Help Maple and Lute Rebuild Their Lives

Hello there, many of you seeing this know me as “Maple” or MaplePudding and my husband Lute or LuteBox.

I have been an artist in this community for many, many years and have made so many amazing friends and been helped to be pulled out of bad situations on a number of occasions from you all. I am making this gofundme in the hopes that we can get out of the financial and mental turmoil we have been in since early December of last year. A lot of not amazing things happened at once and then we had to move-putting us in copious amounts of debt even with the help of friends and some family.

I like to stay somewhat vague online, but I think it is time that I let you all know my background more in depth. I grew up in rural Texas as a queer kid. I have next to no family support, as they are all hard right wing extremists and it is painful to even be around them due to extreme abuse suffered as a child at the hands of my mom. I was mentally and physically abused every single day of my life until I met Lute at the age of 16 and decided I needed to leave for my own good. I have had a very rocky start to life in general because of this, and a slew of mental and physical health problems along side because of the abuse endured. I have C-PTSD, PCOS, Endo, Bi-Polar disorder, extreme depression and am physically disabled due to a mass in my left ovary that I just do not have the means to get rid of, but that is not even on my list of immediate concerns right now.

Since moving in May my psychiatrist stopped filling my medicine since I could no longer make in person appointments. I have been unmedicated for months and my mental health is reaching the point in which I’m not sure I will be able to bounce back from. I want to get better, but I don’t have the means to.

Neither of us have a working car right now. The brakes on my car are completely shot and unusable, to the point in which I may have to actually get the entire rotors in my car replaced because I had to drive it with bad brakes for so long. I’m not sure, as I don’t have the means to take her in to get checked at an auto shop, nor do I have the ability to even drive it there. Lute’s car is out of registration(as is mine) and has headlight damage making it fail inspection, so until we can fix his headlights and get a passing inspection done we cant even begin the process of getting it registered. We don’t have the financial means to do any of this.

The house we moved into was the only one we could find and afford, with the help of Lute’s family, and have all of our animals come with us. As many of you know, one of my primary goals and aspirations in life is to take in and care for animals, they mean everything to me and are one of the only tethers to life I can rely on. We have 3 cats and 3 small dogs, one of whom requires heart medication. I spend almost every cent we make on my babies, to try to ensure they are being adequately cared for, but this month is the month of yearly vaccinations for them, which will end up being about 1k on it’s own. We intend on using Lute’s next paycheck towards that. I know how easy it can seem from the outside as well, to say to let go of our animals so that we can take care of just ourselves, but that just isn’t an option in my eyes. These are my only family, my babies, my life blood. I have had Mable with me since before I even met Lute and was able to escape my abusive childhood home. If it came down to the point of their health being compromised I would reconsider this, but as of now I take the absolute best care of them I can and their needs are always and routinely met before ours.

As for the house we are in- we are grateful to have a place to live, even if it isn’t the nicest or in a particularly great area. However, it is not in good condition. If you know the east Texas area, you know the humidity and mold that it brings about. This house is truthfully entirely too small for us as a 2 bedroom efficiency house at about 700sq ft, but we can make do until we have the means to leave as long as we can maintain this house in a livable condition. We have had a particularly bad hurricane season, being right in the pathway of hurricane Beryl was not amazing for that either. Our house is starting to mold and rot and the bugs have gotten dire, mosquitoes and roaches and ants are seeming to infest our living quarters and we have put our last dollar from this paycheck into buying more yard spray to try to keep things at bay. Right now there is a giant hole in our bathroom floor from where I literally fell through because of the rot, there has been a plywood board over that area for about a month that was supposed to be a temporary solution and it is beginning to mold.

The amount of stress that this has all caused on top of not being medicated for my mental or physical illnesses and not having the means to fix anything more than a bandaid at a time has started to weigh extremely heavily on us. Lute works full time and I try my best to make ends meet where I can, but we just truthfully have not been able to bounce back since last year and are just sinking further and further into debt. All our cards are maxxed out, our credit is sinking continuously and we have no where to turn to.

I am asking for help getting this months bills paid and to be able to take our clothes to the laundry mat(we dont have a washer or dryer here, it is too small) and to be able to buy groceries for the month. Anything left over will go to getting my doctors appointment made and my car fixed so that I can start looking for part time work here in town.

I cannot overstate how deeply shameful it feels to ask for help from people who owe me nothing. I am sorry and guilty for even posting this, but it is my last resort.

I love you guys. Thank you for your years of support and love to both me and Lute. Literally every dollar makes a difference for us to be able to crawl our way back to living life somewhat normally.