Recovery From 2023: Save Amanda From Eviction

I've been putting off posting this since October, hoping that something would change, things would somehow get better. I got lucky a couple times, but that luck has just about run dry. I've been unemployed since August, my tiny bit of savings gone for months, and I have until March 1 to catch up on my rent or face eviction. I think I'm going to need a little help here.

[Note From The Future: I started this fundraised on Jan 5, one month ago now. As you can see if you read all the updates, we reached the original goal after only five days! One week after kick-off, only ten days late, I was able to send my landlord a complete rent payment. This was, of course, a huge relief for me, removing my metaphorical neck from the proverbial chopping block, but it did not get me out of the figurative woods. That was a complete rent payment for December, leaving January outstanding, and before we even got to February she informed me that I must be 100% current on March 1 or face eviction. Of course, to make it worth staying I needed to keep the utilities on, food in the kitchen, razors in the bathroom in case I had a job interview... That means three months rent - January, February and March - plus past due utilities, groceries, and the like, all with virtually no chance of an income by then. So stick with me please... even if you're not able to donate, I'm told that it's a good story, and though my opening paragraph has changed, the rest of this has earned little editing since the original writing. -Editorial Mandy]

In case you missed it, I'm Amanda... but if you're bothering to read this, you're welcome to call me Mandy. At least, I'd prefer that you call me one of those, but I guarantee I've been called much worse. Among those things that I would consider worse is my "legal name", aka my deadname. I'm transgender. and I have been living my truth as a woman for about 10 years. "Living my truth" is such a funny phrase... but I guess it beats dying for truth. The jury is still out on whether living a lie is better than dying for truth, but fortunately that's not a decision I've had to make... yet.

Honestly, until last year I didn't think I'd have to make a life-or-death decision about my gender expression. Before 2023, I considered myself truly fortunate, a transgender success story who suffered almost no social backlash when I transitioned. Even my parents, the only family I had, were not particularly hateful or judgemental despite their lack of understanding. When I transitioned at work, I was a first for my employer, so I'm proud to say that I helped craft the policies surrounding gender transition at a Fortune 500 company, and I'm told that the policies continue to be influential to this day.

I'm a professional geek who has been working in the St. Louis IT market since January 1, 2000; I've earned my keep as a software developer for over two decades, though I've been writing code for over four. More accurately, I was a professional software developer, and I hope to be so again at some point. For the moment, I'm an artist, writer and researcher... which is a polite way to say I'm unemployed.

Somehow, I went from being a successful career woman to losing three jobs in less than a year. In the first instance, I'm absolutely certain that my gender expression was at issue. The second case is not so clear-cut, and I'd like to think I would have continued to work there had my car not been stolen.

The third job I lost was just weird, but the circumstances make it seem very likely to be related to my gender expression. I was fired by an executive-level decision-maker on my first day of orientation, before ever meeting any of the five people involved in my hiring decision, and I was never given a straight answer surrounding my abrupt dismissal. I was, however, called “sir-ma’am” three times in a single conversation, both the director and the older woman from HR who served as her witness slurring from the masculine honorific to the feminine with what seemed to me a practiced disdain. “Of course,” one might argue, or might imagine a lawyer arguing, “That’s a matter of opinion, and not an uncommon mistake to make even among friends and allies… right?” Well, yes, perhaps... but my not-yet-ex-wife is also transgender, as is my current boyfriend, and both will tell you that they must regularly alert me to dirty looks and even instances of outright misgendering because they just don’t penetrate my practiced shield of cultivated indifference. I am not normally the type of person to get offended by imagined slights.

Really though, my employment problems are only a part of the tapestry of disaster woven by my life in 2023, and I'm sure that they're merely a temporary setback. I started last year unemployed too, although admittedly under slightly better circumstances. Just after Thanksgiving 2022, I was "discharged during staff reduction" after four years with the company. "Nothing personal," they told me. "You're just paid too much." Never mind that I had accepted their original offer, and I never received a raise above three percent. As always, "too much" is relative to your tastes.

I have to admit that it came as a surprise. For three years I had dodged termination by a transphobic architect, his dictatorial brother (who happened to be my boss), and an HR department that couldn't spell retaliatory and had never even heard the word nepotism. It seemed like an eleventh hour miracle when my boss was transferred about three weeks before paper-trailing me out the door; even better, the developer I respected most at the company was promoted to manage my team. Part of me was certain that the management change had something to do with me, but that just seemed self-centered. Wouldn't it have been easier to find a different position for me in the first place? Of course, now I see that it was probably a set-up from the word "GO". Someone must have finally thought to ask Legal how they felt about a transgender woman suing them. "No such thing as bad publicity," indeed. I don't suppose I'll ever learn to be suspicious enough to understand corporate politics.

Getting laid off was nothing new to me; my career as a developer was marked by one company after another selling out to international conglomerates who wanted the intellectual property rather than the staff. Losing a job is never fun, and job searches are even less so, but in the past I've always had a severance package, a new position or both. Last year, even heading into January with seven weeks of pay wasn't enough to keep it from being the worst year of my life. I truly don't believe I can survive another year like 2022, so I'm trying to see this situation with fresh eyes, but it's difficult not to draw parallels.

I don't really know how to explain 2023 in brief... I mean, if you're still reading I'm sure you've realized that I don't know how to say anything in brief; however, an account of last year would literally (and literarily) be a novel unto itself. I started the year with no car and no job, and I ended the year with no car and no job, but beneath the surface both my situation and my attitude couldn't be much less alike. Last year, I knew I'd have my car back in March, and by the time my severance was exhausted I knew I'd have a job then as well. This year, the car is gone gone gone, stolen once by thieves and once by my insurance company, and I'm probably going to have some trust issues even if I'm told tomorrow that I'm hired. Nevertheless, I entered 2023 with little hope for an improvement in my situation, having been convinced by my partner that my only purpose in life was to make money in service to her addictions. This year, I once again have a bright outlook towards the horizon despite the obviously dismal weather at the moment.

I learned a lot in 2023, most of it the hard way. For instance, I finally learned how to set appropriate boundaries in a relationship, and all it cost was a month of homelessness while my spouse kept me locked out of our apartment. I learned to respect myself enough to stand by my principles, though it cost my marriage and possibly more than a few friendships in the bargain. I learned that Dutchtown may have a higher crime rate, but the car thieves in Soulard are more professional; however, it required little more than cooperation between my insurance company and my auto finance provider to legally steal the car.

I learned that if one absolutely must go to a hospital ER (for whatever reason... like, for instance, urgent care is closed), it is best to go either late at night or early in the morning. Having an actual emergency at 4:00 AM is considered evidence of drug-seeking by some ER doctors, and taking prescribed HRT medications can be used to support their supposition. I also learned that it's both easier and safer to quit using opiates than it is to quit using antibiotics, but the antibiotics are harder to buy on the street. And I learned that... well, honestly, all I really learned from my professional experience last year is that one can be fired without ever being given a reason; though I could tell you what happened both times I couldn't tell you why.

All those lessons are in the past, though; in the present, it seems that I'm meant to learn to ask for help. It's not something with which I've ever been very comfortable, nor is it something at which I am terribly adept. I'm really more the giving type, and I've been rather fortunate in life so I've done my best to give to friends as much as possible, always telling them that I'd rather it was paid forward than paid back. Honestly, if I knew of a good way to crowdsource a loan, I'd have done it already; if you want to be repaid for your kindness, please just let me know and I'll put you on my loan list, but (whether or not you wish to be repaid) I guarantee that it will be paid forward... or I'll die trying.

I'm really very optimistic about the future, despite my immediate circumstances; I feel like something Big and Important is on the horizon for me, but if I don't hold things together for the next couple months on sheer strength of will then Everything Falls Apart. Beyond the obvious, I've lived in this apartment for nine years, and I'm about as close to my landlord as I was to my mother, so her threat to evict me hit pretty hard. I really don't want to disappoint her, and I really don't want to leave everything I can't carry on my back to end up in a dumpster, and I really really don't want to be homeless.

Once the January rent is covered, the additional funds will cover bills (some seriously past due at this point, thanks to the Cold Weather Rule), groceries (two adults for the next month), household goods (many of which need to be restocked) and my HRT meds (uninsured price, but I have not had them for two months and it’s starting to show, both physically and mentally). Finally, when the dust settles from all that, I'll start paying back the rent that I was unable to cover since my last paycheck in late August. Finally, I'll have to cover rent for February and March. A high-level breakdown looks something like this:

Rent (January): $1000

Bills: $900

Groceries: $300

Household: $200

HRT Meds: $100

Rent In Arrears: $1800

Rent (February/March): $2000

Processing: $200

I hope that's about it. In my experience, the job market in this town absolutely dies during the holidays. In high-school, I called the period between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day "The No-Breakup Zone", because a person would have to be pretty callous to break up with whomever they're dating between those holidays. Callous and stupid, actually, because word would get around that this person went to extremes to avoid gift shopping. Anyway, as an adult... Well, let's be clear, "The No-Breakup Zone" still exists, but I seem to be impacted more frequently by it's alter-ego, "The No-Hire Zone"; no one wants to bring a new developer onto the team during this period. Even if one could count on them to focus and felt comfortable with their holiday vacation requirements, when would one find the time and, more importantly, the energy to train them?

Anyway, I have plans for becoming self-sufficient again, even if I don't find a new position immediately, but everything needs just a little bit longer to come to fruition. I'm not exaggerating the consequences if I can't pull this together though; I have no family on whom I can fall back, no friends likely to take me into their home, no one leaving me a car or a house in their will. I can't imagine finding a job will be any easier if I'm homeless, and I can't imagine any other way to bounce back. Even if you're not close to anyone for whom I've been there in the past, please consider contributing something. If everyone in my Contacts list gave fifteen bucks, this crisis would be over. Thanks <3