Written By Joel And Michael Stoneburner
My day was pretty much perfect. I had spent the day with my person, Joel. They spoiled me and I had many moments of being wooed, smiling, laughing and just really enjoying the day with them. As everything began to settle down and we were preparing for bed, I checked my email. It’s a bad habit of mine. You know the saying nothing good happens after midnight. Or 2am. Or that whole don’t go to bed angry. The point is with my neurodiverse brain I need to wind down for sleep. I don’t need to give it ammunition to invite insomnia through the door so it and my thoughts can have conversations in cycles. I checked my email. 1 new message. It was from the real estate I was renting the house through. We recently changed to them in the last year or so and I was content. The last real estate was homophobic and bullies. Even the landlord couldn’t stand them. Hence the change. So I opened the email. Noticed it was sent right after 5pm. That’s when they closed. The property manager started the email with hoping we had a nice weekend. We had a few good chats in the past so I smiled. And then the last part of the email suddenly changed as they wished to inform me that the Landlord has requested a POSSESSION OF PROPERTY.
This was a term I’d be repeating in loop all night. I opened the attachment and there it was in its PDF glory. A form with those words plastered all over: POSSESSION OF PROPERTY. There was no clear reason. All the reasons given on the form were crossed out. Reason for selling. Crossed out. Tenant breaking the contract. Crossed out. It was just a POSSESSION OF PROPERTY with a date that only left us just over 30 days to get out. I called out in alarm to Joel who was, quite frankly, toileting at the time, and they heard the panic and urgency in my voice. They finished their business very quickly to rush out and ask what was wrong.
“What does this mean? POSSESSION OF PROPERTY? Are we getting kicked out?”
I knew what it meant. I didn’t wait for an answer. I answered it myself and I kept repeating it over and over again. Now, Joel would later reveal they had read their email earlier in the day. They knew already but didn’t want it to cloud our day of celebration. They held onto the fear and the shock of it all. They were able to come to terms with it just a bit longer. But for me, I stood there, after a day of laughter, smiling and being wooed and I sobbed. I shook. I vomited.
You see, I knew as a renter that this place was my home but it wasn’t MY HOME home, but it still meant a lot to me in many ways. It was the first house I moved into after I came out and ended a relationship that had me be the “guy” the world had taught me I had to be. I got to be a “person” in this home. I learnt independence. Since 2009 onwards, I would discover myself, my true friends, my true family and ultimately build a life with Joel in it. We would mourn the loss of bio-family and friends who didn’t accept us in that house. We would mourn the loss of our cat. We would raise a new cat in that house, who was a rescue trauma drama just like us. She would learn what love was in that house. Crawl up into my lap after months of trepidation and push her face into my beard in that house. I had so many firsts in that house and in just over 30 days I’d have to say goodbye to it. Without reason. From a landlord we built a relationship with. Over drinks. Communication. Personal emails. We spent hours hanging out when they personally came in to fix up the backyard. We trusted the landlord. And then dead silence. Nothing. That relationship ended over an email from the real estate with the words POSSESSION OF PROPERTY. And that’s their right. And I get that. I understand logically.
But I’m neurodiverse. I have trouble building relationships. Add on decades of physical and sexual abuse from my bioparents giving me a lifelong mental illness and PTSD and that makes building relationships even harder. So some might understand this when I say, I took this personal. I took the silence and the no reason personal. But legally they did nothing wrong. Yet.
But that yet doesn’t matter in my case and it doesn’t matter to so many other cases that this is happening to. Yes, this is happening to many other renters across NSW. The house crisis is real. The rental crisis is certainly a nightmare. The house sector is overworked and there’s not enough houses for people. Homelessness has risen and it was just about to happen to us. And for me, as soon as I saw POSSESSION OF PROPERTY, and even though I still had a little over 30 days to get out, the place stopped being a home. My brain accepted the fact I was no longer welcome and my PTSD attached this legal ejection to the ejection out of my biofamily, my jobs, my friends, my social circles, my schooling–
“You had a good run.” I would be told later. It came across more as “Get over it.” But they weren’t wrong. 2009 to 2024. 3 different owners. Two different real estates. I’ll never have a nice thing to say to the first. Career changes. Family changes. Life changes. “You’ll find a place.” “We will help you.” “We won’t let you be homeless.” Some truths. Hard truths. To the lies that weaved amongst them.
So as I’ve said before, I’m on the spectrum. My brain is wired differently. Not the only marginalised part of me. My disconnect to that home happened quickly. I tend to do that with mourning. With anger. With loss. I disconnect because it won’t hurt as much. I try and rush through the array of emotions so that I can still stand on my own two feet and forge on. A few people called that strength and courage. “You are so strong.” I trusted them but I didn’t feel it. If I even allowed myself one taste of mourning that house, I’d crumble. I did. I crumbled. So many times I fell into Joel’s arms and said I can’t do this. This is too hard. And so many times, they’d agree with me. After all, they are also neurodiverse. And we’d cry and feel helpless and wonder if maybe we just go into the garage together and end it all. Together. At least we were together. And its those moments of despair, I needed to avoid. I needed to disconnect. So we took our psychologist’s advice: “Just do what you can.”
So we did and that’s when we learnt more about the housing crisis. That’s when we came to terms with homelessness and what that would look like. We faced the worst case scenarios and then some as we travelled through the 30 days of feeling helpless, lost, alone, afraid. The countdown had begun. Get ready, Michael, because the world isn’t going to wait for your ND brain to catch up. No one was going to be able to cater to your needs. Nothing was going to help you as you ticked each day and woke up within four walls that at the same time was still a home but also not. The cyclone started and we weren’t going to land anytime soon.
My psychologist said something that really validated me, “As a neurotypical person, I’ve struggled with this. Packing up your life is hard. So it’s heightened for you. You are in crisis.” I really took that on board and tried to be more forgiving of myself in the way I managed things going forward. I say this lightly and carefully, because nothing about this was easy, but the easiest thing for me to do was categorise our belongings and box them away. I did that anyway in the house and my ADHD really enjoys organising and reorganising. I like things in their proper place and I enjoy experimenting about where things can go that are both appealing to look at and “feels right”. The feels right is hard to explain. It just does. And when I find the perfect spot for an item, I won’t ever move it because that’s where it goes. I had a cupboard that sat perfectly aligned from the Laundry Room door, against the wall and snuggled up against the end of the cupboard where the fridge went. It never moved from that spot. It was one of the last things I packed away too, because I had a hard time putting it anywhere else. Joel was very accomodating to my need to organise things and the way it was organised. I even had to put things in boxes myself because I would do it right. Not that I didn’t think Joel wouldn’t, well maybe a part of me did, but I didn’t even “trust” them to do it or my neurodiverse brain needed the satisfaction that it was done in a particular way because that’s just how my wires were crossing. But this was one of the many ways our teamwork really paid off. I scheduled the packing up of our belongings to the letter. Joel had a great time coming up with codes to write on the boxes that only we would understand what was inside them. I had fun breaking their codes and telling them it was too easy. It’s these moments, where somehow we found time to have fun, I cherish the most. It’s what kept me going. They are what kept me going.
We lived, and that’s still weird to say in past tense, in a townhouse. They claim it’s a two bedroom townhouse but living in it as long as I did, first as a single person and then with Joel, it’s 1.5 bedrooms at the most. The shape of the rooms make no sense. There were arches and slants and nooks that drove me crazy but also became satisfying when I found a piece of furniture that would fit perfectly in the space. The bathroom was upstairs. It only recently had ventilation put in and it’s small window that it did have looked straight into the back neighbour’s upper balcony door. There was no aircon upstairs so in the summer it was scorching. In the winter, it’d keep the glass of water I kept at my bedside chilled. I started with those rooms first. To my logic, if we had the upstairs all packed, we’d only need to deal with one floor. Because something was happening that really upset me the most. Everything. And I mean everything. It was last minute. There was no prep time. No time to adjust. And we were warned by numerous medical professionals that if we found a place, things would happen quickly. It was all utter chaos. I had to repeat to myself “Do what you can” all the time because there was too many things I couldn’t do. One of them was planning on real estate viewings, interacting with each one and the many people that would attend the open houses.
As part of my PTSD and ADHD, I have an extreme social anxiety disorder. I was able to mask most of my life. Being called an extrovert. I was called a people person. People were always in awe how I carried myself when presenting on stage or reading. I was that good at covering up my anxiety, to those who didn’t know which ticks to look for or just how bad I was before and after my masking performance. My anxiety really took a nose dive in 2015 when I was forced to resign as a Primary Teacher for being gay. While dealing with the trauma that came with losing a job, I didn’t cope and I didn’t have the support that I needed. So I withdrew. Believed the world hated me. I mean, the evidence was all around me. “You don’t meet the ethos of our school.” The Australian Marriage Debate. The protests. The Religious Freedom Act. Lack of representation on the census. All the hate that spewed around me led to me isolating myself well before Covid isolated the world. There was nearly 5 years I did not interact with the community outside of Joel. I just couldn’t. The GP I was seeing at the time was suggesting I was agoraphobic. Being a neurodivergent person, and getting further diagnosis of just how much on the spectrum, I was heading into my 40s, I normally struggle anyway. Is it possible for a marginalised person to be further marginalised? Being a non binary/trans person, I don’t think I need to explain the amount of hate I’ve received, even within the LGBT+ Community who clearly believe it ends with B or even the G.
Joel, however, seemed to hyper-fixate on finding places for us to look at, while I was hyper-fixating on how to pack up the house. They’d set the dates and times on the calendar and my job was to drive us to the places. With Joel’s autism, they cannot cope driving, as the receiving of information can overstimulate them and they have trouble processing and filtering through it all. I just call myself the sexy chauffeur and I’m okay with it all. “We’re a team.” A phrase we use often.
While the upstairs was slowly being culled and packed away in the garage and the downstairs area, every day was becoming what we would call an “Adventure Day” where I’d put into Google Maps the address of the open house and get us to it. I’m terrible with driving to unknown locations. It’s another part of my neurodiverse brain coming into play here. At first we looked in areas that were around our friends, but the price was way above our budget and we were terrified that this would be the norm. Living so long at one place had its benefits of rental control, however, it seemed to catch up to us in the end. But an increase in rent a week by $300 plus dollars was a reality we weren’t prepared for.
Another harsh reality I faced while applying for these rental properties were how different each real estate handled their applications and the problems I faced not being born in Australia. Most of the real estates went through an online process, either realestate.com.au or tenantapp or both, but not all real estates asked what I felt like were intrusive questions regarding where I was born. For example, one question asked me why I moved to Australia. Why did it matter why I moved there? I’m here now and I am a permanent feature. I had to wonder if it allowed for racism or discrimination and one open house we attended confirmed my suspicions. Asking if I’m a permanent resident or citizen is fine. I get that. But to ask me which country I’ve come from or why I left or chose Australia just seems uncomfortable to me.
A man and his family were walking through a house in Glenmore Park. He came across as a very humble person. Stepped aside when I awkwardly would walk through doors. Make casual conversation about how nice the house was. Was very gracious with his partner and children. And after she told him what to ask the real estate person there hosting the open house, he walked up to her with a meekness I related to. I waited my turn to ask questions and secretly hoped he’d ask them for me. Then I’d just say thank you for their time and make way to the safety of my car and try to learn to breathe normally again. The man spoke of his circumstance. That they were new arrivals, but had all their paperwork and wanted to make sure that it was correct what he would need. We were standing behind her near the kitchen counter far enough away to where I feel I was being a creep, gave them plenty of room for spacial awareness but I could still see her phone as she fiddled with it while talking to him. And while he asked all of his questions, she was just nodding and pretending to flip through her phone as she said she was making a note of it. After he left, she turned to us as we approached and was like, “So what do you think?” And I was like “Oh I love it, but I really hope that family gets it.” And she just simply said, “Oh. He won’t get it. So you can still apply. Sooner the better. I can forward you the details.” I was speechless, but it was this same real estate, as I later found, where their application was asking me why I moved to Australia. I can only hope that family found a place because for some families we came across it was becoming dire
“We’re living at a campsite right now. All of us in a tent. During winter,” the person told me. It broke my heart. Every bit of me wished I could do something for them. I didn’t want to apply for the same house. I even text a dear friend of mine and said I really like this house but I don’t think I can apply for it. They were like but you are in crisis too. In a few weeks, you’ll be without a home. And Joel and I were the lucky ones. I knew we had our privileges. We had friends tell us we could stay in their spare room until we found a place. We’d just need to rent out a storage for all of our things, which was our backup plan anyway. At this point it’d be cheaper to rent out a storage space for all of our things than pay rent. We were even lucky with regards to a Bond and money for the removalists, after getting approved of a NILS loan at a local community centre. So we had all these things in place. Things we could do. We even had a social worker to help us stay on track in applying for public housing. We even had a date set by the psychologists on when we should start panicking. 10 days before the POSSESSION OF PROPERTY seemed a good enough day to start panicking. Allowed us to tell ourselves we were on track and doing the best we could.
And the amount of people who were frustrated when we’d show up at an open house and the agent didn’t come. They’d talk to each other about how panicked they were. So many of them received a POSSESSION OF PROPERTY. One woman said she only was given 14 days to leave. Others talked about how the NSW rental laws were changing soon. That unlike other states, NSW could evict their tenants without a reason. And I wanted to believe my landlord wouldn’t do that to us, panic over a law that MIGHT change in 2025. That was only going to be presented to the government in September to be passed. Joel wasn’t so compassionate. Their frustration in regards to how we were dropped like so many others weighed on them. Then we got involved in a conversation with the neighbours. We didn’t know which removalists to call, but saw a truck starting to pack away. The neighbour talked about how they received a POSSESSION OF PROPERTY and had to leave at the end of the month, but fortunately for them they had a family they could move back in with. That’s when friends started asking us if maybe the owners were selling to developers. I still thought that could have been told to us by the landlord who had just been over at our place a week before we got the email.
“Hey, just to let you know I got a great offer from a developer that I can’t turn down. It’s been great having you as a tenant. I just wanted to give you as much time as you need to get out before I have to have you out at the end of next month.” – an imaginary conversation I would have appreciated more than the silence.
I still think I would have stressed out but at least the why would have been answered. But, the developers theory would soon be extinguished when the new neighbours moved in and the other owners were discussing rejuvenation of the outside of the homes right outside our windows. Discussing us right outside of our windows, “These two are gone by the end of the month. So we won’t bother telling them.” And waking up to men out on the balcony working as I crawl out of bed. It was then I moved the mattress down into the living room and the upstairs was cleaned and officially moved out.
We were having no luck with the houses. Open house after open house was a bust. I wear colourful clothing. My nails are painted. My eyelids are beautifully done with an array of colours. I was what is referred to me as “visibly queer” and apparently I’m brave to walk around Australia like that. Not terrifying at all, but there’s a phobia behind it we faced going to different areas. Going up to the mountains to view houses being told it’s queer friendly only to have the agent say “the owner is looking for a more conservative tenant.” Or the amount of times I could just tell that the people of colour were not even getting a second glance while the agents happily approached the white people.
The whole open house process always made me feel awful. Here is an account of Joel’s experience with the Open House process:
A stomach sinking feeling
“OH HI!” she called, waving at us, with a surprisingly enthusiastic smile. “I saw you at some other open houses,” she continued, listing off a handful of familiar sounding addresses.
I didn’t catch her name, and I didn’t recognise her face, but it was plausible. She pulled us aside for a chat, her child’s hand in hers. Despite her disarming smile, I could hear her disdain about her situation. Some of her hairs had come loose from the ponytail, and jolted out like bolts of electricity, like she was somehow brimming with it. Like us, she had been handed a no-grounds eviction notice (still currently considered legal in my state, sadly).
As we listened to her familiar tale, one we had heard from others during this time, I counted at least 10 others pass through the same living room, floorboards creaking their ominous song. My stomach sank into unknown depths as something clicked inside me, a dark realisation.
The problem has a face. Rather, those that suffer at the hands of the problem do.
It’s too easy to say that problems exist, that we live in broken systems that nobody seems to know how to fix. But I was speaking to a woman who understood the pain and stress and anxiety. Something in this conversation made everything… real.
Those that suffer, they have disarming smiles, frizzy hair, children in hand and are looking for a place to stay, let alone a place to call home. In this environment does, how can we let ourselves find that feeling of safety? The place we were living at the time didn’t feel safe anymore.
That same day, we received an email from a property manager regarding a 2-bedroom apartment that we had seen and applied for. It was a nice little space and neither of us had lived in an apartment before. We thought it would be snug, but safe.
“your application has not been accepted by the owner… he believes it will be hard to [afford] the rent”
Audacious, to say the least.
We both grew up in low socio-economic households, so we learnt the hard way how to budget. We spent plenty of time pouring ourselves into how much we could afford. Being knocked back like that (like a poorly executed breakup) felt like a slap in the face. This unknown landlord had the power to determine where we could afford to live and it felt, for me at least, a little personal. And it was a terrifying thought. How many other landlords would be given the power to deem us unable to rent a particular property?
I questioned the ethics of the situation. No matter where we went, we would be paying an increased amount on rent. We had come to terms with that. How could this landlord possibly know how we manage with what we have? And how could he be okay with the state of the housing crisis? Unlike him, I wasn’t able to buy a building of apartments for $8 million with the power to knock back potential tenants.
Yes, I’m salty.
I think this was my tipping point. Yes, I had hit stress, fear, anxiety, sadness and more, but I hit my limit. Everything felt too much.
I didn’t know how else I could manage to mask my social discomfort around new and strange people on an almost daily basis. My battery was getting empty.
Near the start of this journey, we came across a 3-bedroom home that we immediately fell in love with. We spoke to the real estate agent, telling her we loved the place, how we each saw us living there. It reminded both of us of our grandparents, so we had a quick sense of home. Of course, even though the real estate kept reaching out to us for more information, which we took as a good sign, we were unsuccessful in our application.
I had lived with Michael for just over 12 years at this point, at the same address. We had each discussed over that time the idea of moving (of our own freewill and agency), but we never followed through. The area itself was not necessarily somewhere we felt safe, but we made the townhouse an escape, a haven for us. A lighthouse on the edge of danger that we could escape to.
We built our life together there. Though we both knew that home was with each other, we no longer felt at home during this time. It felt like our foundation was being taken away and we weren’t sure what our next foundation would be.
We discussed at length what homelessness would look like for us. No matter which way you try to spin it, it’s not a fun conversation. I can promise I would not have been able to go through all of this by myself, and I do not envy any of those who have had to, or will have to.
As Joel stated, it wasn’t on our terms to move and we weren’t prepared. Even discussing moving, we’d budget and realise we’d have to save for a long time. We didn’t have the $2000-$3000 bond needed for most places. We couldn’t afford $1500-$2000 for the removalist. No way we could save that up within the 30 days and still move. Our reality was we would need to go into debt in order to get into a home. That was if we were able to find one. Dozens of people lining up to get to see a home. Many places weren’t as advertised. Many places our social worker crossed out due to it not being safe for LGBT+ people. So many advised us to seek more towards the east, but the reality was the rent was beyond our means.
By the second week, with only 15 days left before we had to vacate the premises, we were all packed up. Most of our things were away. We only had what we called “Dailies” out. Enough clothes to last a few days. Wash them. Wear them again. Personal Hygiene a daily. Bed in the living room. Couch. TV. It was then we noticed our cat wasn’t coping. She’d stay near us when we were home crouched nearby. When we could sit down, she’d be in our lap. She looked as if she walked on egg shells and it matched how we felt too. The cleaner we made the house. The more we avoided upstairs. The less we would have to deal with. 15 days left and still no house. Rejection after rejection. Or they wouldn’t show up to the open house so many of us scheduled because applications were already accepted. We began to recognise people every place we went or they recognised us. There was a pleasant way we smiled, shared our fear and pain for a moment and continued on in our journey. Some turned it into a competition and I could sorta understand as they stood there praising themselves up to the agent. Some broke my heart further and talked about their kids, begging for the agent to push that through to the owner in hopes they’d pick them over others who didn’t have children. And as I said before, I almost didn’t want to apply for houses so that they’d get in first. And sometimes I begged Joel not to apply to certain ones because of it. And sometimes they listened. I knew my compassion made it harder for us and probably for them. But I needed to sleep at night.
Transcript Of Our Plans:
Plan A: Get a house. Safe space for LGBT+. Maybe a place that actually has 2 bedrooms. Try something new. Keep an open mind. Apartments? Might work. House? No more strata, maybe? Be open to change.
Plan B: Public Housing. Social worker is helping. Push through as crisis and emergency. Apply with an LGBT+ Initiative to prevent and stop LGBT+ homelessness. Wait list normally 7 years, they said. 5 years if we applied for emergency. At very least get on the list and wait.
Plan C: Put our things into storage. Live with our friends who offered their spare room until we found a place. Probably feel like we are imposing and only come in after 6pm, with our own food. Bastet wouldn’t probably handle the dogs well or cope with small spaces. Always offer them money and feel like we are a burden.
Plan D: Keep our things in storage. Live in our car and travel around to other parts of Australia to find a house because obviously NSW ain’t working for us.
Do not panic until ten days before eviction. Do what you can.
Moving into the idea of homelessness was a huge blow to our mental health. It really put pressure on our relationship as there were times in all honesty we were yelling at each other. We’d yell until we realised it wasn’t because of each other it was the situation we were in. We were getting tired. We were frightened. We’d talk about what life would be like without a home. We knew we’d get through it together, but we needed to prepare. We needed to see what it would be like and there isn’t until you are. Speaking to people who have moved into homelessness from POSSESSION OF PROPERTY without reason terrified us to our future. And as we packed away the last of our belongings and spent the next few days leading up to the 10 Days Before Eviction, we fought through fatigue. I drove until I had no more petrol to drive with. We were eating one meal a day. Drinking water because our GP kept monitoring us and keeping track. And this is where I want to acknowledge the privileges that we did have despite not having a biofamily to fall back on, despite not having a large social network, despite our disabilities, neurodiversity and mental illness. We had a GP and team. We had psychologists and other support. We had a friend willingly to take Joel, Bastet and me in. We had a car. We had each other. We have white skin. So many people have disadvantages that shouldn’t be disadvantages. We should not have more people than homes and prices shouldn’t be rising. For so many people the cost of living is their life and that’s priceless. Needs should be met. Shelter. Water. Food. Three basics people are dying over.
On the day we were to panic, we had a phone call. Joel answered.
When we were finally approved for our next house, I almost had a panic attack out of sheer disbelief.
If I’ve learned anything from this experience, trying as it was, I know how to push my limits to survive. I am fortunate enough that I am in a position to be able to look back knowing I made it.
But not everybody does. Many out there don’t have any support system, or access to the help that we accessed to get through this ordeal. Like us, many don’t have family to help in times of crisis like this. I imagine what this process would be like if I had parents come to the rescue. Help pack. Organising. Transport. Administration stuff. Cook a meal. Hold my hand. Give me a hug. I wish our system wasn’t so broken and those with privilege would put all those people first with enthusiastic smiles.
All I can do is talk about my experience.
Everyone who warned us was right. Everything happened so fast. We are in debt for it. Pay higher rent because of it. Still have struggles ahead, but unlike so many others who have moved into homelessness, we were lucky to find a house. At the last minute. With only a few days to spare. I don’t know why the new owner chose us. I don’t know why we were lucky and so many others aren’t. But I am grateful. And even though my neurodiverse brain is still not coping with the change, I see that my belongings are around me. Bastet is no longer cowering, though her scared mews still break my heart. Joel is with me like they always are. I hope to one day feel like I’m home again. That the world around me will change so that I won’t spend a wonderful day with my person to only get an email telling me it’s time to move into potential homelessness. The thought haunts me. I worry next time our luck will run out. I chase away the guilt of being disabled and not live in a world where it’s safe for me to work in it. I hope to be able to write again. To produce my books and be happy. I don’t ever want to experience this again, though I’m warned it will inevitably happen.
And to the mother, who held her son’s hand and gave me a smile. Who told me they recognised me. That I looked fabulous. Who shared words of fear and doubt and frustration. Who struggled socially like I did, but found bravery in trying. To the single mother with three kids who didn’t understand why they were evicted. Who didn’t come to terms with POSSESSION OF PROPERTY like I did. Who was scared about providing for her children. To the family who came to Australia for a better life. Meek but tender. Kind and thoughtful. Overlooked and unfairly treated. To the person living in the campsite in a tent all through winter just wanting a home. To the others out there struggling in this era of living crisis. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It sucks and I only want better for you. I hope you find it.
To those out there who are in position of change but don’t change it for the better, may your eyes open and you be humbled. May you learn that life is precious and short and you can do better. So do better.
Do better.
If you’ve reached this far, thank you. I love my readers. Not only do I post musings on my website, but it’s a place to buy my books, to join in on Story Stone Writing Prompts and to occasionally get Tik Tok videos. Though a lot of that has decreased due to circumstances, I hope to return to all that. Any help will be amazing. I want to stop worrying that the way that I am prevents my family from living a comfortable life. Donate here: https://ko-fi.com/michaelstoneburner