- I
- L
Hi, I'm Dan, and it's been a hell of a year. I'm a disabled queer person who had to move from my home state of California a couple of years ago due to financial hardships. I was starting to get my bearings a little bit better, when boom: My mom, also a severely disabled and ill person since I was a toddler, was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in June of 2020. Not only was it important for me to come see her, but my mom was going to need a full-time caregiver, and as we couldn't afford to hire one and I was the only one able to who wasn't working, my dog and I came back to California that July (which was hard to make happen) and have taken care of her until her passing this last July. We went through a lot, to say the least. Everything that could have gone wrong, did, and went worse further yet. All this during a pandemic (and me, an extreme hypochondriac, for whom a pandemic and cancer are my literal nightmare scenarios). Now that my mom's passed on, the time for me to have to move out of her place is nearly up (she didn't own her own home), and I need to get back to Texas, and to an entirely new home to me at that!
While I'm fairly sure I'll get some help from family to get back (I think?), things are strained, and I now have things I inherited from her (small mementos, some cookware, clothing) that are precious to me, along with things I've had to buy for myself and my dog while living on her couch for over a year, that I have to figure out how to get back to Texas. Things were already cramped driving my tiny 2013 Honda Fit over here, and it's downright impossible now. I have some amazing friends, who have been more generous and loving than there's a way to put into text, who don't want me to have to drive all the way home by myself and who are amazingly flying over solely to make the long drive back with me. And that, of course, makes even less room in my car! The only way I have a chance to get my things over as I head home comes in two options:
1. Get a pod service (which are thousands of dollars, that sure isn't happening)
or, what I'm aiming for,
2. Use a combination of Busfreighter and a roof rack. I can ship the hardier, smaller boxes (mainly clothing and non-precious paperwork and kitchen stuff) through Busfreighter for a couple hundred dollars, and then store the larger stuff on the roof rack and utilize the remaining space in my car for whatever is left over (including just what we need for traveling).
A roof rack costs a minimum of $200, and installation doesn't seem to be too expensive, but is another factor. I have a few hundred dollars in inheritance from my mom (that's truly all she had to pass on), but I'm gonna need more, especially if it turns out I'm not getting the assistance I've been planning on to get home.
I'm not going to lie: The situation I'm in is awful. It's probably the second-worst place I've been in in my life, which is saying something, or I wouldn't be making a GoFundMe. My friends are doing so much to help me, and it's so important to me that they don't have to cover the cost of us getting to Texas, because when I say that they've already done a lot, again: I cannot begin to explain how much, and the idea of adding strain to their lives just about kills me. Additionally, I still have things at my old home in Houston that I'm going to need to transport to my new home with them in the Dallas area, which means further transportation costs (thank god, that trip is only a few hours). All I want to do is go home and begin to grieve, something I truly have not been able to do with so much ahead of me and so much going on throughout my mom's illness. We're nearly there, but this is going to be the worst push of it, and so I'm asking for anybody who's able to help to please do so. I can't say how grateful I am for anything you can do, even if that's just sharing this.
- Why can't you just wait longer to go home? I'm super, super poor, and I've got nowhere to stay, especially in California's price range. And with the pandemic and traveling season escalating, even if I had somewhere to stay, it's going to be too dangerous to travel during those times until after the new year, and on top of this all, my physical health is deteriorating in ways I'd rather not go into where I need to get settled into a solid place and begin taking care care of myself, including seeing doctors and getting a good therapist. And, frankly, my poor dog needs a yard (this part is just a big want, but goddamnit! She does!).
- Can't somebody just hold onto your stuff for you? I guess not, nobody wants to keep anything at their own house, garage, sheds, or whatever, and my family doesn't want to pay for a storage unit for more than a couple of months. I've already had to accept the loss of a lot of things I would hold onto if I literally had the ability to, to say it's been hard having this limitation as it is is an understatement.
- Why don't you just fly home? I have my car here-- I came over in some of the worst of the pandemic (and then still, these same friends drove halfway with me for support), and the safest way to travel, especially with a bully-breed dog, was to drive.
- Why don't you get a trailer? My car is a super lightweight vehicle and it's dangerous to tow even the smallest trailer U-Haul offers behind it. If I were able to afford the payments on my mom's SUV (god, I wish I could), I would be able to, but that's still a surprising amount of money to rent a trailer for that distance. If I'm able to find a small enough trailer that my car can tow and I can afford, that could be an option. As of yet, no such luck.
I'm setting the goal at higher than I'll likely need (though, god knows, with how things have been going...), but even if it gets past that point, believe me: there are things I need but I just expect to slowly work towards. My mattress at home is small and full of holes, for example. I have a vet bill I have to pay back in increments after my dog needed an emergency endoscopy recently (that was super fun), I'm going to need to buy some medical equipment to help treat a newly-likely-permanent condition I've developed, and I want to help cover some of the costs of renovations my friends are doing to their home to make it more comfortable for me to live there. And again, I have to still get all my remaining stuff from Houston to the Dallas area. Whoof!
Once again, thank you to anyone and everyone who sees this and wants to help out, whether that's with donating or sharing this or whatever else. Literally everything is appreciated, and I can't give my thanks enough to you all.