Help Us Get To Safety!

Hello, lovely people! Thank you so much for finding our fundraiser/mutual aid request!

We are Eli (26) and Evren (27), two best friends living in the Netherlands. It's lovely to meet you, despite that it's under unfortunate circumstances.

We both currently live in abusive, restrictive, dangerous, and financially unstable households, and we are raising money together to help us move out and establish safe, independent homes.

Our friendship has become an incredibly important source of safety and support for both of us. We wanna see each other eating, and that's why we're doing this together. We are hoping that, with some help from others, we can finally leave the environments we’ve spent so long surviving in.

⚠️ Content warning:

This fundraiser discusses domestic psychological, physical and financial abuse, CSA, threats of violence, honor-based violence, and suicidality. Nothing is described graphically.

Please take care of yourself first! You never owe us your support at the expense of your own wellbeing!

Anonimity:

For our safety, we cannot publicly reveal our identities or location while we are still living in these households. We are therefore using the names Eli and Evren for now.

We understand that transparency matters, and we wish we could provide more identifying information. Unfortunately, doing so before we’re safely out could put us at risk.

Thank you for understanding!

If you want to skip the part about our personal situations because it is lengthy, or because of the content warnings, feel free to scroll until the following emoji: ⭐️.

You can then skip to what our goal is, how we mean to use the donations, and how you can help!

Evren's situation:

Hi! I’m Evren, a 27-year-old Dutch-Turkish, fat, mentally ill and most likely disabled/neurodivergent lesbian. I live with my abusive mother, while my abusive father lives nearby. Both of my parents are mentally unstable and have serious problems with regulating their emotions. This also caused me to be extremely parentified from a young age.

My father has physically and psychologically abused me throughout my life. Because of my sexuality, I have experienced threats to kill me, because I tainted the family name, and he has threatened to force me to take my own life. I keep him at arm’s length now, but cutting him off completely is difficult while we still live in the same town. The risk of honor-based violence still looms over me.

My mother has also been abusive (mostly psychologically and financially) throughout my life. She also was complicit in my CSA by my ex-stepfather. Although my mother superficially accepts my identity, she frequently ridicules and insults me, leans on me emotionally and financially, splits on me, and parentifies me. She is financially exploitative towards me, and I currently have no ability to refuse when she asks for money. She also has my bank card in her possession, and is entirely reliant on me, her child, to get by instead of working, while she is fit to do so.

I am currently on sickness benefit after losing my job because my mental health deteriorated severely, due to my past traumas and current home situation. I have grown up in extreme poverty, and I'm trying to break that cycle; I work when I can, but the mental health issues stemming from my traumas have made me a hollowed out version of myself that is busy surviving the day, over and over again, and can't do much else. I have experienced psychosis and a very severe depressive episode after the loss of my job, and I am currently receiving psychiatric care while waiting for therapy.

Despite being unable to work, I contribute a substantial amount of my income to my household. I have repeatedly tried to save enough to move out, but my savings are continually used for household expenses and my family’s needs. I have even ended up in debt that way. I am left with very little for my own necessities, let alone enough to save for independent housing.

I have lived with severe trauma, unsafety and instability for most of my life. As mentioned before, I am on a waiting list for therapy to process this. I want to recover, I want to heal, and I want to live, but trying to recover while remaining in the environment that is contributing to my deterioration has become an impossible cycle, which makes me quite suicidal. Everything I learn in therapy is undone by my home situation. I want the chance to build a life that isn’t entirely organized around surviving my home environment.

My sickness benefit is also time-limited, which makes establishing independence increasingly urgent.

One devastating thing that I have also recently learned from my psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse is that, if my mental state deteriorates further, I will not be fit for the diagnostics I'm waiting for. I need diagnoses to move further in my process to apply for disability before my sickness benefit expires.

All of this just feels like a vicious cycle that I desperately want to free myself from, but am unable to do alone.

Eli's situation:

Hi! I'm Eli, a 26-year-old indigenous Moroccan (Amazigh) gay trans man. I live with my extremely religious, conservative mother, whom cannot find out about my identity for my own safety—and neither can my family, and therefore most of my town. I can't be who I truly am here, and I constantly have to look over my shoulder, be misgendered and deadnamed, and walk on eggshells. It's taken an immense toll on my mental and physical health.

My mother and father (divorced) have been physically and psychologically abusive towards me throughout my life. I didn't speak to my father since teenhood, and he passed a few years ago. As an only child to first-generation immigrants who never mastered Dutch, I have suffered a lot of parentification and my mother has relied on me more than she should have financially. I also was heavily bullied throughout my childhood and teenage years, so I was not able to seek solace/refuge in the weekdays spent at school either. I still haven't had the room, safety or peace to process all of this and go to therapy for it. I'm constantly in fight-or-flight mode.

Being raised in a poor, muslim, and North-African household has been incredibly hard for me as an AFAB gay trans man, who is also alternative, mentally ill, and most likely neurodivergent. I am expected to be a good muslim "girl" and do the cooking, cleaning, be subservient to their demands, their religion, and values. If I fail to adhere to these rules and demands, I am punished through gossiping, belittlement, insults, and being told I shouldn't be here and there is no use in me being here.

As you can imagine, it is not only incredibly misogynistic and invalidating, but it also makes me feel heavily dysphoric and it absolutely further deteriorates my mental health. I try to stay resilient and find a middle ground where I don't make them too suspicious, but I express myself little by little so I am not breaking down from my dysphoria. I fail to mask and fit in most of the time. I am then not simply judged, but heavily ostracized and interrogated for it. They're slowly starting to catch on the further I try to find a balance between expressing myself safely and passing their standards, and there is definitely a sense of imminent danger forming.

If they find out about my identity, I will not only lose housing, but honor-based violence might follow as well.

I feel suffocated, trapped and like I'll never find a way out of a cage I have been put in since birth.

Whenever I have attempted to speak about my hardships or mental health to my mother, or expressed my own thoughts and opinions, I am either met with laughter and mockery, invalidation, or pure rage and threats to be kicked out. I can't imagine what will happen if she actually finds out about my gender identity and sexuality. I don't think my family will "simply" kick me out in that case, and that is not an exaggeration. In this household, I don't have any right to think my own thoughts, have agency, autonomy, or be my own person.

And I just can't take it anymore. I'm a man, and I want to speak the way I want, be addressed the way I want, dress the way I want, think the way I want, believe what I want, and be who I want to be, and deep down am.

This home situation has caused my mental health to be at an all-time low. Just like Evren, I am currently on sickness benefit and am stuck in a vicious cycle that I feel I cannot get out of. I'm saving up as much as I can, but it will probably take years for me to move out at this rate. I can't afford that. I struggle with a lot of suicidal ideation as is. But I want to live. I want to survive this and overcome this.

What we dream about:

We want a home. We want to go to queer events. We want to dress the way we want. We want Eli to be able to pursue gender-affirming care. We want to have friends over without fear. We want to experience queer relationships and queer joy.

We want ordinary things that many people get to take for granted.

We want to wake up somewhere peaceful.

We can't wait to meet the people we could become once all of this is behind us, and get to live our lives just the way we have always deserved and wanted to.

⭐️ Skip until here! ⭐️

Our goal:

Our goal is to move out of our current town and rent our own homes, so that we can finally live independently and safely.

We will split the funds and use them to establish two separate homes, ideally near one another so we can continue supporting each other.

The money will go toward:

We will keep records of our spending and, once it is safe for us to do so, provide updates and evidence of how the funds were used.

Our target is ~€15-20K.

This amount is based on the approximate costs of establishing two basic, independent households.

How you can help:

We thank you so much for reading.

We know it was quite a long read, but we felt like we had to explain how dire our situation is.

If you're able to share, engage with our content, or even donate—thank you, from the bottom of our hearts! We'll keep updating you along the way!