State of the Writer: Sometimes, You Just Don't Know What to Say (Testing the Waters) · 12:41am Nov 26th, 2022
Alternately, the super brief explanation of why my visible activity on this site has dropped substantially since 2016 and the challenges I'm facing now.
I'm going to get right to it. Specifics withheld for the preservation of suitable anonymity. "We" just refers to myself and/or my immediate family (sans one person; you're smart enough to figure out who) for the convenience of brevity as well; I don't plan on a detailed rundown of, say, who-said-what, anyways.
So…
A few years ago, someone in my family (my father) broke a promise. Had been for a while, really. This was found out at the time and while things were concerning for a moment, everything worked out. That's what we thought.
Fast forward to last year, and an accident leads to an inconvenient situation where I take over many of the tasks of running the household (and I'm working to mitigate the ongoing situation as well). A moment of his absolute carelessness reveals to my mother that he hadn't changed at all since the earlier incident, and even though he toned some of those behaviors down, he gave up on almost none of them. And to be honest, I think this is a mental heath issue, but I live in the US so that doesn't mean anything to anyone in a practical sense, really.
He's actually had counselling for years now. That hasn't done a thing, because the US is really bad at this sort of problem. But also the whole world, but that's a rant for later. Our own research into his issues reveal that this has been a problem that has affected all of us for almost twenty years, and we only found out about it less than a year ago. This really is a huge topic for somewhere else.
About a year ago he left the house (and things got a lot more comfortable in less than 24 hours FOR SOME REASON). A few months later he served the divorce papers himself (appalled that they were accepted if that helps you color in the picture of who he kinda is.) Also one of her family members was dying while he served the divorce papers. And he's broken basically all of the promises he made to anyone in my family at this point, leaving us off none the better for it.
Recently, I spent my savings having the two cars that He neglected to a dangerous degree (Literally: Fluid leak? Keep refilling once monthly). this was to the tune of several thousand dollars. Each. Still cheaper than replacing them, and they have good engines at least.
Then we find out that all of my mother's joint and personal assets are frozen (another complicated issue). He froze her credit card and locked her out of the other account a while ago. And he's been not paying child support (divorce ongoing, but this is already court-ordered), but the courts are working on orders to sell off savings to keep things afloat. (He got a job, rented an apartment more expensive than our mortgage, and lost his job since he left the house, all the while having the option of staying with his own parent (Oh, by the way, my extended family don't give a flying f
k about any of us. Fk them too.)).
And with the first batch of money freed up, he allocated it (somewhat excessively) towards mortgage and rent, with almost nothing left for child support. For children that he's fighting to see. (And OH MY GOD is that something with a few dozen rants behind it.)
OHHH and I should probably mention that he left us with dozens of (various, incl. livestock) animals to care for.
I don't even know how to make that more succinct and it definitely isn't worth the time. There are still absurdly important details I left out like how this could kill one of my siblings if it goes wrong. There are big ones that could affect your perception of the whole situation still but I can't even think of them all at once. This is hard enough to put into words in the first place, and I'm just writing it up here as it comes to mind just to get something out. (I've been planning to put something up for a short while now. Figure it shouldn't hurt to do so, probably.)
I have let a handful of people here in the community in the loop as things happen for juuuuust over a year now; they can identify themselves if and as they desire. The validity of these circumstances can probably be vouched for if necessary.
This is probably the point where I could break down and make a GoFundMe campaign or similar, appalled at how it's come to this but driven by necessity to do so anyway.
– Except –
For all my research, I see that I can't do that anonymously. Turns out this is a problem that people attempting to escape from domestic abuse deal with too. ("If I use my name and zip code, He will find out and take the money and beat me.") I can't identify myself (Literally down to the town/zip code? Ouch.) or it could complicate matters and be used against the parent whose side I'm on in court (even though it's not even remotely illegal or anything). If there's a solution to this somewhere, I don't know of it.
So…
I guess that's where I'm at. I thought about writing more of this up in detail as an exploration of the problems, but heck if I know if that'd be worthwhile at the moment. It'd be a lot of work, for sure.
And I didn't even really touch on just how draining it was to have this person in the house for the last few years as things got worse and worse in the shadows. And yet it wasn't painfully obvious at the time, kinda like the frog in boiling water metaphor.
Would a paypal or kofi link be possible so folks who can help are able to toss you some funds? Or would that jeopardize things too?
5700110
Only super privately for people I can trust with identification. PayPal Business could kind of be anonymous, but is kind of dodgy when it comes to anything on the internet, especially since it probably has no idea how to handle a gift. That and my experimental account has been flagged as suspicious for even existing.
Family Court is weird. There's no penalty for perjury, for example. It's not so much about what the law specifies exactly so much as it is what one lawyer or another will argue and what the judge thinks.
5700112
Ahh very true, I know paypal requires very public facing knowledge but I thought ko-fi allowed slightly more anonymity.
Here's hoping you can last through family court then. It definitely seems quite messy and confusing. :/
5700113
Ko-Fi doesn't really handle your money for you, so they pass it off to PayPal or the Apple equivalent (I forget the name exactly), pretty much exclusively. If someone is anonymous, they're using PayPal Business, which Ko-Fi recommends as the solution to anonymity.
GoFundMe just says "have someone else do it" which gets a lot harder when the person you're trying to escape is driving your friends away (and this is especially bad from domestic abusers because this can be VERY intentional).
5700124
Ah okay, my apologies for making you re-explain this (potentially)
Gofundme is definitely a poor bandaid for big problems, but it's better than nothing for a lot of folks. I wish it was for you guys too.