#i mean i wrote every day of my life until ptsd ruined my brain and i had a break for six years

[gnaarmokboatingshack-blog]

I'll think of which pieces I've written are my favourites when I get out of bed.... 😴

#i only started writing 5 or 6 months ago.... so strange to think of that #i mean i wrote every day of my life until ptsd ruined my brain and i had a break for six years

[grey-water-colors]

After All This Time (Bucky Barnes X Fem!Reader) Part 2

I went ahead and wrote the second chapter, I was so excited. I did a lot of research on PTSD and the triggers. I may not have a full grasp on it, but I hope I at least got some of it right. I feel kinda iffy on writing the characters, but I did my best to stay true to who they are. I hope you like this chapter!

Summary: The real world is a scary place, even more so when you’re alone. You live alone in a apartment filed with the ghosts of your memories. You’ve both changed since you last met your fiancé, but can love mend the gap after all this time.

Pairing: Bucky X Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of torture, violence, yelling. Talks about triggers and PTSD. Mentions of death and killing. If there are any that I missed please let me know!

Word Count: 2,492

Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Steve, I don’t understand why you’re dragging me out here to this museum.”

“They told me that they made a new addition to the Captain America exhibit and I didn’t want to go alone.”

Bucky clenched his vibranium hand and continued to follow Steve. “Did they at least tell you what it’s about?”

Steve sighed, “No, they didn’t. I wish they had though, I hate going into these things blind. Who knows what they’ve dug up.

“Steve, did you find it?”

“Uh, yeah Buck. I don’t think you want to see it though. It’s something they had no business digging in”

“What is it Steve. And don’t even think of lying to me, I know you too well.”

Steve sighed and led Bucky to the new exhibit. A memorial just like Bucky’s, but it was dedicated to Y/N L/N.

Bucky scoffed but read it out loud anyways. “Y/N L/N was a childhood friend of both Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Y/N met the two in 1923 and they were close ever since. In 1941 record says that she became engaged to Sargent Barnes, but never married. Y/N was drafted as an Army Nurse but died in Germany in 1944.” A picture of her before the war and in a case were her dog tags, which was weird. If she hadn’t been found, how were her tags here.

Bucky trailed off, the rest just going on about what kind of person she was. They stood in silence for a while, both staring at her picture. Steve finally broke the silence, “How much of her do you remember?”

Bucky looked away and tried to remember the girl in front of him. Flashes of smiles, tears, and laughter floated through his head, but he could only focus on one memory.

“I don’t remember her before the war.” Steve’s head moved to look at Bucky so fast that his neck cracked.

“What do you mean before the war Buck.”

He looked at Steve and backed up until he could collapse on a bench. A deep breath then, “I remember seeing her when I was the Winter Soldier. I vaguely remember a mission, maybe a couple, and then an order. I couldn’t help myself. All I could do was watch as I choked her to death, them dragging her away after declaring her dead.”

He shook his head as if he could erase the memory, make it disappear to never see again.

“If you killed her-“ Steve paused, “If you went on missions with her then she didn’t die in 1944. She was captured by Hydra. Then there could be a possibility that she, well that she could still be alive. Could it be possible that it was staged? Buck is there any chance at all that she could still be alive?”

Bucky shook his head again and looked at his hands. “I felt it Steve, I felt her neck crush. There’s no way she survived that.”

He took a deep sigh and felt the world shift, his heart plummeted to the ground as he realized the full gravity of what happened. “Oh god. Oh god, I killed her. I killed my fiancé, Steve.”

Steve just sat down next to Bucky, still in shock. She had been a good friend to Steve. They had come from similar backgrounds, hell they had grown up together, she understood him in a way that Bucky never could have at the time. She had been there when needed and even when she wasn’t. A ray of sunshine in a dreary New York. He had taken a picture of them after Bucky had proposed. They were all so happy.

It shook Steve to his core that Hydra had gotten their hands on her. He couldn’t imagine the horrors that she had gone through, might still be going through much like his best friend. Was she as much of a shell as Bucky?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It felt good to walk into her apartment without having to break in. She had hassled every office and bank that had her name in its databases to get her back as a registered live, human being. And to get electricity and water going to her place.

She had already been living in the apartment, but now she could cook, light a fire, and make noise. With her accounts opened again, she bought a couple pairs of clothes to wear while she cleaned the place.

Starting with the kitchen she cleaned every surface, threw away all the canned food that had been left behind.

By the time she had finished cleaning, she was physically exhausted, but she couldn’t bring herself to sleep in the master bedroom. She had managed to turn off her emotions for the day. No tears had been spilled because there had been work to get done. But her new superpower didn’t work now that she had nothing to do. Y/N stood in the middle of the living room desperately trying to stuff her emotions back into the box they had been in, but they had seen their chance and taken it.

Tears filled her eyes and she took her first real look around the place she had once called home. It was like she had never left at all. A place for everything and everything in its place. She turned to face the worn leather wingback. The thick blanket draped over the back just like it always had. She shuffled over to the chair and sat down in it. The leather was cold but familiar with the smell of her life before the war. Ghosts of days past floated through the air around her. She curled up in the chair, thick blanket pulled over her.

Things had been so easy then, and it would be so easy now to just fall back into that time when everything was perfect. Except the person that had helped make it perfect wasn’t here. A tear fell from her cheek onto the leather, and she quickly brushed it off not wanting to ruin the chair.

As she was wallowing in self-pity, a fight broke out on the street below her window, voices piercing the air and pulling her back to a place she never wanted to go again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Project Cecilia had become a nightmare. A nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. The project was a testing ground of trial and error. They tested the trial serums, triggers, enforcers, and everything else to make sure that they wouldn’t damage whoever took the role of Winter Soldier. The project was named after the scientist who did most of the testing.

The serums were bad, it felt like lighting her blood on fire, like hell itself was inside her. But trigger testing was far worse. For every test or experiment, a trigger experiment came after. Is sound more effective than smell? Are words better than sounds? What kind of words work better than others?

Trial and error for over 30 different types of triggers until they settled on a list of words that would mean something to the Winter Soldier. Her mind was blocked off so carefully that she couldn’t remember anything before the last trigger.

Here she was, testing how much electricity a super soldier could take before things started to shut down. And then the doctor walked in. Constantine Cecilia was the man who haunted her dreams. She couldn’t ever quite remember who he was, but somehow she knew that when he arrived, things would be bad.

“How is our little rabbit doing today? I believe a congratulations are in order, you finished testing.”

He put on plastic gloves and his assistant walked up to them both. “She’s due for sound this time.”

The doctor smiled. “Good good.”

Things were going well; the set-up went smoothly. She was ready to receive the trigger, the thing her mind would take as a trauma to seal away all of the bad.

But then a fight broke out, and then people were yelling, screaming at each other. The trigger was set.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shuri had done her best at getting rid of the physical effect of the triggers, and by best, she was completely successful. Unfortunately, there was still an emotional effect that came with the triggers. Certain smells, sounds, colors, and even sometimes emotions would send her spiraling into a memory. Most were memories that terrified her, they brought her back to Hydra and their torture. Some were good, like remembering life before the war.

They happened less at home, surrounded by memories of a past that never hurt. The outside world was what tortured her. Going outside was like sentencing herself to relive the worst of her life.

And she remembered it all. Hydra had done such a good job of playing Tetris with her brain that every time that Shuri released a trigger, she remembered everything. Y/N bet that Dr. Cecilia was laughing in his grave at her tragedy.

Y/N fell asleep under the thick blanket on the chair of the man she had loved more than anything else in the whole world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Y/N decided to visit the Veterans Center, hoping that they magically had the cure for what Shuri called PTSD. She walked inside and was met with the smell of burnt coffee and laughter down the hall. She followed the noise until she came to what looked like a break room, or a very poor excuse for a kitchen.

A tall man took notice of her and he excused himself to go talk to her.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“I, uhh, came here to talk to someone, hopefully.” Y/N cursed herself for feeling so small. She was a veteran after all. She just fought in a different war.

“Are you a vet?”

“Yes?”

He smiled, “Well then welcome. My name is Sam Wilson. I help run this place. Mostly I work with the people though. Business isn’t really my style.”

Y/N gave a weak smile.

Sam spoke up again, much to her relief. “Why don’t we go somewhere to talk so we aren’t standing in a door way.”

She merely nodded and followed Sam to a room with foldable chairs and a couple beat up sofas.

After they had sat down, and awkward silence filled the air. Sam cleared his throat, “So what’s your name?”

Y/N took a deep breath and “My name is Y/N”

Sam nodded. “What war did you serve in Y/N?”

She froze, of course she could just answer him. She heard there was a whole museum dedicated to the two oldest people on the planet, so why was it so hard?

“You don’t have to tell me if you aren’t comfortable with it. I’m not going to force you into anything here. It’s a safe place.” The genuinely caring smile on his face helped her relax.

“I fought in World War II.”

Sam looked startled for a second. “Excuse me?”

“I was a nurse with the Red Cross in World War II.”

She watched as Sam’s shoulders dropped. Y/N prepared to fight, to tell him that it was true, without going through the horrors that she had witnessed. She prepared to give him the riot act like she had for every person who hadn’t believed her at the bank and social security office.

Instead, he started laughing. “Man, I wonder how many more of you there are out there,” Sam said between breaths.

The look of confusion on her face must have put more puzzle pieces together for him at how lost she really was.

“You… You actually believe me?”

“Yeah I do! I work with the other two.”

She suddenly felt cold, like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. While Shuri had told her about James, or Bucky, and about Steve and how they both lived in New York in the Avengers Compound, it had never occurred to her that they were so close. So close, yet so far away. Her heart dropped.

“How exactly do you know them? You said you worked with them, so you must be an Avenger I suppose.”

“How much do you know about this time and place?”

She felt, for the first time since she left Wakanda, that someone understood. Only a fraction maybe, but an understanding all the same. Sam somehow knew that she didn’t know much about the present she found herself in. She didn’t really care to learn either though, the world was scary, and she had to face it alone for the first time in her life.

“Not much. I’ve only been off ice for about 9 and a half months now. Most of that was spent in Wakanda, while Shuri worked on getting rid of my triggers.” The more she talked the more Sam’s face filled with understanding and horror and that scared her.

“You were captured by Hydra weren’t you?”

All she could do was nod, her head held low.

“I won’t ask about that. I know better than that. I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors you’ve been through.

“Well, I’m the Falcon, I fly and I see things really well with my goggles. Other than that I’m just a human, no serum or anything.”

It was like all she could do was nod her head, she had been robbed of words.

“Would it be ok if I went home?”

“Of course! Nothing is keeping you here. I’m glad we met, and you’re more than welcome to come by anytime at all. We do close at 9 pm, but here’s my phone number if you need anything after those hours.”

More nodding. Y/N rushed home.

The first thing she did was climb into the chair, drape the blanket over her, and tell a ghost of what happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Sam are you ok? You seem distracted today”

“Yeah. Yeah man I’m good.” Sam looked at Steve for a minute. “Say have you ever met someone named Y/N L/N? She came into the VA today and when I asked what war she fought in she said WWII. She was captured by Hydra. I didn’t press her on it, she got that same look that Bucky does when it gets brought up.”

Steve froze. “What was her name?”

“Y/N L/N, do you know her?”

“Are you sure about what you told me?”

“Yeah. Why? What’s going on?”

“What did she look like?”

“She had H/L hair and E/C eyes. She was about yay-tall” Sam held up a hand to about her height. “Again, do you know her?”

“I promise I’ll tell you later, but I gotta go.”

Steve took off running through the compound until he got to Bucky’s door. He hadn’t seen Bucky since the museum, but this was important. He pounded on the door, “Buck! Bucky! Open the door!”

A quiet mumbled “Go away Steve” came as a response.

“Bucky,” Steve pleaded. “She’s alive. Sam met her today.”

Silence.

Then the door opened. “Where?”

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky x you #bucky barnes #bucky fic #mcu #x reader #x female reader #marvel #marvel imagine #bucky barnes au #reader insert #mcu imagine #marvel universe #the avengers

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga Continues…

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle committing to right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals/Friends: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

#transcrowdfund #trans crowd fund #please help #please consider donating #donation #donations

[threenorth]

Tw dentist, blood doctors and maybe more i don't know it's ment to be a vent...ptsd horror I don't fucking know... Just leave I've warned you enough.. You can read whatever you fucking want.

Here's a vent that might take you forever to see, and i guess that's how it goes now.

To whoever finds me in my state of mind where there is only me and my battles of my own mind.

Thanks for what i assumed was coming to wish my happy birthday, i guess now it's not you, i thought id come clean and then to see you say you didn't know...

God i hate anons. Y'know? Can't they just tell us who they fucking are...and if i find out it's you later I'm going to more hurt, but i can take the hurt.

I will never do any of those things. It hurts you think I would, i got really fucked up a few weeks ago from everything that's happened this year and I'm haunted from a kiss, I've had to suppress my sexual activetly around you incase it brought you truma, so I found photos of things i thought was attractive and ultimately being undiagnosed autisc i guess there's alot I've had to learn the past 3 years... Let alone 7...everyday is beautiful and i face my demons and I'm winning some fights but now I've lost my reason to fight them, when i went to the gym and i can't do another push up i tell myself one more because it's a step closer to being able to pick you up and carry you over the line, not to do the other things you say.

But it's hard when all you can see is the other side of the coin, I thought id show you how much you mean to me, I don't think you should move away from the things, I just wanted to show you that i could of reached out but when i did it was only in an emergency... Your voice calms my seas like nothing else, now all i had was repeats of things that you said i guess now I'll have to live with your new words being painful ones...

I want to rebuild us, but now it's gone.

We need to talk, but we never can be on the same page, time is foward's and backwards you face your last battles because of me, i face mt first because I finally was brave enough to try ask for help because of you.

i guess we're both in bad places but i said i would get hurt for you, i want you to clear your plate but i guess i'm adding to it, but it only get better... Well for one of us...

but everytime it's a fight now, i tried to come to help at the time i saw what i thought was your sign for help. now i feel like no face from spirited away just another soul.

You once told me you wish people would fight over you, yeah little did you know then i wanted you but it seems you later we did too.

But i remember everything, about you it's taking up my memory because everything i choose to do, it's about you.

But I'll leave my socials how they are, if you want in my brain your find the fragments from June 2014 to September 2021, each blog post one thing in it was about you or something in my day.

If you want to find me, you know where I can be found.

In my letters i apologise for my actions, to everyone and try to talk to them.

I wanted to get to know them, but i guess i never will be able to either.

I even tell your father that i would always have an account for you with 5000 dollars it in so you can always go wherever you need to go.

I tell your father to exchange letters with your mother, where i tell her it would be nice to have Brunch with her.

I'm not a perfect person, but everyday i try to get my life back and every crossroad has your name on it.

Your wish is my command,

I hope you remember one thing from me.

I always tried my best for you, even if i knew at some stage your find out... I'm just sorry that I can't build a freindship with you when you mean so much to me aswell...

So herd about the police call.yeahhh that one was pretty bad but...

Did you know i called a safe shelter for you to ask pricing that i would of paid for?

I was loosing my mind but i said i would do anything so i guess my anything is walking away once more because that's what's asked, I want you to know I'm proud of you, your doing an only fans, the girl who told me she didn't want to wear a bikini because she was scared about her scars.

You truly are as beautiful as i saw, even if you didn't see it.

I guess i will never be able to be what i want to be, you are only person I've ever felt remotely anything for who understood me when my words don't work for anyone, but even when i didn't speak the ones i wanted you knew i suffered, yes i did but your voice heals my voids and makes me feel alive and now that I'm finally coming back all i want is you to sing to me, like i sung to you.

I'm ruined and broken, but to see you smile it's something that warms my heart like nothing I've felt.

I wrote about everytime i saw your face i saw the truma of the horror movie trailer, i saw your face and the horror on the screen, the lights the horror I couldn't do it because all i saw was you suffering.

I called the hospital twice and because i wasn't in harm to myself they didn't care, but i still kept my promise to you not to self harm, they didn't ask if I felt like it oh i surely did but i couldn't break a promise and see you in tears.

Do i want to die? Everyday my life without you.

Will I? No because everyday is full of pain i can feel again because of you,this sounds awful but the pain of having a good job because i remained here because of you.

I tell you father that we don't have much but he can take my life, and take it for every cent because it doesn't mean anything to me every paycheck i tried to save some money to help you out, and now i got new costs that i didn't plan on since my meltdown...

I will tell you many things but this one was supposed to be a surpise... In 2014 i asked someone if he wanted to help me make a song.

Some how being ignorant, he posted some of my songs lyrics to a website called something awful forum.

Eventually someone got in contact with me anf told me he did but something magical happened that a kiwi guy saw the song and put chords on it.

He modified it a little but in turn i could enter s contest for song lyrics, i came third.

Here's my song performance by nitton.

I would check the mail everyday hoping for a post card, but I've bounced around the place so many times that part would would say it's in the lost mail section of the post office.

I made this song when i first saw your smile and it melted me away but I told myself not to talk to you because you were younger than me but we became freind's then you became my best freinds then you became my lover then we broke apart then somehow because that's our relationship we met face to face, i left to suffer in my mental state or never being able to have you ever and try do college and now i rebuild my puzzle and piece I'm looking for is around your neck, you are my final piece, i knew you were special to me, but i hadn't known how special you would be...and still are.

She asked me how I was and i said good.

I lied to protect the ones you love.

I lied to survive another day to see you.

The days we didn't talk had been the hardest on me and now the days i talk to you are the hardest on you.

My problems fly away when i see your smile.

I wished it could be everyday forever...

But it keeps falling to pieces.

I have missing pecies but i don't notice my faults when you are with me i feel whole and complete.

Maybe the fault was the stars i saw in your eyes.

Maybe i am the pain I feared i was, i would tattoo my face to change it so all you can see is me but i grew my hair out like I've wanted and i grew my beard out needs a bit of trim but i wanted to show you that i have changed things have changed alot for me just as much as you.

But every wind blow in my hair feels like your hands in my hair...

I went to the dentist, got a clean done and this is hard on anyone but for me the sounds are so much worse being autisc, and then getting two cavities, i was in pain suffering from all the times I've had prior but I found peace in my pain reminding me I'm alive i felt your arm holding my hand, telling me everything will be okay and I let go of my pain and suffering from dentists and still hate the sound but...

I went for my covid injection, i had a mental issue on the way there but i didn't feel my pain you told me that I was okay and this is a new chapter for me.

In the day after talking to the people across the country. I had been in hospital, they had taken my blood i asked for not having a nerve block on my arm maybe it was the anti-pychs but i didn't really feel it this time, my nurse (male) was. Named the same as one of my bully's, the only one to apologise to me for making my life hell.

I don't feel pain anymore, but I do feel remorse and regret i guess i'm finally a man but a man in progress as I'm awaiting to tell them about my pain and suffering I've been through to maybe get meds. Everyday I wake up since 2014 and think i hope your okay, but i saw your face and the horror on the screen your face causes me pain but i can take it and eat it away until my demise of being bullied one night in a bar, I'm glad i didn't do anything stupid but i sure as hell felt it but then i remember that my job would be in jeopardy.

I never planned coming back to Colorado unless i need to and if that means wearing a gps tracker your see the only place i would go would be to the amc, the place my life begun and ended within minutes of each other, i might go up on that rock and scream out that I'm such a fuck up.

If i become famous in my song writing, i told myself I'd never tour colorado.

I would give you every grain of truth but when you say yours I'm in tears you think I'm capable of those things, I'm still haunted by our kiss.

Didn't he tell you that? I said i didn't ask permission to kiss you.

What do you think that means?

I had my rules for being with you and i started horrible habits to deal with my other parts.

I've given that up many moons ago, but you can't be here to believe me, my words feel powerless and weightless because you can't see my world, i see yours through a tinted widow that's how we are.

My words are often misconception and miskewed...

You may never understand my disabilities or my issues I face daily, I don't even know if I'm going to be able to drive yet... but i face them because you gave me hope for better things to come on my hardest days.

I tell you that i would of searched and this comes across like that word you use.. No I'm trying to say that i said would of looked everywhere for you, you are so fucking special to me, you don't have a fucking idea how special.

but you right where i left you, you are the best thing i saw in co, you are the best thing to happen to me in 27 years including college graduation and maybe even being told i would be hired full time... Maybe your be lucky enough to get a full time job.

I told him that every line there would be she can shortcut the line, he didn't even budge to see the lie when i named your demons with one being a lie, he doesn't fucking care about you the way i do, he can't even give a shit to make a fucking comprise on diet for you, you have dated him for 5-6 years. He's a complete douche bag.

He's never going to understand your hints..you see for me i had to analyse every word and every phrase and every gesture to try understand you and i failed to see the ones when you got broken.

I failed to see the time you were trumantised, but you saw me suffering and you made me feel at ease, but i opened my eyes to soon why couldn't you tell me it was over, why couldn't you see that..because you like horror and I've hated it...

that comes across like s- so fucking be it, i know more about you then most people.

I want what's best for you so i guess what's best for you now is that i never get to tell you that I've thought about you everyday expect once, for 7 years.

I guess I'll never tell you how in my darkest hours you push me.

I guess I'll never tell you that i would marry you on my best days and my worse days.

I guess your never find out what you want to know because I've offered to try mend but all I do fucking bend.

I said it once but ill change my words.

I don't know if it's me, well now i know its not.

I hope who ever it is you choose they at least have the fucking desire to learn everything they can.

And maybe they might understand how to ground people in the right way, and not tell them that reailty was wrong, i know you and i don't know what he knew about me, but he could of asked me anything.

In my letter to him i had planned to tell him you should of put a god damn ring on that finger i felt i should of many years ago but I couldn't, can't you see we had to do college and all this other shit...

Within 3 months of dating you i would of asked...

He's had fucking 5-6 years 3-4 more years with you then i ever did, he's a fucking idiot.

But if you love him, go ask him to marry you and don't wait for your fucking mental ex to come back,but you did... You waited for the perfect man I'll tell you I'm not perfect but I've made peace that I'm not, i just wanted to hold you in my arms as i cry on the days i think my pillow is you.

You say you threw out my favourite t-shirt.

I have to believe that, you say many things...

I would of asked for your hand a few months ago but didn't see the laws regarding that marriage is that i have to be in mountains , and file a record to the courts but if i return to mountains i know I'll be shackled more then i have been prior in my mental health.

If you needed blood on a surgery it's a shame I'm the same type,they may tell me it's risky to give more than a certain ammout but i would tell them to risk everydrop for you, i wonder if we're kidney matches, because i would give you my kidney.

If you wanted the moon i would find a way to legally name a crater for you, i wish i had more money to pay your surgery in full, but if you were here my medical insurance would cover most of it.

I would do anything for you and i guess the one thing you can't get from me is the thing you will get. A painful memory that when i tried my best to rebuild my life again and hearing you speak to me i should of just left you alone but I couldn't help it all I've ever done and wanted was to be yours, I wanted a tech job paying well to look after you i wanted to be in San Francisco we both loved the bay. If you need anything at all, i won't provide it because it's already been given you gave me my life and it belongs to you, you can do whatever you want to it. You want it gone so hes.

[cosmosogler]

hi.

last night my brother screamed at his computer until around 1:30 even though i went to bed at 12:45. i finally dozed off around 2.

when my alarm went off at 9 i was so tired from not sleeping and from comicon that i slept in for 45 minutes. my brother was already up and screaming at his computer by 9.

i took a shower... needed to get the glitter from yesterday off. i scrubbed a little bit before bed last night but dumping water on myself for 20 minutes helped more. mom made french toast. i got real sick after trying it.

i mostly bummed around watching youtube videos until 12:30 when i needed to start getting ready for therapy. i got to the facility on time and filled out the daily check in stuff and blah blah blah. i really didn’t want to go, but i wanted to interact with mom and dad less than that. dad already had some judgmental things to say as i was leaving. something about honoring our veterans.

i tried to avoid over-participating in therapy today but got kind of dog piled during my check in. i kept it focused on what i did and not how i felt. i think that kept everyone pretty distracted. the therapist commented that i had done up my nails and looked really good and it was good to see me taking care of myself. i said i only did it for the costume but she didn’t respond or look like she had heard me.

also i feel even worse than usual so i thought maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring that up just to rain on their parade.

that sounds really, really stupid when i write it and look at what i just wrote.

but i didn’t want to be dour just for the sake of riling them up! i did that dumb thing where i would recount something bad that happened and laugh and then apparently immediately stop smiling. the therapist says i do that a lot. she said nobody else is laughing with me and i was thinking “just let me have this.”

sooo... we talked about boundaries today and co-dependence, which are important to talk about. more direct communication. how some people have rigid boundaries and some have porous, and in different situations, and how that can get out of control. i said i felt like i had porous boundaries and then the therapist was all “i see you as more of a rigid-boundaries person” and rated it 70/30. she asked if i had ever been open and honest with anyone which created a great launch pad for a list of people who snubbed me. 

i need to be more direct about what i need from therapy. but i really, REALLY don’t want to spend 3 hours complaining about people i don’t like. which seems to be necessary to explain why i don’t like people. 

i guess nobody knew that mom used to beat me when i was little because everyone got kind of quiet when i mentioned it when we were talking about physical boundaries. i forgot to mention that i had already called child services when i brought up she maybe hits my brother too... maybe wednesday. 

um... i refused to participate when we talked about sexual boundaries.

and i talked about how i don’t really feel anything when i do big favors for people. like when i drove leah to the hospital and stayed there with her all night. she never even thanked me. and... i mean, it’s hard to thank someone in that situation.

well, no it’s not... i didn’t have trouble thanking bradley or hogan when they drove me to and from the hospital back in january.

mm.

and thinking about everything i did for craig for literally nothing makes me too furious to think about anything else so i will try to avoid that road for now. maybe later.

now i’m getting angry about other stuff. i poured my heart and soul into my relationship with jim. i did everything i could to communicate clearly and be open and trust as best i could (maybe not incredible amounts of trust, but, enough to expect him to tell me when things weren’t working out any more). and he DITCHED ME WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i spent 12 years of my life being friends with that guy. do you know how much growing it took for me to start being able to have actual, like, friendship activities with him? how hard i worked to learn how to be a good friend and treat people better?

i’m not saying he owes me anything. but, like, a “this isn’t working, i’d like to stop talking for a while” would have been nice.

but no.

the therapist says i spend a lot of my time living in the past, and yeah... i have trouble letting go of my anger and frustration. i feel like if i don’t hold on to it and etch it into myself it won’t have been real. if i stop being angry everyone just gets relieved and smooths it over and goes back to their lives. “forgive and forget,” the christian school kids used to sneer at me after, like, spitting on me. that happened.

i can’t forgive or forget because that would be letting the bullies win. and i’m stubborn and hate when bad people get away with everything. that’s probably why i can’t let go of the craig stuff either. because i was a bad person, so i got what i deserved. and i have to remind myself of that every day, because that’s justice.

that and isn’t an aspect of ptsd, like, being stuck reliving the same events over and over even if you don’t want to any more? i mean, i get flashbacks. i don’t know if they’re real memories or not any more... but sometimes they come on and i literally cannot focus on anything that is happening in the present because i can feel what happened. the thoughts just kind of waltz in, ruin my day, and then leave, and then my day is ruined and i’m frustrated because it wasn’t real that time and i’m letting it ruin my day.

and, i feel like, if i don’t let it ruin my life, then that makes what happened ok, because it’s fine now!!! it doesn’t matter what happened, because it’s not happening any more!!! like the crime never happened, because the evidence is eroded out. but it did happen. and until someone who was there fricking acknowledges that it happened it needs to stay right where it is and FESTER until it smells so bad they have to recognize it.

does that make me feel better? no. but justice. i can’t sit back and say “well, karma will get him someday,” because that’s super vague and probably won’t actually happen because good things always happen to bad people. even hitler wasn’t brought to justice. he just killed himself. and his family. he never had to sit and look at what he did.

it feels wrong to move on unless something changes, or the event becomes real.

things i see/hear/whatever aren’t real. i can’t ever be sure if i’m experiencing reality or not. someone else has to tell me they’re seeing the same thing for me to be sure it really happened.

it’s not even that i have hallucinations or anything. it’s just... my sense of reality is so skewed from people being nasty to me that i cannot tell if my memories are real or not. and i know some of them aren’t, because that’s just how brains are wired. some of my earliest childhood memories, even the really sharp ones like the kicking and the beating and the screaming, have details that i’m sure just aren’t true. like what color the walls were. what time of year it was. what the floor was made out of. how big mom actually was compared to me. 

just like i can’t remember for sure if there were actually other people in the room or not with the craig stuff.

but if there weren’t other people there, then like half of my anger is totally fake. and that’s awful to think about.

and like... i could always just reaffirm to myself that everything i think is true. but not everything i think is true, that’s the nature of being alive and learning things and changing your understanding, and i can’t deliberately lie to myself. things aren’t ok.

and i feel like people who haven’t experienced that can’t understand how it feels. when someone else spends years ungluing your reality, you can’t really just stick it back on the wall. you can’t put your sense of reality back together without seeing the glue holding it there. and it’s so artificial that it’s just not the same as having real confidence. cracked mirrors still work, of course, but their functionality is irreparably changed. you become aware that you are looking in a mirror, and a damaged one at that. if you look in a regular mirror you just see your reflection. but with the cracked mirror, you see the glass that your reflection is coming from.

i don’t know how to reasonably convey this to my therapist during the span of a single check in... i don’t know how to say what i want to say, or what direction i would like to go in now, so i don’t bring up anything, and then i don’t get help, so i can’t figure out how to say what i want to say. cool.

should i just... print this out and hand it to her? that is alarmingly direct, and also risky, as i have to use dad’s computer to print everything. so the file will be on his computer unless i delete it and then suspiciously clear his printer history and also his recycle bin.

i mean, he’ll probably think it’s porn, but i don’t want him thinking that either!!!

and it could potentially take away from other group members’ time, because this is freakishly long already and i haven’t even gotten to my evening activities. i could give it to her during a break i guess.

after therapy i resolved to, well, resolve some of the communication issues i’m having with my family with the chores and the screaming. so i got a chore chart! and several different-colored markers for my family members to choose from. when i got home i explained it to mom. i think she is already not using it how i had hoped.

i also bought myself a chocolate mint mocha and too late i realized i had not specified that i wanted decaf. so i had the jitters for several hours after that. i tried to keep the explosion confined to asher’s chat window. i appreciate that he also sat through the mood crash afterward.

i saw the steven universe event. i have a soft spot for really mean, really insecure characters sometimes... i really want to talk to someone about it but i am Afraid of The Discourse. i have a lot of thoughts about pearl too but i don’t post them here because i don’t want... well, random people looking at my journal. even though it is public. i’m just not in a very good position right now to participate in huge discussions.

my favorites are of course the ones with the overblown egos. they are SO CONFIDENT. i wish i could believe in myself that much.

i gotta get up around 7:30 tomorrow to go get my hida scan. according to the google i can bring my ipod, thank god.

oh, that reminds me. i spent most of the morning talking to gilbert. we just chatted about whatever came up. harry potter, archie comments, the terrifying archie cartoon i saw when i was a wee babby. it scarred me for life. i was so scared of jughead, i swear to god.

(the humor/script was the real thing to be scared of. i watched an episode today. there ain’t nothing wrong with jughead.)

so i gotta try to sleep now. i’m gonna yell at my brother to shut the hell up when he plays league of legends so i can get some shuteye for once. i, of course, will then not be able to fall asleep anyway, because that’s just how it works.

i guess i should find a way to print that stuff i wrote out. there’s no way i’ll be able to say it in group. and i think i have gotten to some stuff that we might be able to work on instead of “angery” and “i hate everyone,” which are not things i can easily work with. 

oh, the therapist’s recommendation for what i should do to get close to people again was “make a new friend.” i started grinding my teeth.

i neglected to download all the cool music i found over the last few weeks... i will have to find something else to listen to during my hours on the scanning table. maybe i can mash a few soundtracks together on the way over to the imaging department. i need to tell dad i don’t actually know how to get to the hospital.

anyway, later. i hope you guys are having a better time than i am. that’s not setting the bar very high though.

oh, one more thing. i neglected to do any therapy homework over the weekend. my reasoning was, “if i am incapable of working hard in a way that will be helpful to me, then why waste my time.” i mean, i don’t have anything else to do, but it is less frustrating to talk about music theory with an acquaintance than it is to “phone in” yet another therapy work sheet. i worded it better when i was talking to asher... it’s too late to go into that now. i need to try to rest. i got individual therapy tomorrow and i need to make the most use of that ~45 minutes that i can.

[ohdeargodnotyouagain]

Brain Dump @ 4:30 in the F’ AM.

My Issues

So I started wanting to write a book several years ago and never got around to it. This isn't one of those posts that talk about 'oh whoa is me' but one of those 'hey I notice this shit and I'm working it out in my big fat brain how to fix it'.

For years I've been told I'm a good writer. I wrote a continuation of the Great Gatsby for a final paper in high school- didn't finish it mind you- but turned in what I had and had the teacher tell me she cried about how beautiful written it was. Not tooting my own horn either.

But then WHY, why in the HELL, do I have so many issues with getting my own book published? I've narrowed them down roughly...

1) No motivation. I love starting things. I've gotten hundreds of ideas- started compelling and interesting series. Only thing is that I lose the will to finish them usually two to three chapters from getting to the end of it. I can't tell you how many times I literally three chapters from completing a HIGHLY reviewed, three part series and I just drop it and NEVER look at it again. I've done that EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

2) Though that's my biggest problem, I have others. "Oh Shit"... yeah, I know. So my second problem is thinking I'm not good enough to be published. Which- jesus fucking christ- I've had people tell me for YEARS that I could write. Teachers. Parents. Friends. Strangers on the internet that have read fiction works from when I was 12 (Insert physical cringe here) up to my current age of 22. Now don't start that shit that I'm young and I have plenty of time ahead of me. People use that as a fucking crutch if I've ever seen one. You say that your entire life and then when you get to that ripe ass age of 60, you wonder where the fuck your life has gone and ruin your life trying to do those things you missed out on as a kid. Anyway, why the fuck do I not think I'm good enough to write the next great novel? Why do I have issues with this SO BADLY that it probably contributes to problem 1?

3) I can't be straight. Or gay. Or romantic. Or horrific. Or gory- or- or- o- Shut the fuck UP BRIAN THE BRAIN. I tend to jump across multiple genres. Probably because I'm so everywhere in real life that I look at one topic and think "Meh, I'm gonna get bored with this so I need to be OUTLANDISH" as possible to stay interested in it. FALSE. I've recently discovered I have a really good knack for horror. Surprise surprise, if my horrific childhood wasn't enough funsies for me already.

4) I have recently come to terms that I have badshit crazy RAGING depression. So I'll fully admit, I smoked weed since April 2016. I fucking LOVED it. I could write, run, smile, and basically be a normal human being. But I was hiding it like crazy and did too much at times. I lost some friends, gained some not so good ones. Never told my mother who I lived with- so like, damn, how did she not know? But I ended up telling her during Hurricane Irma. My bad. Anyway, she told me I had to get a medical license and toss the shit out. And so I did out of respect. Now a month sober... I'm losing my goddamn mind. My panic attacks are back, the fits of rage, the depression so bad I just want to decompose into my bed and the not eating. (Insert the slow clap for myself here). Anyway, I can afford the medical license but here is the problem. The doctor I have to go to every 45 days is like five hours away and my only transport is a literal bicycle or my two god given feet. Also I can't afford health insurance for working 50+ hours a week. Go me. Anyway, this isn't a pity party, I'm literally just talking shit out with myself at the moment so bare with my rambling. This helped when I was high so I'm blasting music and recreating this shit. Anyway, so I admitted I had a problem. Not only is my doctor far away but I also have been SO SCARED to admit I had a problem (Plus felt that I would be admitting defeat if I admitted it...) that I was never officially diagnosed except by some halfwit therapists after the domestic violence when I was a kid. All of them said the same shit. PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Mild Dissociation. Like what the ever loving fuck does that mean? Moving on, mother dearest suggested I should go to the doctor, explain that I've had these issues since I've been fucking 13 and I need to have a record of it. Thank you Doctor Robert Duff for making an awesome audible book too- that convinced me in the first place that oh shit I need to see somebody about this before I got off the deep end more than I already fucking am. I have been self managing for years and it's taken a turn for the worse around the time I hit 19. It's been 2 years of batshit crazy- and that's why I turned to weed. Which was great but no longer an option. Yay. Anyway, hopefully this new FDA (laughing) approved medicine will help until I can get to Colorado at the end of June.

5) Back to writing. Another thing that might be fucking me up is that I'm an EXTREMELY organized person. You should see my house. My writing may be scatter brained but I have my hair products organized by shape, size and color. So is my furniture and my pillows. And clothing and... you get it. So is my work now that I think about it- it makes me great at my job as a clerk. I've been working on this for a while now and I think it's also the environment. I'm not trying to make up excuses either. Oh my environment is bad, oh my depression is killing me not softly- NO. MY HOUSE IS A DISASTER AND I CANT CHANGE IT. After Hurricane Irma my apartment GOT FUCKED. So pretty much my entire area is either plastic bagged, boxed, or strown because I sold a lot of my furniture to try to move out of here fast-esh at the end of June. Cause fuck loading up a huge truck. Nope. Fuck off. I think it's contributing to my sjfpoahfoseurhgieuhrgoeruhgeorugh-ness.

Okay that's all the tired brain can think of right now. Also I'm up at fucking 4 in the god damned morning typing this trying to silence a hyper brain who is just like MAKE A POST ABOUT THIS TO ORGANIZE THOUGHTS. It kinda did in a way. Still miss weed. Still miss writing. But now I can work on this.

First I need to get my meds. Hopefully. And stick to them. I need to break the bad habit of not finishing things. I need to either fix my environment or move out. End of June. I need to let go of attachments and put more on Craigslist. There is no use in me freaking out about all the things I have to do right now. I need to just keep my damn pants on and focus on the goal. And hell, I might even publish a book.

Thanks for listening.

#Weed #writing #brain dump #my life #smoking weed #depression #anxiety #moving #colorado #surviving #domestic violence mention #long post #organizing thoughts #can I just be fucking normal

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga: Feb 2019 Edition

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is at the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link can be found through the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as will be pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

#trans crowd fund #please consider donating #donations #transcrowdfund #homelessness #please help #hurricane #hurricane sandy