A Fresh Start — Help Me Get My Life Back

I've never been good at asking for help. But I've reached a point where I have no other choice.

Over the past several months, my life has been completely upended. I experienced a violent assault at work — the place I'd called home for 22 years. What followed was a cascade of betrayals, legal chaos, and ongoing harassment that I'm still trying to make sense of. I won't dwell on the details, but the short version is: people I trusted for over a decade let me down in ways I never saw coming.

What I want to talk about instead is what that's done to me — because that's the part I'm living with every single day.

I haven't been okay for a long time. I have severe panic attacks now, regularly. Some days, leaving my house feels impossible. I haven't earned a single dollar since November. I have no car. I've been in weekly therapy since the spring, doing everything I can just to stay functional — and next week I'm starting ketamine therapy, $2,100 out of pocket, because I've run out of other options.

I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you because it's the truth, and I've spent too long pretending I'm fine.

The thing that's kept me going is a clear picture of where I want to end up: Austin, Texas. A fresh city. A real restart. I've been a performer my whole life, and I'm not ready to give that up — but more than anything, I just want to feel safe again. To sleep through the night. To walk outside without my heart pounding. To be a person again.

I am genuinely surprised I've made it this far. I don't say that lightly. But I know that if I stay where I am much longer, I won't keep making it.

The only thing standing between me and a new chapter is money — and that's always been the one thing I've never had much of. If you can spare anything at all, it would change my life. Not just logistically. In every way that matters.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring. It means more than I know how to say.