Cry For Help · 6:44pm February 16th
I've been cagey about what's been happening to me.
Part of that is an instinctive wariness of sharing personal info online. And yes, those of you who have worked with me through Paypal are free to note the irony, since y'all know my legal name but... you still get it.
Fanfic writers fall under the wide "online content creator" umbrella, and when you start playing in that space, there's a risk of the person becoming the product. And I've flirted with that line, in writing blogs in the first place, but they tend to at least be about fanfic, or at least about hobbies. I even, when I put the possibility of setting the theme of blog into one of my Patreon tiers, added the caveat that I could turn down a theme for being too personal.
(Not that I was ever expecting a ton of Interest in that reward, even if I got regular patrons. People seem to like my narrative voice, but I'm still not Estee.)
The times when I've had to get personal is when I need help, or when someone else does. The GFM for what I called the "teeth saga" required knowing some about the loved ones involved, and you all know that I take medications and what for because I needed help to afford them one time...
I need help again. And I hate it.
Because I need to pull back the curtain, a little, to understand how I got here.
I'm unemployed. I've been unemployed for a long while.
I thought I'd found the exact job I wanted, once, with good pay. It ended up crushing me, and after one mental breakdown too many, I was let go.
I've never been able to find anything since. I live in a community with a small job market, and my options for transportation are limited to seek a job elsewhere. I've had my applications ignored, been given the runaround by people claiming they want to interview me and then repeatedly cancelling or no-showing, and had a few things look promising only to suddenly give me a very bad feeling that turned out to be right.
That's why I've been going so hard on commissions. Because that's been my income.
And even that has had its problems.
A lot of you are probably familiar with the term parasocial.
It's something that's really come up with the advent of Youtube. It's like I said above, the person becomes the product. You see them all the time, listen to them talk, hear their thoughts and opinions and aspects of their life... and you start to feel like there's a relationship there. You feel like they're your friend. If they have social media, or a Discord, all the better. You can see even more of them, and even have a chance to talk to them, and have them notice you.
I said this on my January blog:
The planned Moonstrider trilogy has been definitively cancelled. The World Shall Rise From Ashes has also been unpublished. Some of you may be aware of what's been going on there, in the broad strokes, but to put it simply: For the sake of my health, there will be no revivals or further contact with the person who originally commissioned the work.
And some of you may indeed be aware of those broad strokes, because a chunk of it went down in Estee's server, and my tiny readership overlaps with their much larger one. And I'm still not going to give every detail but...
I made a mistake. I let myself think a client was my friend.
That doesn't mean that I think that being friendly with people who commission me is a mistake, nor that I wouldn't take a commission from someone I was already a friend with. Workshopping ideas and brainstorming can be a bonding activity, and one I enjoy. But I let someone get way too friendly and casual way too fast, who effectively had me by the paycheque. It was going to be a big story, after all, told over multiple fics. It would be something steady in a situation where I had nothing steady and stable.
All I had to do was let him push the boundaries a little of what I considered acceptable commission content.
All I had to do was listen to him constantly revise what he wanted done with the story.
All I had to do was be emotionally available all the time to talk him through his depression as his only friend.
All I had to do...
And then the harassment started. The ban-evasion. The lies. The threats of what he was thinking of doing to himself, because he's just so depressed you know and has no one but me and why won't I just talk to him...
He "apologised" semi-recently. And has gone silent.
Maybe I've stopped being fun to torment. Maybe he's finally bored.
Or maybe the next time I have a supposed "new client"...
He might even be one of my followers who I just haven't found yet to block. He might be reading this right now.
He might be having a victory laugh right now, seeing me finally talk about it and show some of how much it hurt.
But I have to keep putting myself out there. It's all I've got.
I've mentioned a blog before. And a Youtube channel.
Those aren't money-sources.
The blog ended up a money sink after an organization that promised to make blogging profitable suckered me in, which I've since gotten away from. And the Youtube channel has been a lot of stumbling, not a lot of traction, and trying so hard to do everything with free programs and assets, and equipment I already have, because I can't afford to throw any more money into something that it seems like no one wants to watch.
I haven't been able to record anything in a while. Partly due to difficulty cutting the time out of my schedule when my living space would be quiet enough, and partly because my voice keeps being too shaky.
I'm so afraid.
I'm in a relationship.
It's not a romantic one, though the commitment level is similar. It's a QP relationship. QP stands for either queerplatonic or quasiplatonic, depending on who you ask and how comfortable they are with reclaiming the word "queer" in the first place. It's an emotionally intense and committed relationship that nevertheless doesn't involve romantic attraction. Being an aroace person, it's a delightful and very fulfilling relationship to have.
(And if you've ever wondered why romance in my fics tends to be very understated, there's your answer. I literally work from a very different angle mentally for what a close relationship looks like.)
It's long distance, and neither of us are particularly mentally healthy. In many ways, we're each other's reason to keep going, but... neither of us have much of an emotional support structure otherwise. She outright lives with one of the abusers in her life because she wouldn't survive being homeless and "homeless" is basically the only other option.
I'm words on a screen. Voice on a microphone. Occasional photos. I can't even hug her, I can't actually make it better, I can't--
I had a breakdown mid-December. Because holidays are hard on both of us, and I was dealing with the harassment I mentioned on top of it, and I finally collapsed. But she hit some of the worst mental health lows of her life too, and so December and January felt a lot like we were both drowning and grabbing onto each other in the hope that the other would figure out how to swim before it was too late.
I thought I finally had.
But the water's still cold, and deep.
I've been physically sick, too.
A lot of my adult life has been trying to figure out what I should be, or should not be eating, that's causing whatever new trouble my body threw at me. Some things need medication regardless--there's things I can do to make my migraines less frequent, for instance, but every once a while I need to just nuke the site from orbit with my prescription meds and then try to sleep off the side effects--but a lot of it boils down to "eat more of [thing] and your body will stop screaming at you."
Gotta make sure my iron is up. Gotta make sure my vitamin D is up. Gotta make sure my magnesium is up. Gotta make sure my sodium (yes, really; turns out that as much as too much salt can mess you up, too little is much, much worse) is up. Gotta make sure my potassium is up.
That last one was a recent problem.
Because you know what makes eating at all difficult? Lack of mental health making me feel constant nausea and lack of appetite.
You know what makes eating the right things to keep healthy hard? Not being able to afford the foods I used to.
I used to get a lot of potassium through a fruit juice blend that used banana puree. It is, unfortunately, too expensive to keep buying. I didn't realize that my potassium levels had dropped so much until the fatigue and body aches grew extreme. It was like constantly having the flu, and I could barely get out of bed for a few hours at a time.
I made some adjustments. Turns out that dried apricots can be a good source, and, would you look at that, the inexpensive generic brand at the grocery store isn't completely devoid of flavour, bonus. I started to improve after that, and feeling at least a bit physically better got me feeling ready to pull myself together mentally.
But I've been away from my writing. And when the writing's all I got...
I have a negative balance in my Paypal.
So many payments are set to go through it, and I cut down what I could, but I was supposed to be writing through December and January and everything's piled up and I just...
I thought I had time.
I just got a letter telling me I have seven days or they can and will escalate their attempts to get it.
The amount, translated into USD, is about $450
My savings account, right now, translated into USD, is about $75.
I can't write when I'm having stress-migraines.
I can't write when I'm having panic attacks at night.
I can't write when I'm trying to scrape together enough of myself to help the drowning person next to me.
I thought I was getting better.
I thought I'd get everything worked out this month and I'd be fine.
I'm scared.
Help.
If you got this far, have something to spare, and want to help, my Ko-Fi has had its goal adjusted accordingly. It's in CAD, and that's why the number looks higher than what I stated, but the amount works out the same.
I hate asking for help.
It's easier when it's for someone else, but the guilt is intense when it's me.
I don't want to be the one who keeps asking.
I don't feel like I deserve it.
But I don't know what else to do.
I'm sorry.
Did what I could. Here's hoping it can help halt the spiral.
Hang in there, I'll do what I can "HUGS"
Good luck!
We don’t know each other, but I really hope you’re gonna be okay, and I hope your partner’s situation also improves soon. You don’t deserve what’s happening to you. I sent a little bit your way; it’s not much, but I hope it helps.
Don’t give up! This may feel like rock bottom right now, but you can get through this and you will rise again. Good luck!
I gave some. I wish you well. I'm so sorry you're going through the ringer right now and just know it WILL pass, in time. Things WILL get better.
I feel so bad for you both! I sent a bit. I hope you find a good way forward soon!
I want to help but not too long ago my PayPal was refusing my card. So I can certainly try, I don't know if you'll be able to get it.