Above is a picture of happier times: me and my husband 7 years ago, during our engagement photoshoot, on the beach in Southern California. As of the time of this writing, I have not worked for a year and a month (apart from 2 temp jobs in February 2025 that lasted only 3 weeks). I've been disabled for 12 years, but my health has declined sharply over the past year--both physical and mental. Despite this, I have still been fervently hunting for a job--and have turned up nothing. The job market actually is that bad. As a result, even though we were already living paycheck to paycheck, my husband has taken on an enormous amount of overtime in order to pay my half of the rent. Last week, he informed me that he got in trouble with his boss's boss for taking on so much overtime. My husband paying my rent is not sustainable. And even if it were? I still have to come up with the money to pay the rest of my bills--and the money has run out.

Over the past year, I collected unemployment from the state, but the funds ran out this past August. I applied for and was granted a short-term state disability claim, which my doctor stated SHOULD have lasted until February of 2026--it did not. The disability funds paid from August to November. They are now gone.

So is our savings. There's nothing left.

I'm still hunting for a job. I'm starting to lose hope. I can re-open my unemployment claim next calendar year, but it takes four to six weeks for those applications to go through. Effectively, I have no way to pay my car, car insurance, and other crucial bills for December of 2025 and January and February of 2026. And after that, I need to be ready to start paying rent, because my husband can't keep going with pulling overtime like he is for long. It's straining his mental health, his physical health, and the health of our marriage.

On top of all of that, my husband and I are cohabitating with my parents. They are not able to help us financially. They have been of no help whatsoever--quite the opposite. They have not taken my unemployment and disability well. They've stated outright that, the second they find a house they can afford, they plan on moving 2 counties away and leaving us high and dry.

Now, we have a backup plan, and that is moving in with my husband's parents. But his mother has NEVER approved of me (she believes that my being disabled is a burden on my husband and that he should have never married me), and if we do that, the target of parental verbal abuse will switch from me to him--and I cannot do that to him. I love him too much to put him through that.

I have already exhausted all potential leads in receiving aid from state and local governments, and local private institutions such as churches and food pantries. There is not enough to go around. Everyone is suffering. I've been turned away everywhere I try. So, I'm asking the internet--you all--for help.

The total amount of this GoFundMe is for the non-rent bills, food, gas, and vitamins I need to pay for by the end of February of 2026. If it looks like a lot, that's because it is--not only is the cost of living in Southern California quite high, but I'm already behind on several payments, AND there's a massive annual charge about to debit from our account in January. Normally I wouldn't care about stuff like credit cards, but I HAVE to keep my credit score up if we have any hope of moving out of here.

Any money raised beyond that will be used to pay my half of the rent, so that my husband will be safe from job loss. If I manage to get a job before February, any money raised will go straight into our savings--so that we can get the hell out of this house, and move somewhere where neither of us has to take abuse anymore just to survive.