I need financial help.

(The title is the short version, and here's a link to donate via paypal. Read on for the full version and/or more ways to donate.)

Since my dog, Chloe, got hit by a car, I've been riding right at the edge of financial ruin because once she was released from the emergency vet, safe and sound, the urgency was gone, my depression took over, and I never finished fundraising to pay for the care that saved her. It costs a lot to save a dog, it turns out. Or maybe that's only when the dog has a punctured lung and needs a blood transfusion and such.

Whatever the case, the last two and a half years have been spent with me right on the edge, and several times I've been pushed over it. That's meant I had to beg. That's not fun. It makes me feel sleezy. It makes me feel selfish. It makes me feel guilty. It makes me feel like I'm a grifter or a failure or even both at once. I hate it.

Still, the charity of people on the internet, most shockingly strangers --complete strangers-- on the internet, is what's kept my head above water this whole time. It brought me out of crisis and back to living on the edge. It did so so, so many times.

It's more than two years since I've updated a story here, and the only reason I managed to write that chapter was because it was about deep depression. I never got to the point where the positivity that was meant to qualify it for the Pride and Positivity event really kicked in. My other stories are also mostly stalled at one or two chapters, also because of deep depression.

No one here has a reason to support me, but the thing is . . . my usual means of asking for help aren't working, or at least aren't working well enough to cope with the expense. These days, everybody's struggling, and few have anything to spare. Some places where I once went for help are less active, which means less people who might help, and also less chance of being noticed, as people go longer and longer without checking.

Also, Putin's war in Ukraine has jacked up the price of heating oil to the point of absurdity, but the weather grows cold and I need that shit to survive.

I need more than $3,800 dollars, and I can't tell you exactly how much for two reasons. First, the price of oil fluctuates by the day. Second, when I was tallying shit up, I went from having the most hope I'd have a brighter future with less depression and more creativity (more _writing_ for one thing) in forever to, "Darkness take me now," which isn't that unusual for me, to, "Oh my God, I have to stop doing this NOW, before my mental health gets any worse, because where it is now is really, really bad." And that was when I was at, "Ok, that's $3,800 plus or minus depending on heating oil fluctuations, now it's time to add in the cost of [the next big thing]."

So at $3,800 I stopped counting, and all I can say for sure is that the stuff I didn't count is definitely enough to cancel out price fluctuations in heating oil so it's over that instead of exactly that or under that.

Unless I've somehow forgotten a major disaster, that's the most money I've needed at one time since Chloe got hit by that car.

As for how things got to be this bad this time around, about 20% of the tally I did make is because my insurance didn't cover much needed dentistry. The total cost of heating oil would be 40% of it (prices are way up), but the total cost includes what I would normally pay, so the increase is actually contributing rather less than 40%. How much less? I'm not gonna do that math right now, but it's probably safe to say the increase accounts for circa 20% of the tally.

58% of the tally is self-inflicted. This is part of why I feel guilty when I have to ask for money. Usually it's down to shit that's my fault. My depression got so bad that for the latter part of 2021 and most of 2022 I stopped opening my mail. I brought it into the house, so the box wouldn't fill up, but I just let it pile up there, unread.

There have been a lot of results of that, but one of them is that I never filled out some very important paperwork. It's been costing me $200 a month every month. That's $2,200 so far (payment is on the first, you see.) Early on that could have been solved by making some phone calls and filling out some forms, but: depression. Later, it couldn't be solved as in getting back what I'd already lost, but it could be solved as in no longer having $200 a month less than I need to stay afloat, and again all it would have taken was making some phone calls and filling out some forms. But: depression.

Signs are positive, my depression is better treated, I'm hopeful that I can fix this soon, but that's still more than two thousand dollars because I didn't read my mail and haven't made some phone calls. Like I said: self-inflicted.

With a war on, and attacks on bodily autonomy (abortion and trans rights alike) in the US and UK, there are so many more worthy causes you can donate to than helping someone who screwed herself over out of the mess she created.

Back on point, that's what got the ball rolling, that and already being on the edge. But if you have credit, you can postpone a financial catastrophe. At the cost of making it even bigger when it does come, because debt breeds more debt via things like interest and, if you can't make a payment on time, late fees, and then interest on the late fees.

I've had my power cut, I've had my phone cut, I've had my internet cut, and twice I've had someone come to the house to disconnect my water. Why? Because they don't charge me interest and late fees, so until the lights go out (or whatever utility is cut) it's much better to service debt than it is to pay one's utilities.

But the problem with not having money is: you don't have money. So getting the phone or the power or the whatever turned back on (or preventing it from being cut in the first place), or buying food, means more debt, which cancels out the payments made on the debt, and things just get worse and worse until finally something has to break.

And that's where I am.

I need over $3,800 dollars. That's what it'll take to get be back to living on the edge, where I'm theoretically fine going forward, but a single major problem could spell catastrophe. To get to a place where I'm not living on the edge, I don't even know for sure what it would cost, and I'm not sure it matters, because honestly? I think I'm fucked.

But I've been wrong before, so I'm making this post saying I need financial help, I'm telling people how to donate, and I'm asking people, if you're willing, to help signal boost.

One can donate here if they have a PayPal account.

Alternatively, if you have a credit card, you can donate using the button here. For some reason, probably because they'd rather force people to have PayPal accounts, they made it impossible to link directly to the donate page, with the donate button generating an eighty character long token, without which the link will not work, when pressed. (Copying the token is of no use, because the necessary token is ever-changing.

Do not check the "Make this a monthly donation" box; it does not work. Not only does it not work for monthly donations, it will also fail for the first donation, meaning instead of checking the box making the donation monthly, it makes it non-existent. This is a problem that's existed for years, they've never fixed it, and I don't know why they don't just remove the checkbox.

If you want to make a monthly donation, use my Patreon. That said, be warned: While you will get MLP/EqG content months or even years before it makes it onto fimfic, you will get very, very little of it. The reason none of my stories have updated in the past two years isn't that I was saving that content for Patreon, it's that my depression has been very bad and I've written almost nothing.

Comments

[GBThundaII]

Wish I could be of assistance, but I really don't have anything to give. But I will give you good vibes, and I hope things get better soon. Having gone through similar financial issues, I know it's rough. Are there any government assistance programs that can help? Debt relief or things of the like? I'd imagine there must be something to help get you back on your feet.