Stuart to Anissa: I don’t usually use social media to post or even like. In 2012 I joined Twitter and quickly found my voice here to be ignored as much as it was irl. But in 2023 on one of the most predatory and tone-deaf games I met my wife. That’s right we met on the Oceanic servers of Diablo Immortal. Shortly after server merge. I can show screenshots of me discussing with my officers. That she was either completely delusional or wrapped up in some weird game politics BS. But that’s another story. We lived in different states but talked most of the night, most nights. And will we could almost have been described to live in very different real life’s. What I found was we had an alignment that I had never experienced. We may not of agreed on who should run the country but we did on how. We didn’t always believe in the same solutions to for instance, education, but we agreed on the outcomes. I had never had an alignment like this with someone. And while it wasn’t exactly love yet, actually frighteningly more like when an AI falls out of alignment and mirrors you. It did be come it after we met in person in 2024. We visited each other for most of the middle of 2024. Before I moved down to Melbourne in October after losing my job. That’s when I became her carer. I had previously cared for my mum with cancer so I didn’t have any qualms even though I knew it can be harder with your partner. What I didn’t understand was how bad Lupus was. I had a passing knowledge, but mostly from things like House which gave us the friendly “It’s never Lupus.” Line. The bowel cancer my mum had made her suffer a lot. But the treatment had a rhythm. Treatment, sick, recovery, good day, treatment. But Lupus can hammer you all day and give you 5 mins of energy. Or you can be fine for all intents and purposes, just tired to some degree. That’s the part most of us see if we have a friend or family with lupus. Because when they are bad they can’t turn up to dinner. One of the main triggers, stress. And everything is stress these days. Online/offline, I don’t need to tell you it’s an epidemic that spreads worse than Covid. But when I get stressed I get angry or grumpy or I don’t want to interact with the world. When she gets stressed she can barely get out of bed and that’s mostly to throw up. When she’s super bad, like she has been for the last 4 months since a family member basically cut her off for being sick. Then me being anything but calm and helpful will send her spiraling. So we are in a situation now where she hasn’t been out of the house to do much more than GP visits since December. Our improvised setup won’t cut it. Our car can take a mattress or a wheelchair. It can’t easily take both. We basically have to choose if she gets the ability to rest when we go places or the ability to get out and do things. And while we are trying to figure a way to trade the car to get the van we need and she now dreams of, we just aren’t in the financial state to pull it off on 2 pensions and in debt. So she started a go fund me. She been trying to do it herself and it’s well not going great. So I thought I would give her a hand, but I’ve never been a fan of money. Sure it would solve a lot of our immediate issues. Don’t get me wrong donate if you can it will help. But a lot of us can’t, it’s just bad out there and I understand. The thing that bothers me the most is that lately she feels like nothing matters. Nothing will change. We are doing our best and we are failing now, but if you start believing that it can’t get better you can’t win a fight like she has to every day.