we got our first quote. it’s nigh on 50k, which was my horror story high end of things possibility, pretty much. and that’s just cleanup, not rebuild.

we’re meeting with an attorney on monday. i said the phrase “sorry, that was my attorney calling” earlier this week. “my attorney” isn’t a phrase I had ever expected to have to say. maybe that was a goal in life.

the more overwhelmed i get, the less i post. if you want email updates to go with my sporadic posting, there is an email subscription box at the bottom of the page – you just have to put your address in, and the click the link in a “confirm” email it will send you.

most of what I can tell you is a list of Things we haven’t done yet. we haven’t found a place to live in january. we haven’t started work at all. we haven’t figured out fundraising, if that’s something we want to do. there’s a point you (i) reach where the regular things you have to do to survive are really exhausting, and we were already there before we learned the news.

it has become blasé to us, that point where i will mention our situation in passing and forget that it’s a Big Deal to other people. it’s oddly like some of our queer/weirdo identities in that way. mostly i bring it up because i want to tell related stories, so it’s context, but it feels like a big disclosure (which is interesting in terms of that STI metaphor, considering that “disclosure” is STI language too. it came up in a Job interview last week (“so where do you see yourself in five years?” “well we have a house here that’s under construction because…”) and it’s funny because it feels Highly Personal and Inappropriate, but it shouldn’t be.

I brought it up the day before during my pre-interview haircut because the hairdresser was about my age and might know people buying houses. I want everybody to test their house for meth, because this shouldn’t happen to people, but especially to people who are living on a shoestring trying to pay for their first house.

still, communication is tough in general when I’m tired, and moreso when I start worrying about people thinking that I’m talking about my pet meth house all the time. when I’m weary I start having trouble responding to people reaching out to me, be it by phone (voicemail is the worst), email, text, facebook, or anything of that matter. if you have contacted me and I haven’t gotten back, it’s not because I don’t cherish the outreach, I promise.

I find myself judging myself for having a “pity party” sometimes, but that’s not where I am. I find myself vacillating between robotic “do-the-thing-make-happen-go” and a deep world weary sorrow. we come from a bunch of areas of privilege (the fact that we have been relatively housed for most of our lives at all, and the way that we were able to have the familial support to try to make a house happen, and white privilege, for a few) but we also face a handful of discrimination, and they make this recovery tougher.

there is inherent fatphobia when people look at me, which colors every interaction we have. my being unemployed and my partner’s underemployment make us suspect around ability to make our rent (which is completely reasonable) but also makes people look at us warily in general, as if our inherent value is based on what we contribute to capitalism. people are horrible around disability, always, but we have extra chances to face it now. social services barriers are high. we both have degrees where we had to do a fair amount of resources to get them, plus a team of smart supporters, and we have trouble figuring out where to go next or who to ask for help. every official agency we’ve talked to has given us an across-the-board “no” on whether they can do anything to help.

still, it keeps coming back to rallying around what community we have. we’ve received so much support, which i hope is a mirror to what we’ve given in the past and what we continue to give as we are able. we have a lot of skills, and a little time, and occasional energy. giving is a valuable distraction, and I hope that people will (continue to) let us know what we can give.

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