My name is Lowen. I am a disabled queer creative living in poverty, attempting to escape an extremely bleak living situation.
who i am (specifically)
I've been on the internet since 2009, often using my time here to tell stories to strangers. I used to write short erotic fiction (both dark & contemporary romance) quite prolifically in 2012 - 2017; then, in 2013, I started working with reactive animals as an in-home pet sitter.I live with my best friend, Adam, my little sister, Rory, and our collective three dogs, Omen, Pan, and Mercury.Throughout my life, I have wanted to be a psychologist, a youth educator, and eventually an animal behaviorist due to my positive experiences working with 'difficult' animals. I also have wanted to write novels for as long as I've been able to read.Unfortunately, due to a series of traumatic events I experienced between 2017 and 2019, my life was put on pause as I lost myself to severe depression and a psychotic episode-- one I am still recovering from.
How I Got Here
PART ONE: THEN
In order to understand 'the mess,' it's necessary to understand my background.Starting one seemingly random night in 2008, I began to experience semi-consistent aching in my lower abdomen and legs. Using the arguably archaic 'emergency room pain scale,' my every day became a steady '6,' with moments of pain skyrocketing me to a stern '9.' At the time, I was 14, and had never experienced pain like that in my life.My parents did not find this shocking, upsetting, or urgent in anyway-- and when I didn't 'shut up' about it, they attempted to frame the situation as if I were just a naughty, lazy child; that, I was obviously feigning the pain, motivated by the desire to avoid tasks like household chores and homework (and play-dates, parties, school events, family vacations...). They denied me medical care all together for years, and the tension it caused in the house never went away. I felt like a burden on everyone around me, and often gaslit myself into believing what they believed about me in order to make peace ("Maybe this is what liars feel like?" "Maybe I do just need to learn to relax?").I never got better; just better at smiling through it. To this day, my mother still believes this pain is all in my head, and that one day I'll 'finally' 'relax' enough to not need to 'crutch' on it anymore. She is better in some ways, but this is not one of them.This set me up for a really bad time, as you can imagine; and to be perfectly honest, I was already kind of having a bad time!My parents had problems with each other most of my life, and I think regretted having ever loved each other. My dad is a life-long alcoholic who I often compare, in a literary sense, to the character 'Frank Reynolds' from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Not to be confused with 'Frank Gallagher' from Shameless-- though that's not far off, either). My mom, in the same respect, is an amalgamation of 'Lucille Bluth' from Arrested Development, 'Peter Griffin' from Family Guy, and 'Professor Trelawney' from Harry Potter (sorry for mentioning Harry Potter).While my father was largely absent outside of our turbulent finances and his drunken 'shenanigans,' my mom became so depressed being married to him that she numbed herself to everything to do with the life she chose with him-- which unfortunately included the every woe of my sister and I. She was supportive when she had the time to be, but 'bad things' seemed to slip through the cracks.When I was assaulted at school, it was brushed off because I was "strong" and should have been able to just handle it. When my loved ones ailed and died, my emotional fallout was dismissed because "death is a part of life" and I should have just adjusted to the caverns it created. Close friends died young, adults abused me, the education system lost me-- and nothing ever inspired intervention, because my mother negligently believed that any child of hers was 'above' needing her help to grow.Additionally, my mom is an avid believer in the apocalypse, as well as the core belief that only the strong should survive. Some people call people like her "doomsday preppers" or simply "preppers," and the only reason I hesitate to use that label is due to her lack of genuine preparedness. Where most survivors of a "prepared childhood" will recall being educated in gun safety, hunting, fishing, farming, carpentry, or any other otherwise helpful survival skills, my mother's training for my sister and I only included one observed truth: that something was coming, and if we weren't fully independent when it arrived, she would leave us behind. More pointedly, she would leave me behind, due to my weaknesses.By 2014, I felt largely self-raised, because I was. I was extremely sensitive to fear, afraid to love, and buried in a phony personality I had crafted for myself in order to survive-- and that's just what I thought everyone felt like. I thought that 'life' was a soul within a thin shell crafted to keep you alive and loved. Very few people knew the real me, because I would rather die than let them know how fleshy and frail I felt the real me was.I had also been passively suicidal for just under a decade, and due to political unrest I was very seriously under the delusion that I would be dead soon-- urgently. A large part of me felt dead already, and that I was just waiting for my body to catch up with my spirit. I felt many of the things necessary to progress in life were worthless to attempt, because in the time it would take me to accomplish them... there would be nothing left. Everything was a waste of money, a waste of effort, and a waste of time.I had stopped being able to keep up with my peers. I couldn't afford college, and I wasn't able to work consistently enough to move out because of the pain I was still regularly experiencing. Where my friends had their parents' support, I only had the illusion of it. I was getting friendlier and friendlier with the concept of dying, as my friends made new friends, new connections, and new pathways for themselves. I know this is something most people go through after they finish their public education, but for me-- someone who had never been given tools for regulating my emotional pain, and who was otherwise all alone-- it was making me insane.I don't mean 'insane' as a flippant hyperbole, either. I mean physically, chemically, these complicated feelings were driving me to madness. I had developed CPTSD from youth-long medical neglect, emotional abuse, and physical abuse from adult caregivers (such as teachers and babysitters), among other things... on top of BPD, which typically develops in early, early childhood, and likely informed a lot of my mistreatment as it continued into my walking-and-talking years. I also had OCD that I had mis-self-diagnosed as GAD, which can cause schizophrenia-like symptoms when left untreated. So, in short, I was losing it. I was hanging on by a thread. Every road bump felt like a mountain.This all came to a head in late 2017, when so many bad things happened to and around me, one after another, that I stopped being able to function like a normal human being at all. Some of the things that happened were so confusing and painful that I'm still not ready to talk about them. Some of the things were universally upsetting, such as aforementioned political unrest, stirrings of war, and violence that has Wikipedia pages dedicated to them. With all that was going on in my head, and all that was going on in the world, I felt as though I had the confirmation I needed that it was all over; nothing would ever be okay again, and I was looking at the end of the road for humanity as a whole.I didn't want to see the ending, I didn't want to be abandoned; but I also wasn't 'brave' enough to take my own life. Today, I am thankful for that perceived cowardice; however, at the time, the duality broke me. I wanted to be dead so badly that I'd pray for it. I'd ask for illness. I'd ask for an accident. I'd ask for violence.Over the next year, my every day was a game of will-I/won't-I take my life. I made and canceled plans. I pushed people away. I locked people out. I had changed my shell to something thicker and covered in spikes, because when I did die, I didn't want anyone to miss me.I finally suffered a suicidal episode while on a job in early 2019, and my life has not been the same since.
PART TWO: NOW
In some ways, my life post-breakdown improved. Because of how unavoidably serious my mental health was, I was finally provided a doctor. That doctor took me seriously enough to rush me to a therapist and psychiatrist, who helped me discover and understand my diagnoses. I got put on medication that worked and started attempting to live again.In 2018, I had also helped my best friend escape their own abusive situation (this is Adam); and, in late 2019, we moved into an 'apartment' (read: a two bedroom basement level, with an unfinished bathroom and no kitchen) maintained by my parents. Unfortunately, that apartment ended up flooding the first two years we lived there, destroying most of the material belongings I had. This also drove a fresh wedge between my parents and I, because they had no interest in repairing the problem that caused the first flood-- which caused the second flood the following year.After the leak was repaired, as part of proclaimed "peace treaty," we were offered the 'upstairs apartment' (the ground floor of the property we were already living in) by my father. My parents had finally divorced the year previous, and he claimed that the smaller space made more sense for him. He was also aging, and the basement apartment was most accessible.Unfortunately for us, he left out that he had not cleaned a single thing in the home since my mother left him, or that he had completely destroyed the plumbing in the kitchen and bathroom.So, we moved from a two bedroom, one bathroom, no kitchen basement- to a three bedroom, two bath (???), no kitchen house, that we had to clean what had become hazardous material from before we could even think of settling in. We also saw a huge spike in rent, as my father began spending all of his money on alcohol, and required an extra $1000+ outside of our agreed cost a month in order keep the property at all. If we do not meet his demands, we will have no where to live. That's the situation we've been ignorantly stuck in.I have been working hard on my recovery for the last seven years, but it hasn't been easy. This text details only some of the major hiccups I've run into. This is just the stuff I've talked about so much, that it's easy to share so publicly. Despite my best efforts, I still struggle with my OCD, fatigue, agoraphobia, periods of mutism, and catatonia induced by fear/panic. My chronic pain also remains undiagnosed due to the wonders of the US healthcare system and, as such, I am still extremely limited, both physically and mentally.I'm trying my best every single day, but I need a lot more help than I am receiving-- and that doesn't mean I'm not receiving a lot.
What I Need
The likelihood of this page being linked in association with a specific plea for financial help is high. I have been trying desperately for years to build up my savings so that I could have the funding to support myself, get better, and then maybe get my little family out of here. The ultimate dream is to someday be so far away from my family that they can't hurt me anymore; however, for now, I'm still drowning alongside them. The world often feels stacked against me/my success.I'm trying to get on SSI, but its been difficult due to my undefined status as a physically disabled person. My father has also used my social security information to get grants and tax breaks himself, which makes it seems as though I am already recieveing aid from the state, through him. I realize this is illegal, but because we don't own the house... it's not like I can go after him legally. We will lose everything and be worse than we started. So, until I can secure contact with a social worker that actually cares about people/me, this road is blocked off.In short: I am trying my best, but until my "best" is better, I must rely on the kindness of strangers (like you) to assist me in affording simple necessities, like food and shelter, and modern necessities, like internet access, and my cellphone.
How To Help
I appreciate everyone who has helped with boosting this page, my posts about fundraising, and everyone who has already donated in what ways they can. Some have reached out directly to offer a helping hand in leu of money, and that means the world to me as well. I’m really bad at staying on top of my social life, so to know there are people who care about me at all is an immense feeling.You can also help by buying off our wishlist, or buying from my RedBubble shop.
PayPal Email: [email protected]
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