL Food repulsion

Inability to keep anything down

Abrupt stomach pain leading to vomiting (even when only sipping water)

It doesn’t seem like my digestive system moves naturally anymore

i just want a break to take care of myself and focus on medical needs. Ive worked endlessly in order to do so and will continue to work as I need to but I don't know what more I can do that im not already doing. It’s been 7 years since I got sick and I’ve worked no matter what. Now it feels like my country itself is trying to find a way to force my trauma back upon me. Because I have this undiagnosed stomach issue and now finding that Im back to square one without Hashimoto’s to blame it on I do not know exactly what needs to be done, just that it needs done and ill need funds to get that far.

My goals are:

-I want answers and relief regarding my health.

-I want to clear my medical debt [sitting right now around 7200USD] so that my credit cards can go back to being for emergencies and credit building.

-I want to live long enough to make sure Holly’s life is as happy as I can make it. I have fought this long for that specifically.

-I want to be SELF SUFFICIENT AGAIN. I am so tired of being out in the open. I dont like being the sick guy begging for help. I want my interactions to feel unconditional again and connect with people without my health being in the way.

-I want to be stable enough to be able to rest voluntarily if I need to without worry of something falling through the cracks because I am sick.

-I want to get mental help. I am not ok and the more time passes the less I feel like I am a viable human being.

-I want to move somewhere safe and less expensive. I do not want to have to risk my safety as a 4’11 female bodied long term rape victim who can barely walk right now in doing so. I’d love to teach in japan and do volunteer work if my body eventually allows me to. I know I will never play basket ball again but id like to at least be able to take walks and be useful to my community.

-my dream reality would involve deer. I am not joking no matter how stupid that sounds. I want to be where deer are. I want to work in animal rehab, something I have experience in and am very motivated to expand on even if im limited. I think a lot about what could have been now and how much id love to farm, and while that is no longer in the cards I can at least do something actually useful with my life.

-If all goes well, I [and the amazing community who have supported me] want to continue to do monthly fundraisers for other people in need. I especially want to help other people in similar situations.

-As dramatic as it sounds I want an actual life. Ive had so much good in between the bad in my life but I am very aware that things should have never been like this. Ive watched so many people like me reach freedom and im desperate to get there too.