No, I will not give up.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Well.

It has been a day.

It started off with such promise, too: a few shares, two donations, and most of all, the ability to wake up to the knowledge that Wings aced his stress test yesterday. That's one part of six weeks' worth of enormous stress off me now, too. [Only one; there are more concerns, significant and highly stressful ones, but at least his heart is in great shape, and that brings me more joy and gratitude than I can say.]

It was all downhill from there.

There are a couple of problems with the front doors. I'm not up on it enough to describe it with any accuracy, nor do I know how it will shake out, but it's another issue. 

The neighbor's cows apparently downed a section of fence in a place we didn't know about, and the horses got out. Took forever to get them back on our side, and in the meantime, Shade managed to get wire cuts to both hind legs and her left eyelid. We got her patched up and got antibiotics into her; waiting for confirmation from the vet, but I'm pretty sure that when they got their vaxes last week, that included tetanus. Still, a couple of hours out of the day that needed to be put to other use, and a lot of physical and other strain involved.

Then this afternoon (I was, of course, outside dealing with some other crisis), YouCaring's payment processor notified me that they had halted processing of the first donation, citing alleged "suspicious activity," and assured me that they were contacting the donor to verify that all was well. Within 60 seconds (yes, you read that right; in one minute), they then notified me that they were canceling our account. They gave no reason, and no method of recourse. They did not contact the donor at all. They have not responded (yet, at least) to my message asking for an explanation. 

You know, no one has ever been pressured in any way to donate to our effort to have a home once again. No one. This is all voluntary. People who want to donate and feel they can afford it will; people who don't and can't won't. We have endured seven winters, two electrical fires, untold days without running water, bitter cold, dirt, dust, leaks, formaldehyde-riddled surfaces, mold, and too many other dangers to mention. Those are just the big ones. That doesn't include the grinding erosion of our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being in other ways: the constant lack of space, the scarcity of hot water, the inability to cook properly because the oven is next to useless, the refrigerator that constantly craps out and either freezes everything rock-solid or floods all over the floor, the inability to live a normal life in really basic safety and security. And we've been doing all this with chronic (and severe) health conditions. And while I'm not going to detail any of it here, we still manage to help others out as we're able, because people need help and that's part of our responsibility as human beings.

If someone has a problem with our trying, at long last, to be safe and to have some small relative comfort? That's having a problem with our survival. You should get that hole in your soul looked at. 

I'm very angry at this moment. I cannot, and am not even going to bother to try to, articulate what these last seven years have been like for us. I'm also not going to explain what the last six or seven weeks have been like for me. Suffice to say that they have taken every ounce of strength and persistence to keep going. I am, at this moment, disheartened, demoralized, discouraged. I am about an inch away from a panic attack. And you know what?

Fuck that.

I am not giving up. Period. I am going to make sure that we are safe, Wings and myself together, and eventually, we will be able to live the way everyone else does, in a home that has regular running water and heat and an actual bedroom and an actual bathroom and an actual kitchen. When our aging bodies are in massive pain, as is the case daily, we can take a bath instead of a shower for the first time in almost seven years, and in the shower, the water won't turn ice-cold in three minutes. I will be able to cook decent meals again in an oven that actually works, that doesn't tilt and doesn't scorch everything because the flame will not be directly on the shelf. We will not have to go outside in sub-zero temps to light the pilot and then wait an hour for three minutes of hot water, nor will we have to turn the pilot off because it blows out and floods the place with propane fumes. We will be able to do what most people take for granted, simple things like turning on the faucet and knowing water will come out, even in winter. The roof will not leak in a half-dozen places, no matter how often it's patched, and we will not suffocate in a claustrophobic "bedroom" with no room for an actual bed and no room to stand up, either.

I don't know whether we'll get our YouCaring page back. If not, there's always Wings's PayPal link. But no matter how tired I am, how demoralized, how much I feel like giving up, I am going to make sure that we have a safe place in which to grow old together. It may take me years, but I will do this.

If you would like to help, we're grateful for it. For now, PayPal is here; Wings's site, for sales of his work, is here; our wishlist, for the Lowe's cards for materials, is here. And if someone doesn't want to help, that's perfectly fine; just ignore us. But instead of seeking to harm us, perhaps they could, oh, I don't know, just leave us alone and go live their own life?




All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.