Ivan & Michael are For Sale

January 2013 update:

Ivan plans to make a right and proper post about it soon- but I wanted to update this since it’s old now. 

Thanks to the wonderful people here on Tumblr, we were able to find someone to stay with for awhile, and she quickly turned into a good friend. Later this year we’ll be taking over the lease when she moves- Pennsylvania has become our new home. It really is lovely there too, we really enjoy it! What started out as quick plans when Ivan needed somewhere to go has really turned out better than we could have ever expected. Thank you so much for all of your help, we really could not have done it without you. 

-Michael

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Our Story:

(feel free to read our original story, found below this one. I just wanted to update everyone with what has happened in the past months.)

Our names, though not the ones we were born with, are Ivan and Michael. We’re two pre-everything ftm boys from South Georgia, right in the bible belt. We found ourselves stuck in a small town (pop. 300) where new jobs were nearly unheard of, living with my queer/trans* unfriendly family, who suffer from a very rocky marriage and anger issues. We were living in an open room next to the kitchen, giving us no privacy and leaving us open to the above issues 24/7. To top it all off, my mother was constantly threatening to throw Ivan out. We were miserable and depressed, Ivan had nearly stopped eating completely… Something had to change.

So, finding ourselves at rock bottom, we swallowed our pride best we could and came to Tumblr for help. We didn’t think much would come of it, but boy were we wrong. We watched, amazed, as our story hopped across Tumblr, watched as fandoms we weren’t even in found and spread our story, and people came from all over to buy our stuff and send us donations. We were beyond words. We took a trip to Orlando to look at apartments- it looked like our plan was finally going to work and we would be out of there.

A few days after our trip, we woke up to an email from my father saying Ivan had to leave. My mom had finally had enough, seeing our efforts as pointless and stupid, and demanded that Dad kick him out. A few weeks earlier, we had a wonderful person come to us and offer us a place to stay in Pennsylvania. It seemed silly at the time, because we were trying to get to Orlando, but suddenly she was a life saver. Ivan had been speaking with her on Skype since the day we first met her, and they had become pretty good friends, so he hopped on Skype and let her know what had happened. She was more than happy to let him stay. Another friend of ours in North Carolina offered to buy Ivan a bus ticket and let him stay the night there- greatly shortening the trip for the Pennsylvania friend. Out of nowhere, a plan had come together with perfect timing. 

Now, almost five months later (Jan 9th will be 5 months), I have just got back from visiting Ivan for Christmas and I am happy to say I will be officially moving up there in a week (maybe two, depending on a few things).  [EDIT 2: I’m in PA now! Safe and sound with Ivan] My dad has recognized that, at 20 years old, we are old enough to make our own decisions, and has decided to take my side and help me move. Things are finally looking up for us, and we are finally getting back on our feet. 

We couldn’t have done it without Tumblr. Thank you guys so much.

-Michael

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We are for sale!

Quite literally, actually. (Well, maybe not on Michael’s end, but with me, for the right price…)

Ahem.

My name is Ivan, and I’m 19 years old. I live with Michael/Kaitlyn, in a house with his parents, and his little sister. I’m an FtM, and Michael is genderfucked. To avoid wall of text syndrome, I’ll offer you a bullet list instead. The house we live in currently presents the following problems:

• trans*/queer unfriendly (sickeningly so)
• no privacy (we live in the den)
• regular fights (the parentals fight to alleviate boredom, it seems)
• triggering atmosphere (yelling, door-slamming)
• dysphoria inducing (insisting on calling me my legal name, won’t accept the excuse of a nickname, constant misgendering)
• trying to ‘fix’ us (church every Saturday, huge fights if we try not to go. note: I’m not even of the same religion, so there’s a lot of disrespect too.)
• “do your own chores!” (the problem with this one being that they do them for us before we get the chance, and then yell at us for not doing them.)
• “get a job!” (Went to the labor board-seventeen offers in the area, none of which we qualify for. Already put in applications everywhere anyway.)
• constant insults (“you don’t do anything! you’re so lazy! you had all day to do this! you should lose some weight! you got your hair cut like that?”)

…and those are just the main ones. We’ve been trying, desperately, to hold it together for just as long as we needed to get out, but…but we’ve literally done everything we can think of. Michael is trying to be a Scopist, but he hasn’t gotten the Scopist job set up yet, and there are no job opportunities for me here.

So for months now, we’ve been planning on how to improve our situation. This includes, but is not limited to:

• getting a car
• finding a place to live (scoped out-we’ve looked into lots of places)
• actually moving
• finding a job in the new area

Intended moving place? Orlando, Florida. We’re currently in a nowhere town in Georgia, not far from the Florida border, where the only policeman in town has made it his duty to harass us. We’ve intended for a while now to do everything we can to save up to get us out. Our priorities have shifted as our conditions have worsened; and I, personally, have been miserable up to the point of legitimately being sick. I don’t want to even eat anymore, it’s gotten so bad. Part of it is the misery, and another part is a feeling of debt for every bite of food I take. My diet’s fallen to a can of Mt. Dew and a handful of vitamins in the morning, and a nibble at dinner.

We’re in bad shape.

At this point, we’re desperate to get out by any means necessary, for the sake of our mental and emotional well-being. The problems with this:

• no jobs, no money
• no car
• loan payments
• nowhere to stay until we can get into an apartment

Our loan payments can be handled, postponed, etc. That’s our responsibility. But the rest of it, we can’t much help.

So why did you just read through our sob story? Because we need help. We can’t keep living like this anymore. We can’t.

So, Michael and I are selling practically everything we own. We’re not looking for a handout, we’re not trying to have our every problem solved and tons of cash handed to us on a silver platter. We are, very humbly, and with a lot of pride-swallowing, asking for help.

We’ve cut our preferred moving costs down to one very necessary item-a car. Our goal is $3000, for a good used car that will get us the hell away from here. Everything else can come after, we can crash on couches, or floors, or on the side of the road if we have to, but we have to get out of here, and a car is the only way to do that.

Inclined to help us? Here’s how, via another handy bullet list:

• commissions - I draw and write, and examples of both a fic I’ve been working on, and my art can be found here.
• visit my store - I sell my art in various forms here.
• need old clothes? - We’re selling ours here. (Consider this an online yardsale-more than just clothes about.)
• new clothes? - I have a few tshirt designs up here.
• donations - My paypal email is lefleurdefranceparis@gmail.com.
• anything else - Signal boosting, encouraging words, floors to crash on, requests for anything else we can do for you-anything, really.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated, truly.

Thanks again-and here’s hoping Tumblr helps us as much as we’ve seen it help others.

-Ivan and Michael.