Jeez this is a fucked up convoluted story, but at least it's a genuinely interesting one, I think.

So I used to have an incredibly normal, but ultimately very miserable and unfulfilling career in digital media. When I set out to become a journalist when I was in undergrad, I was very ambitious and I wanted to work on stories about institutional sexual violence, sex trafficking, and human interest stories about the lives of survivors of sexual violence. However, things did not really pan out well for me, because I became extremely ill my senior year of college after being struck with a rapid onset autoimmune condition that physically disabled me for some time, and completely sucked all the energy and vitality out of my body.

The impacts on my mental health were also horrific, which was already not great, given that I had been living with complex PTSD due to a rough childhood that included my own experiences with CSA, and multiple rapes both within abusive relationships and instances involving roofies/drinking. The support needs that I now had as a very chronically ill person were lost on a lot of family, who treated me quite poorly for a condition I had no control over and made me feel like if I didn't fully support myself and remain as independent as possible, that I was some kind of burden on everyone else.

So I began to prioritize the kinds of jobs in digital media that came with the sorts of health insurance I needed to afford the expensive pharmaceuticals I now needed, and the kinds of paychecks I needed in order to live in New York City, where all of those benefits-having jobs in journalism, or "digital media" were. I was completely and totally in survival mode, and also quite miserable. The illness created the professional unhappiness, which created worsening C-PTSD symptoms because I had all of this previous trauma and nothing constructive to do with it now. This created a vicious cycle, where I was getting sicker and sicker as I became unhappier, because autoimmune disease is exacerbated by having a fried nervous system, and high stress levels. The worsening illness created more anxiety because I was not receiving appropriate levels of support or consideration by the people I needed to rely on for support. They did not seem to understand that I was suffering from an actual disability, nor did they seem to notice that I was pretty clearly falling apart all the time.

Things got actually really, really bad at this one particular high stress toxic work environment that I was in from 2016- early 2019 and I needed to be hospitalized as a result of the stress that environment was putting on my body and psyche. I felt that a lot of people around me greatly misunderstood this emergency and responded by socially isolating me and treating me poorly for being in distress. I was labeled as "toxic" because I was experiencing a lot of pain and it was quite literally driving me into psychosis, at times. After that experience, which frankly was re-traumatizing in its own right, I started to repress my emotions even more, and go to much greater lengths to hide the actual amount of suffering I was in. Surviving and remaining independent was critical.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, COVID hit about a year later, and everyone else became a shut-in by government mandate. It was at this time that I met my now ex-spouse on the internet. Autoimmune disease ran in their family, and they had been suffering from lupus since they were a kid. They were also really itching to leave the situation they were in. They grew up in a really strict, religious fundamentalist household and there was mounting pressure for them to enter into a traditional marriage that they did not want to be in.

In hindsight, I should have definitely been less impulsive and not invited someone who is more or less a fresh-out cult defector to live with me after only knowing them online for a couple of months while in lockdown, and then marrying them after living together for about 18 months, during which they did not seem to be proactively seeking sustainable employment or taking their schooling seriously. Because of my health issues and trauma, I had a really hard time relating at all to my more "normal" peers. I felt like I could unclench and be myself around my ex, who had also lived a fucked up life in their own right and had similar health issues. That said, I was working like a fucking dog to support the both of us because they were lazy as fuck and also felt super entitled to all my shit if I'm being perfectly honest, and would become hostile and very manipulative if I broached the subject of them being a little more productive and helping with household expenses, especially since they insisted that we remained in NYC despite my job being remote, because they wanted to be around other members of the religious group that they used to belong to, in Brooklyn.

I have, since this marriage crashed and burned, read more about the impacts of narcissistic abuse and how and why people like me, often with conditions like C-PTSD (as well as neurodivergent, I'm pretty sure I'm on that AuADHD combination shit), end up in these kinds of relationships and how being perpetually self-sacrificing to dangerous, unhealthy degrees goes back to the way you were raised. Anyway!

Luckily, because a lot of the kinds of work I had been doing had just permanently stayed remote, I was able to function a little bit better. I was able to hide how sick I was because no one could see me, and the lack of subway commute and ability to work in sweatpants every day made my condition a little less agonizing.

Saving money was really hard, because rent and providing for two in NYC was killing me, especially because we had to move more than once due to a scumbag slumlord landlord situation in 2021 and all those moving costs came out of my savings. My ex was also racking up a lot of extra debt on my credit cards that was not typical for me, given that I am a pretty frugal person by nature.

In November 2024 I got unceremoniously laid off over zoom yet again, a kafkaesque experience so, so many of us are now regularly familiar with. It was actually so mundane to me that I didn't even react honestly. I couldn't have cared less, I didn't even like my job or see any point to it, because all I did was shit out clickbait every single day for a newsletter that was just spamming up the inboxes of strangers anyway.

After that pink slip, I'd had enough. I actually no longer had it in me to care about just surviving from miserable job to job anymore. I had wanted to pivot to full time freelancing for a while, and given that I had also recently begun hormone replacement therapy and began to transition I figured it was a good time to try that, because being half-transitioned in a corporate white collar job environment under a Trump administration sounded like a nightmarish humiliation ritual. Fortunately, testosterone actually caused my autoimmune disease to go into remission, and so I no longer needed the same meds that I had been on before and felt like I had a little more freedom.

It was still risky though, we had a lot of household costs and my ex still hadn't gotten their shit together, even though it was now going on year five of not having one's shit together, post-fundamentalism. They said they were supportive, but I could tell they were pissed. Things started really crumbling between at this point, especially as I delved more into the kinds of topics that I wanted to write about and research, and got actively excited again.

Having had many years to sort of mull over my trauma and heal some things through hormone therapy, my worldview had expanded a lot since I last thought about my actual passion subjects, and I became very interested in the topic of sex work. I was of course still interested in exploring the topics of exploitation and violence, but I realized how critical the full decriminalization of sex work and movement for sex worker's rights was in order to really address this issue. I had also decided that if I wanted to really understand this and involve myself to the degree that I truly desired, that I needed to take the leap and go into sex work, in some form. I wanted as deep of an understanding as I could get, of the current landscape for online sex work specifically. I was also interested in learning about dominatrix work, because I am fascinated by the psychology of kink/sexual deviance.

For context, at this point in time, our marriage was an open relationship, which was actually at my ex's dogged request. They had badgered me about opening the marriage for about a 6 month period before I caved and agreed to it. That's not what I had originally wanted, but now I realized that the open door allowed me to enter the industry of sex, without feeling too weird about the impact it'd have on the marriage, given that my ex was already dating other people. So I figured everything was fine!

It was not, however. Things really came to a head when it was getting closer to our lease in Brooklyn being up, and I insisted that we couldn't afford to live there anymore, because I was not going to go back to what I was doing before. I said that living somewhere much cheaper would allow me to launch this new career that I was carefully planning and mapping out, and I was not going to let it go. I told my ex, point blank, that I of course wanted them to come with me, but that I was leaving NYC no matter what and that they either had to come with me or get a sublet on their own. My ex decided that we would separate.

At first, it seemed like the split was going to be quite amicable? At least on the surface. My uncle offered to let me and a friend who was staying on our couch at the time (long story, he also grew up in that fundamentalist group my ex was from, whole other can of worms we can't even get into here, I think, because this is already so fucking long) crash at his very spacious home far upstate, and he said we could kind of just stay there indefinitely. It was crazy, it was like a perfect immediate solution to my problems just presented itself.

This really set my ex off, when they found out that me and this friend now had a place to go. I'd come to find out that they were going around and telling everyone behind my back that I was a drug addict (not true at all) and that I was having a manic episode and engaging in dangerous, impulsive forms of sex work for hypersexual, mental illness reasons (also extremely not true, and very hurtful). They whipped up a group of mutual friends into a frenzy, none of whom bothered to even speak to me at all before deciding to believe all of this horseshit and immediately react, and then revenge-porned me to my uncle, his girlfriend, and my aunt by showing them one of my adult site accounts, where I was interacting with prospective clients. The plan was to put the kabosh on me and this friend going upstate, to have the friend sent back to his fundamentalist family, and for me to go to Bellevue.

It was so crazy, I was quite literally blindsided with all of these accusations, which were being screamed at me by people who had known me for many years who insisted on believing this version of events cooked up by my ex, who were not listening to a single thing I said nor were interested at all in hearing my side of the story.

Eventually, my relatives decided that they didn't want these people up in what now felt like family business and dismissed my ex and this group of "concerned friends". There were some really uncomfortable conversations after that, and a lot of very hurtful and demoralizing things were said to me about some of the things I had been working on and researching, but I was able to smooth things over enough to get that move set in stone.

However! I forgot that my uncle is actually a very mentally unstable person with a serious drinking problem and an extremely unchecked personality disorder. It was a big house and I tried to keep to myself and spend most of my time talking to my friend, but my uncle and his girlfriend were CONSTANTLY looking for problems.

I was being routinely threatened with immediate homelessness for things like "throwing away product that expired several years ago" and "putting cup in wrong cabinet". The girlfriend, who at first pretended to be friendly, progressive, and emotionally available, collected intel from me on my medical information regarding my transition as well as some really sensitive information about my sexual trauma, waited for my extremely conservative (and emotionally unstable) parents to come visit, and then outed me to them, and almost got me kicked out that night. She created a giant massive scene, I think, in order to set me off. If I looked unstable, my family would be able to justify mistreating me further. Very shortly after this, my friend found a job in another state and skipped town, and I was alone with my uncle and his girlfriend, and things got worse.

My uncle was already being weird and gross and having bad boundaries with me, talking to me about things like his sex life and his ex wives in graphic detail, which I was trying to ignore and compartmentalize because I had nowhere else to go. The way him and his girlfriend, along with my aunt remotely, were driving me insane was making it impossible to feel stable enough to work on literally anything at all. There was CONSTANTLY some kind of insane, self-inflicted problem or manufactured crisis going on.

The one saving grace I was experiencing was that I began working out and going on a lot of long, meditative hikes in the woods or long, aimless drives just to get away from them, which gave me a great deal of clarity on the situation, and allowed me to reset my out-of-wack nervous system. Even without testosterone, I was still in autoimmune disease remission.

Things came to a head and really started to fall apart after my uncle got drunk and made a really dark and upsetting joke about raping me. I had a triggered PTSD reaction, and was very upset about it when I told his girlfriend. She responded by going directly to him, and ganging up on me with him, making it seem like I had done something wrong by being upset about that. At this point I completely shut down and just said in a totally monotone voice that I know that a medical doctor and psychologist should both know enough about PTSD to understand the reaction I had, rationally. Eventually the yelling stopped, because they sounded ridiculous and I think they both knew it. I did not receive any apologies, but I was told that I "should get some therapy" for, you know, having a strong negative reaction to my creepy uncle "joking" about raping me.

Things were quiet for a little bit and then I was unceremoniously handed a formal eviction notice. The claim was that this was about them wanting to sell the house, but it's not even on the market, I think that it was personal. My uncle would later go on rants to other relatives that I am "disrespectful". To this day I still do not actually understand where that absurd level of hostility was coming from, or why they were going to such extreme lengths to attempt driving me insane, because they are dishonest and pretending I don't exist.

At first I was really afraid because I had no plans and nowhere to go, except for the childhood home which is where all of this trauma began in the first place. When weighing the options of that and being potentially homeless, I decided I'd rather be homeless.

Then, by some freak miracle, I came across a listing for a cheap room to rent in a house farther upstate into the mountains, where a couple of other queer people were looking for someone to replace a roommate who just skipped town randomly. They were really nice to me about the fact that I was making low amounts of very inconsistent money, and doing online sex work and didn't care about making me prove income as long as I could pay the very modest rent every month, which I do. I left my uncle's house as fast as I could and didn't look back.

I've been here for a few months now, catching my breath and trying to unpack everything that has happened to me in the last 18 months especially, but also just the last decade or so of my life, ever since I got sick and was thrust on this really miserable trajectory.

I am remaining pretty positive and hopeful for the future, even though my situation right now is pretty fucked up. I am completely isolated up here, and a lot of my previous social connections were sabotaged, and my family did a great deal of isolating me as well, telling people that I am mentally ill, to cover up the mistreatment and abuse of power over resources that was going on. I fortunately have had the opportunity to connect with many sex workers all over the world online who have spiritually and emotionally been a lifeline for me while I was going through all of this.

Anyway, I decided to tell the long story here because I think it's more compelling that way? I wanted to explain why I am asking strangers for this large lump sum of money. I just had a black pilling conversation with one of my relatives recently that have made me realize that they have more or less completely abandoned me up here and will not provide any assistance or material support, or even acknowledge their wrongdoing as it contributed to my current circumstances.

I need to be able to get back up on my feet, and I wanted to make a GoFundMe and see if that speeds up the process right now. I have been through a lot of traumatic events and mind-disabling psychological abuse that has rendered me totally socially isolated, and right now I am living on very little. I think if I can rebuild what I lost over the course of my marriage, it will help me do that.

The amount of money that I am asking for is roughly the amount that my ex siphoned from me over the course of five years ($90k-ish, in total), between draining my life savings and my rough estimate looking at old credit card statements, and adding those two numbers together. I want to be optimistic about the kindness of strangers; maybe there's enough of you to really bless me, lol.

What will I do with this money if I receive it? Well to start, I have a lot of housekeeping items around legal stuff and medical stuff that I need taken care of. I have not seen any doctor in 18 months and I really, really need to get back on ADHD stimulants and testosterone, and should probably have some money set aside so I can get a more permanent place to live, that's a little less in the middle of nowhere and closer to the more populated part of this county. I also want to get my nest egg back because I want to actually invest in my professional education when it comes to cybersecurity and improve my tech literacy, as well as invest in things like professional mentoring/coaching and speech therapy (I have a lisp). I would also like to have the money to return to NYC when I need to, which would be helpful for networking with other writers, artists, academics, and sex worker activists.

But literally any amount of all is helpful and deeply appreciated. And if not, at least I hope that you were captivated to some degree by this story. I said it was convoluted and fucked up!

If you can't financially help me, but would like to help me in other ways (introducing me to people who could and would help me, helping me secure a remote job that would bolster some stability for me right now as I rebuild my life, or something else that you think would be helpful) you can email me and introduce yourself. I am very much open to new friendships and connections at this time. Thanks for reading!