Hi! My name is Brandon, and I'm in a bad spot.

I'm a gay man living in rural Southern Arkansas and outside of the family member that I live with, my cousin, I'm essentially on my own.

For the last 6 years I've been working in the low-income housing industry as a property manager, which is a job that has steadily whittled down my mental health to the point where in July I had to be told by my doctor that I need to take a week off because my anxiety was starting to negatively impact my physical health. Along with that, Arkansas is a state with poor job opportunities, poor quality of life, and for a gay man like myself, a very serious concern for safety. It's always been pretty bad for queer people where I live, as expected of the rural South, but within the last two years it's gotten worse. Including seeing openly hostile homophobic signs being displayed around the county courthouse.

My current housing is attached to the job, and is the only actual benefit that I have for what is otherwise a part-time job with no healthcare.

Because if that, myself and my cousin are working to move out of state to find a better life where both of us can find better work and I can live somewhere that I don't have to worry about personal safety for wanting to be openly gay. We've settled on Minnesota as a destination, but the cost of moving and settling in is looking like it's going to completely wipe our combined funds and my bank has denied me for any loans due to the fact that I haven't done anything on credit before.

So, we simply need help moving. We need help with getting out of a situation where we can only exist, not actually grow and have a better life. My job does not even pay enough to let me save up so that I can quit and take time to find a better life and better job, and since my housing is attached to the job, once I quit we'll have two weeks to be moved out.

All of the funds from this will go towards moving costs; moving truck rental, the trek from one side of the country to another, move-in costs for a new apartment, all of that. It would allow us to do all of this without getting there and having little to no money to survive on. Our current moving goal is to be on the road by October 5th or 6th, which is pretty soon, but the longer we wait the worse it gets for us.