Moving Sucks - Please Help

(I didn't realize how little we take pictures of ourselves/together until I needed one for this campaign. I'll post an update when both of us look presentable and not totally sleep-deprived.)

My name is Lix (or Rev, or <insert expletive of your choice here>) and I’m here today because We Need Money.

So we’re making a stupidly huge move from Massachusetts to Minnesota, and hoo boy apparently moving companies have decided that they’ll take your firstborn as payment thank you very much. Don’t have a kid and aren’t planning to get one? That’s okay, they’ll accept your eternal soul, too. (Arm and leg values have significantly decreased, apparently.)

My partner and I are disabled, and thereby low income. We get a fixed amount from Social Security every month, and that has slowly been taking a toll on our overall finances. Massachusetts is expensive as fuck and the federal government would actually very much prefer you to die before they give you a livable income, so after several years of trucking through, we’ve found ourselves at a crossroads (sans helpful demon): be homeless or move to Minnesota.

Since we like having basic human rights, we’re stuck moving. My father lives out there, and he’s a pretty cool dude, so it’s not all bad. It’s definitely better than being fricking homeless (again).

But moving is expensive. Stupidly so. So I am making this fundraiser to ask The Internet™ for help, because we can’t afford it on our own. For those that need me to lay it out in excruciating detail, I do so below. But if this is enough and you’re willing to donate, that’d be totally rad. The big green button is right there and you’re amazing.

Our move-in date in Minnesota is April 1st, 2018.

The nitty gritty:

My partner, Del, has a connective tissue disorder called hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. There’s a bunch of technical shit, but the gist of it is that collagen is the glue that holds your body together and his body decided it didn’t need to read the instructions on how to make it properly and it’s too late to start over, so now he’s both super flexible in really weird ways, and constantly in pain from locked muscles. See, when your collagen doesn’t work/you don’t have enough, your muscles are always wound tight to try to hold you together. That is, as you can imagine, both exhausting and painful. (If you’re curious about how much, go ahead and flex your arms and never relax them ever. Then imagine that all over your body. Yeah. Fun stuff.)

Folks lucky enough to have EDS also often find themselves diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome—or POTS, since literally no one will ever remember a technical name that long. POTS makes things so much more exciting, because it means that the most important muscle of all, your heart, has decided that it doesn’t like it when you do anything that makes it work harder. Like stairs. Or lifting your arms above your head. Or moving anything heavier than a gallon of milk. Or standing up from a sitting or laying down. And it lets you know by dropping your blood pressure and making you dangerously dizzy/lightheaded while banging against your ribs like an angry inmate. People who have it especially severely, like Del, have to be careful about how they even wash their hair, because having their arms up above heart-level for longer than ten seconds is Not Allowed.

Because of his EDS and POTS, Del can’t do any heavy lifting. (He carried a cat carrier up the stairs a couple of weeks ago and almost threw out his back. Then he tried to help me bring groceries up two days ago and nearly passed out. He’s 27. This sucks.) Which means that moving boxes and furniture is Not Going to Happen, especially when we live on the third floor with no elevator and it’s not like we can drive a moving truck up the stairs. Problem is, we don’t have anyone available here in MA to help us (except his mom, but guess where he got the EDS/POTS from) and I’m just one small, out of shape individual. As stubborn and protective of him as I am, I can’t move a whole apartment all by myself.*

Which brings us full circle: We need to hire a moving company. I’m happy to pay big, strong men to move our shit for us, but I don’t have a child to offer, and I’d rather keep my soul if possible, so we have to go the old-fashioned route and use Real Money. Because I have a car that I need to drive to MN, we need to find a company that will load the truck, drive the truck, and then unload the truck.**

So far, we’ve been quoted prices in the $3-$4k range, and we have like maybe $800 between us that need to go toward the actual move-in costs so we could really use your help here, Internet. We’re not dying and aren’t in desperate need of any surgery, but we’d really like to not be homeless, so (like everyone always says in these things) anything you can give will help. We’ve set the goal a little higher than the quoted prices in order to pay for pesky things like gas and a motel to sleep along the way, (caffeine will only go so far) but our main concern is the moving company. Turns out our parents were right all along and money really doesn’t grow on trees.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my bullshit, and I hope it was entertaining and/or convincing enough to coax you into donating. Seriously, any little bit helps.

Thanks again my dudes.

*I couldn’t figure out where to insert this without sounding like I was trying too hard, but it’s also important to note that Del has Asperger’s, and some pretty severe sensory processing issues because of it. This is what makes the money for a motel necessary; he cannot sleep in a car, or go 2-3 days without getting any sleep at all. It can and will cause a sensory meltdown, and he’s had enough of those in the last few years to last a lifetime for like five people. (Our current neighbors like to smoke and play loud, thumping music, and when they are politely asked to stop, tell us to fuck off and then crank the music louder. Because they’re such swell folks.) Also, because of the Asperger’s and the need for routine and certain comforts that come with it, a shelter is absolutely not an option. Hence why we will 100% be homeless if we can’t make this move.

**I have Anxiety™ and can’t drive a moving truck myself, but I’m the only one of the two of us with a license, so we need to hire an actual moving company and not just movers at each end of the trip. (There’s a lewd joke in there somewhere but I’m not clever enough to think of it. Damn.)