- J
My name is Yates. I am a 30-year-old Queer Black Femme who struggles with complex PTSD as a result of years of emotional, physical, financial, and sexual abuse that I've experienced at hands of my grandmother, my aunt, and my mother. My goal has always been financial independence so that I could go no-contact with my abusive family members and never have to speak to them again. Unfortunately, as a Millennial saddled with debt, I have yet to achieve this level of financial stability. And If I keep waiting to achieve it, I will indefinitely be exposing myself to an unhealthy environment that has taken an innumerable toll on my mental health. Below is a bit of my story.
In 2017, I was enrolled in the Master's program in Counseling Psychology at Temple University. My goal was to become a poetry therapist that specialized in working with QTPOC. I had enrolled in grad school part-time with the expectation that I would work full-time, attend night classes, and intern on weekends. I was unable to find an internship willing to accommodate a part-time schedule. At my day job as a paralegal, I filed a document that a client had signed because I had considered the client's signature approval. Why would they sign a document that wasn't approved? The client told me that they expected me to give the signed document back to them to look over it before I filed it, but I had never been trained to do so. My company didn't want to risk the client pulling their business from the firm, so my company fired me.
As much as I wanted to attend class and intern full-time, it would've been impossible for me to do so with no income. On top of this, I was in an unsafe living situation with a con artist who had attempted to claim squatter's rights in my home. To put it lightly, I had a nervous breakdown. I was overwhelmed and became like a child who simply wanted to go home. I called my aunt and we worked out a deal. If I moved in with my grandmother for one year and helped take care of her, then my aunt would front me the money that I needed to return to school and finish my Master's. I got rid of nearly all of my belongings and got on a plane from Philly to San Diego.
It didn't take long for me to realize that my expectation of finding comfort and safety "at home" had been misguided. My grandmother was queerphobic and verbally abused me until my suicide ideation was worse than ever. Each day, after working 8 hours at a job I hated and spending 2 hours commuting home, I would feed my grandmother and give her breathing treatments and pick her up in the middle of the night when she fell out of her bed, all while she called me "lazy" and a "fat dyke" and a "cheap whore." She would call my mother and read her excerpts from my diary over the phone while I was at work. And after a Craigslist date gone wrong in which a man tried to kidnap me, my grandmother never asked me if I was okay. Instead, she yelled at me for potentially putting her in danger.
A year came and went. My aunt never gave me the money as per our agreement. The cost of living in San Diego is so high, that I ended up accruing credit card debt and a car loan in addition to my student loans. My financial position became even worse than it was in Philly.
Despite my financial struggles, I couldn't handle another day of my grandmother's verbal abuse. In October 2018, I moved out of my grandmother's house on a Sunday morning while she and my mother were at church. I had told my mother about the abuse and that I was depressed and suicidal and that I needed to leave, but she didn't care. My mother was living alone in a 2-bedroom apartment. At no point did she offer to clear out the junk from her extra bedroom and let me stay there. My aunt and mother had full knowledge of my grandmother's abuse, which is why neither of them had been willing to move in with her. They had used my desperation to manipulate me into doing the job that they weren't willing to do. And after I moved out, they resented me for making them pick up the slack.
I had been living rent-free at my grandmother's house, so the added expense of rent was tough to manage but felt worth it for the sake of my mental health. In Winter 2018, my aunt made the executive decision to put my grandmother in a nursing home. Since I had a month-to-month lease, I asked my aunt if I could move back into my grandmother's house. My grandmother's abuse was the only reason that I had moved out and since she was no longer there, I hoped to move back in for 3-4 months to save up enough to move back to Philly. My aunt refused to let me move back in and changed the locks to keep me out of the house.
In June 2020, my grandmother passed away. I tried to revisit the subject of living in my grandmother's house, but my aunt still refused. She refused to let me see my grandmother's will and would simply change the subject whenever I tried to bring it up.
I ended up living in my new house for 2 years. It was tolerable, but I was socially isolated and missed all of my friends in Philly. Financially I was breaking even, which made it impossible to save up to move back to Philly and return to school.
In October 2020, I moved out of this house after several of my roommates ganged up on me to gaslight and harass me. They accused me of being responsible for various messes in the house that weren't my doing and they threatened to harm me if I didn't start "cleaning up after [myself] and acting like an adult." In reality, a friend that they had squatting in the house was responsible, but it was easier to blame me than to hold their friend accountable. Though this was a terrifying and stressful experience, I felt that it was the jolt I needed to finally return to Philly permanently.
My aunt took it upon herself to find me a new place to live. She paid the security deposit for me to move in without consulting me. The day I moved into my new home, I was given a different room than the one I was promised. I then found out that all five of my roommates were anti-maskers and Trump supporters and that one of my roommates was a registered sex offender that had been arrested twice for failure to register. One of my roommates has been extremely racist toward me and has asked me if I descend from slaves and if I celebrate Kwanzaa. She spoke out against the Black Lives Matter movement in favor of All Lives Matter and brought up George Floyd's police record as justification for him being murdered. Living with her has also been triggering for me because she goes through my mail, invades my privacy, violates my boundaries, and nags me just like my grandmother used to.
My aunt has not taken responsibility for putting me in this living situation without properly screening the roommates. In addition to my roommates' hostility, the room is more expensive than my previous room despite being smaller and the house having fewer amenities. I was barely keeping my head above water, only to get fired from my job in November 2020. My boss was a workaholic who expected me to match his 60+ hour weeks and required me to work in the office every day, even after a coworker whose cubicle was attached to mine tested positive for COVID-19. He offered me 4 hours of PTO to attend my grandmother's funeral instead of a 3-day bereavement leave and had no empathy whenever life events (the pandemic, my grandmother's death, harassment by my roommates, moving, etc.) affected my work performance.
It is now December 2020 and I feel further away from my goals than ever. I am unemployed and have to pay December rent with no idea how I will be able to pay such expensive rent with my unemployment check. My aunt and my mom are both aware that I am unemployed and have done nothing to help me. In fact, my mom just notified me that she will be moving into my grandmother's house. My grandmother's house has been vacant for the past 2 years, yet my mother chooses now when I'm unemployed and unsure of how I'll make ends meet to move into my grandmother's 3-bedroom house. Yet again, she has refused me a place to stay until I get back on my feet.
I have no job and no emotional or financial support from my family of origin. All I want is to get back to Philadelphia so I can be with my friends, who are my true family, and earn my graduate degree. A knee-jerk decision that I made while feeling overwhelmed has derailed my life for the past 3-and-a-half years. It's hard for me not to beat myself up for leaving Philly and for thinking that my family would ever help me or have my best interest in mind.
I created this GoFundMe because I literally don't know what else to do. I've spent hours crying and wishing I were dead and wondering what makes my mom and my aunt act the way they do. But now, I've accepted that our relationship is beyond repair and that neither of them will ever change. The above-mentioned stories are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the harm that they've enacted. They do not understand that these circumstances have affected everything from my credit score and my ability to plan for my future to my self-esteem and my ability to trust and form relationships with others. All I want is a fair shot at removing this negativity from my life and doing my best to rebuild.
I have set my fundraising goal to $5,000. My goal is to drive cross-country from San Diego to Philadelphia to start my new life after going no-contact with my mother and my aunt. The funds would go toward preventive maintenance on my car (new tires, oil change, tune-up, etc.), gas money, food, and room-and-board for my cross-country trip. Driving is the cheapest way for me to get to Philly and I have several friends who have offered me a place to stay once I get there.
Any donations received would be a huge help and would allow me to leave behind an unbearably painful chapter of my life. Going no-contact has been a fantasy of mine for the past decade and is a decision that I feel is necessary for my mental health and well-being. Now that I'm in my 30s, I want to prioritize my healing and work toward breaking generational curses so I can form healthier relationships and begin thinking about starting a family of my own.
I know funds are tight for many people right now with the pandemic and the holidays, but even a $1 donation would make a world of difference. I would really appreciate it if you could please donate and share my fundraiser.
Sincerely,
Yates
In 2017, I was enrolled in the Master's program in Counseling Psychology at Temple University. My goal was to become a poetry therapist that specialized in working with QTPOC. I had enrolled in grad school part-time with the expectation that I would work full-time, attend night classes, and intern on weekends. I was unable to find an internship willing to accommodate a part-time schedule. At my day job as a paralegal, I filed a document that a client had signed because I had considered the client's signature approval. Why would they sign a document that wasn't approved? The client told me that they expected me to give the signed document back to them to look over it before I filed it, but I had never been trained to do so. My company didn't want to risk the client pulling their business from the firm, so my company fired me.
As much as I wanted to attend class and intern full-time, it would've been impossible for me to do so with no income. On top of this, I was in an unsafe living situation with a con artist who had attempted to claim squatter's rights in my home. To put it lightly, I had a nervous breakdown. I was overwhelmed and became like a child who simply wanted to go home. I called my aunt and we worked out a deal. If I moved in with my grandmother for one year and helped take care of her, then my aunt would front me the money that I needed to return to school and finish my Master's. I got rid of nearly all of my belongings and got on a plane from Philly to San Diego.
It didn't take long for me to realize that my expectation of finding comfort and safety "at home" had been misguided. My grandmother was queerphobic and verbally abused me until my suicide ideation was worse than ever. Each day, after working 8 hours at a job I hated and spending 2 hours commuting home, I would feed my grandmother and give her breathing treatments and pick her up in the middle of the night when she fell out of her bed, all while she called me "lazy" and a "fat dyke" and a "cheap whore." She would call my mother and read her excerpts from my diary over the phone while I was at work. And after a Craigslist date gone wrong in which a man tried to kidnap me, my grandmother never asked me if I was okay. Instead, she yelled at me for potentially putting her in danger.
A year came and went. My aunt never gave me the money as per our agreement. The cost of living in San Diego is so high, that I ended up accruing credit card debt and a car loan in addition to my student loans. My financial position became even worse than it was in Philly.
Despite my financial struggles, I couldn't handle another day of my grandmother's verbal abuse. In October 2018, I moved out of my grandmother's house on a Sunday morning while she and my mother were at church. I had told my mother about the abuse and that I was depressed and suicidal and that I needed to leave, but she didn't care. My mother was living alone in a 2-bedroom apartment. At no point did she offer to clear out the junk from her extra bedroom and let me stay there. My aunt and mother had full knowledge of my grandmother's abuse, which is why neither of them had been willing to move in with her. They had used my desperation to manipulate me into doing the job that they weren't willing to do. And after I moved out, they resented me for making them pick up the slack.
I had been living rent-free at my grandmother's house, so the added expense of rent was tough to manage but felt worth it for the sake of my mental health. In Winter 2018, my aunt made the executive decision to put my grandmother in a nursing home. Since I had a month-to-month lease, I asked my aunt if I could move back into my grandmother's house. My grandmother's abuse was the only reason that I had moved out and since she was no longer there, I hoped to move back in for 3-4 months to save up enough to move back to Philly. My aunt refused to let me move back in and changed the locks to keep me out of the house.
In June 2020, my grandmother passed away. I tried to revisit the subject of living in my grandmother's house, but my aunt still refused. She refused to let me see my grandmother's will and would simply change the subject whenever I tried to bring it up.
I ended up living in my new house for 2 years. It was tolerable, but I was socially isolated and missed all of my friends in Philly. Financially I was breaking even, which made it impossible to save up to move back to Philly and return to school.
In October 2020, I moved out of this house after several of my roommates ganged up on me to gaslight and harass me. They accused me of being responsible for various messes in the house that weren't my doing and they threatened to harm me if I didn't start "cleaning up after [myself] and acting like an adult." In reality, a friend that they had squatting in the house was responsible, but it was easier to blame me than to hold their friend accountable. Though this was a terrifying and stressful experience, I felt that it was the jolt I needed to finally return to Philly permanently.
My aunt took it upon herself to find me a new place to live. She paid the security deposit for me to move in without consulting me. The day I moved into my new home, I was given a different room than the one I was promised. I then found out that all five of my roommates were anti-maskers and Trump supporters and that one of my roommates was a registered sex offender that had been arrested twice for failure to register. One of my roommates has been extremely racist toward me and has asked me if I descend from slaves and if I celebrate Kwanzaa. She spoke out against the Black Lives Matter movement in favor of All Lives Matter and brought up George Floyd's police record as justification for him being murdered. Living with her has also been triggering for me because she goes through my mail, invades my privacy, violates my boundaries, and nags me just like my grandmother used to.
My aunt has not taken responsibility for putting me in this living situation without properly screening the roommates. In addition to my roommates' hostility, the room is more expensive than my previous room despite being smaller and the house having fewer amenities. I was barely keeping my head above water, only to get fired from my job in November 2020. My boss was a workaholic who expected me to match his 60+ hour weeks and required me to work in the office every day, even after a coworker whose cubicle was attached to mine tested positive for COVID-19. He offered me 4 hours of PTO to attend my grandmother's funeral instead of a 3-day bereavement leave and had no empathy whenever life events (the pandemic, my grandmother's death, harassment by my roommates, moving, etc.) affected my work performance.
It is now December 2020 and I feel further away from my goals than ever. I am unemployed and have to pay December rent with no idea how I will be able to pay such expensive rent with my unemployment check. My aunt and my mom are both aware that I am unemployed and have done nothing to help me. In fact, my mom just notified me that she will be moving into my grandmother's house. My grandmother's house has been vacant for the past 2 years, yet my mother chooses now when I'm unemployed and unsure of how I'll make ends meet to move into my grandmother's 3-bedroom house. Yet again, she has refused me a place to stay until I get back on my feet.
I have no job and no emotional or financial support from my family of origin. All I want is to get back to Philadelphia so I can be with my friends, who are my true family, and earn my graduate degree. A knee-jerk decision that I made while feeling overwhelmed has derailed my life for the past 3-and-a-half years. It's hard for me not to beat myself up for leaving Philly and for thinking that my family would ever help me or have my best interest in mind.
I created this GoFundMe because I literally don't know what else to do. I've spent hours crying and wishing I were dead and wondering what makes my mom and my aunt act the way they do. But now, I've accepted that our relationship is beyond repair and that neither of them will ever change. The above-mentioned stories are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the harm that they've enacted. They do not understand that these circumstances have affected everything from my credit score and my ability to plan for my future to my self-esteem and my ability to trust and form relationships with others. All I want is a fair shot at removing this negativity from my life and doing my best to rebuild.
I have set my fundraising goal to $5,000. My goal is to drive cross-country from San Diego to Philadelphia to start my new life after going no-contact with my mother and my aunt. The funds would go toward preventive maintenance on my car (new tires, oil change, tune-up, etc.), gas money, food, and room-and-board for my cross-country trip. Driving is the cheapest way for me to get to Philly and I have several friends who have offered me a place to stay once I get there.
Any donations received would be a huge help and would allow me to leave behind an unbearably painful chapter of my life. Going no-contact has been a fantasy of mine for the past decade and is a decision that I feel is necessary for my mental health and well-being. Now that I'm in my 30s, I want to prioritize my healing and work toward breaking generational curses so I can form healthier relationships and begin thinking about starting a family of my own.
I know funds are tight for many people right now with the pandemic and the holidays, but even a $1 donation would make a world of difference. I would really appreciate it if you could please donate and share my fundraiser.
Sincerely,
Yates