I don’t want to keep a long post pinned to the top of the page forever, not when I’m now committed to a posting marathon, so I’m leaving the details here. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far!

My best friend Bast has received shocking news this week that is both devastating and hopeful.

Bast has been in poor health her whole life and it has gotten exponentially worse over the last decade due to the immense emotional and financial stress of dropping everything to take care of her mother after the sudden death of her father. She finally got healthcare access worth mentioning a few years ago when she got approved for Medicaid. Since moving to New York state, she’s finally had access to a healthcare team that actually cares and wants to get to the bottom of what’s ailing her so that she can work on getting back to meaningful employment.

Well, this week, we learned that is not going to happen. Imagine being in your fifties and only then getting the news that you have cerebral palsy. 😳 This explains everything that ails her, from her deafness to her dental issues, exhaustion, coordination and mobility problems, and more.

This is devastating because she now knows that she’s not going to get any better and isn’t going to be able to go back to work. But it’s also hopeful because she paid into disability benefits years ago, so she can apply for them now. We know it’s going to be a really hard fight and we are braced for rejections and appeals, but even the small amount she would get from them would be life-changing for her. The house is paid for and all the major repairs are done. There are other working adults in the house. I’m working on a project with her daughter Zack Addams to hopefully drum up some passive income. And Bast has a community, including myself, that remains rallied around her.

The problem is that community is tapped out. We have reached the ninth circle of hell — a huge and erroneous property tax bill that the city of Endicott will not work on them with. Turns out they would rather have a house falling apart on main street than to work with the family to negotiate a payment plan or, you know, calculating the correct amount that they should actually owe, which would be a manageable amount.
I have reached out many times to my community to ask for help for my friends. Those pleas have mostly fallen on deaf ears. So I’m not asking for help for them this time, but for myself. I’m in a position to make a significant amount of that tax bill go away, so I will, if that’s what I have to do, because there is no way they are going to go homeless when they are so close to security. But I’m not wealthy and this will cause me hardship, especially since I’m planning to invest money into the passive income project.

Why is this my problem, you will ask. Why should it not be? We all have our causes. My cause is my family of choice. Anything extra that comes in, I send their way. This is why I don’t seem to donate much time or money to charities — I’m hyper focused on this one family rather than donating to strangers.

I have been there, desperately poor and reliant on help from friends to buy groceries or pay the rent. Because I was blessed with good health, I was able, with that little boost, to lift myself out of poverty. It is so difficult to do that when you live in a country at war against its poor. Some people just vulnerable and need help. Once upon a time, we lived in communities, and communities took care of each other. Now, it’s everyone out for themselves. If you can’t help yourself, why should I help you? There is so much judgement and so little empathy.
I refuse to become one of those people, so I keep sharing this family’s story. Because it is a story my own past that is still so close and of a future that I barely outran.

We, her closest friends, have explored all other options to pay this bill or get it deferred, including extending lines of credit and getting personal loans. We are all the end of our own resources. We ourselves need a push to get this life raft to that no longer distant shore of security. Thank you for reading and sharing.