hard not to notice how much more frequently im seeing posts from ppl needing money to make rent. doesn’t bode well!! please donate if you can, subscribe to patreons, help keep each other safe
i’m mostly pointing this out bc i feel like it’s really easy to get fatigued seeing lots of posts like that, and possibly, even if you’re sympathetic! to start resenting them. but from personal experience every time someone asks for money is usually extremely hard and painful and only something most ppl do when they’re really desperate, and the less you have, the more often you have to ask bc you’ve already cut your expenses down as much as is possible (at least i have)
evictions are one of many ways society's immune system attempts to neutralize and digest people from marginalized backgrounds. it's tiring, but those of us in a position to help should do so. we've gotta help each other, nobody else is going to.
On the subject of evictions in particular: Speaking from experience, mine and that of people close to me... Keeping people in housing is absolutely critical in our society, even more than a lot of things. If you can throw a few bucks and help someone make rent one month, that's something they can come back from. If you end up losing your housing and are couch surfing or outside... recovering from that can be a goddamn miracle.
as someone who has been homeless in the past, it absolutely permanently changed me (in a deeply negative sense) and the only reason why, nearly 15 years later, that i'm not still homeless was with the help of several friends. it's unfortunate that these days i'm no longer in contact with most of them. many times we stopped being friends out of some interpersonal conflict partly born from how that event broke me, but more are now dead. (albeit not from the process of helping me) i've never even been evicted and it was still essentially like attempting to climb out of a 10 meter tall pit while you're slowly bleeding out, where all of the walls are completely smooth and slick with oil and your own blood, and then at the top of the pit there's some razor-wire as a final fuck you.
it cannot be overstated how it completely changes how you look at life and money. how it breaks you. how your psyche suffers a violent fiery death and how it is born anew, replete with a million more hangups and an almost fundamental inability to thrive, the only thing that remains is simple survival.
if you can help it, treat my experience as a monument to that which must never be repeated. i wish i could thank those that helped lift me out of that pit that i no longer can give thanks to. a while back, i tried messaging one that i fell out with long ago. i never got a response back from them, but i hope they read the message thanking them. i can only hope that my message didn't fill them with a sense of revulsion.
