telnaga:

By fourteen I had severe depression, anxiety, acid reflux, iron deficiency anemia, and fibromyalgia (anemia and fibro only diagnosed at 19). My mom never appreciated moochers, “welfare queens”, or people with dietary restrictions, and would scream if I did not eat her acidic food that caused me pain and cancer risk. She sank all our money and my college savings into a failing restaurant she made me work as much as was legal at, because I could be paid under minimum wage as a 14 year old family member.

Shortly after high school 1. I quit a cashier job after a week because of unbearable undiagnosed fibro pain 2. we moved from Washington, where we could no longer afford to live, to central Maine, where my mom and brother began resenting me more and more for my increasingly failing body and inability to work. I eventually started getting betting better with medications and therapy, and completed two college courses through an employee dependent tuition waiver, and had an extremely undemanding job managing a branch of the college’s rarely-used social media.

After an endoscopy (in which they diagnosed a length of pre-cancerous tissue that would be disproven with a later biopsy?) my reflux got drastically worse rendering me unable to swallow easily or take pills. No longer on antacids or pain meds, everything hurt all the time, especially when it got stuck and burned in. My mom still refused to change what she fed me until she offered what she thought was a compromise: I start making dinner every day instead of her. I couldn’t, with my health, but I said I could feed myself, at least, and she wouldn’t have to. She told me to leave.

My partner’s parents in West Virginia had been offering I live with them, when they heard what my mom was doing to me, so when I was kicked out I moved in there. Suffering severe, unmedicated depression, anxiety, anemia, and fibromyalgia, I am unable to do much. I was prescribed dissolving reflux meds right before I left, and they make good food, so I am okay in that regard, but they are beginning to resent me and what they think is me controlling their child. When Zach, my partner, wouldn’t put his mom in control of his new bank account, she made us sob in the car home, and said she would never do anything for us again, including drive me to get my meds. His parents blamed me for being kinder to Zach than they were. They think I’m a welfare queen, trying to steal his and their money. I’ve tried so hard to repay their hospitality with what little I can do, but it wasn’t enough. I’m supposed to be moving in with his sister in two weeks, in the town he will then be going to college in. If I am not kicked out early. My anxiety is afraid of the same thing happening again and again, and I haven’t been able to make any progress on fixing my throat because of long appointment waiting periods, lack of transport, lack of information, and not being here for more than two months. For these same reasons I have not been able to get medicaid or disability even started in processing. I have a total of a hundred dollars available to me after a week of begging online, and that will pay for two specialist consultations and nothing further, no food, no procedures, no medications, no cat food, no clothes, no hospitality-securing-rent, nothing. In two weeks I am going to be alone, without my partner, and without my cat, who I will probably have to leave with his parents (or else have to pay an exorbitant fee for).

I am so fucking afraid. I am unable to work aside from low-price art commissions. I have no substantial or guaranteed income. I have no fallback. I have no medications. I don’t have a working throat. I am afraid of having no value. I am afraid of being kicked out of everywhere I go because of resource intensivity and uselessness.

Everything takes a long time to do, but I still need money for when it happens. I want to be able to get to a place, mentally, physically, where I am no longer in pain, and no longer afraid. I won’t be able to on my own.

paypal.me/jazzper