So goes the plans of mice and me...
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Long long looooooong story as short as I can make it (like literally, the moving saga tag is the best start for how long this story is...not totally current but I don’t tag all my help posts with that tag) I am a queer, disabled woman (fibro, psoriatic arthritis, degenerative back disorder, chronic fatigue, bipolar disorder) who has been homeless for 20 months come August 3rd. I am currently waiting to see if an application I put in to the County of San Diego via Alpha Project for Section 8 housing will be approved; I have no idea how long it will take, but it’s already been about a month now.
I have a 16-year-old son who I had to relinquish my legal rights and physical custody of after trying for twelve years to get him back. I had thought his adoptive mom L was a good person and would take care of him as much as she did her own children; in the two years since the adoption has been finalized, that is blatently not the case. He’s suffering from emotional neglect at the very least, but my hands are currently tied because I have no legal visitation rights (California does not have open adoption) and if he gets taken out of her home I may not see him again for a year or so until he graduates high school and ages out of the system (and that’s if he’s kept at the special school he goes to).
So in June, I had my son for a ten day visit at a hotel. He was sent with no clothes other than what he had worn to his awards ceremony earlier that day, his medication and his electronic tablet and headphones. I spent nearly $1000 on the hotel room, food, new clothing...it put my family almost $700 in debt for the month of July. I was then told by L via my son that until I got permanent housing, no more visits.
Then last week, my son says L wanted us to take him the entire month of August, a feat that would have gone well over $3,000 in hotel costs alone. It later became this upcoming weekend (the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of August) and an undetermined visit later in the month for a longer period in time. I still have no idea when this second visit is taking place or how long it will be, so I can’t pay any of my bills for fear I won’t have enough for a hotel room aside from maybe the two storage units we use most.
Last week as well, my mother (who is also disabled - back problems, bipolar, diabetes and has had a heart attack and breast cancer) got an infected wound in her leg which has only gotten worse. She finally got to see a doctor today and was told she needs to be off her feet, doing hot compresses to get the wound to drain and beginning antibiotics. She gets fever/chills or it doesn’t drain, we have to head to the ER because there could be life-threatening complications with her diabetes.
I’ve asked for a lot of help and graciously, I’ve gotten it. But right now I’m pulling my hair out because I need to get my mom in a hotel room for longer than this weekend, I need to save as much as I can to take my son later in the month so I can keep visitation (L gets nasty when I have to refuse a visit by threatening for us not to see him, as she did earlier this July), I need to pay $521 for three storage units with all our belongings, I need gas to go get my son and I have no earthly idea how much of my disability and my mother’s disability we’re getting on the 1st since the 3rd is on a weekend. I honestly don’t even know if we’ll have enough between us to cover the weekend hotel booking at $442.
I don’t know what to do. I need to take care of my mom, I need to get my son in a loving environment as much as I can while he’s on break this month from school, I need to feed all of us (and I’m not joking when I call my son a human garbage disposal...he’s nearly six feet tall and so skinny you can see his joints, but he eats like he has a black hole for a stomach) especially since my son is not getting breakfast and lunch at school this month. I’m at the end of my rope at this point and utterly exhausted from insomnia and pain and trying to finish a massive project I took on with near-daily deadlines.
As I said way at the top, we’re in line to receive section 8 housing we hope, and help filling in gaps from our twenty months of homelessness plus whatever else we have to go through before we get approved. We’re in a van and it’s killing me to climb in and out of the back with my arthritic limbs and the fibro hurting my muscles. I have a cane and a walker crammed in there and it’s such a tight fit. Any help getting a hotel for a while would be a start; after that, food and help paying the bills. I may be able to pay people back in installments once I know when I’m supposed to have my son for his second visit so I can get the reservation and have a finite amount of days to pay for.
Please help. Please reblog if you can’t. This has been one of the most stressful months of my life and while I thought August might be better it’s already off to a bad start and I just want to cry.
