In my previous life, prior to several major injuries and health collapses led to the onset of disability, I had the highest aspirations of honing my talents and pursuing my rising star as a collected, published and exhibited fine artist, the proud co-owner of the largest outsider art collective in the Southeast, and an accomplished video dj doing violently hallucinatory live visuals shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of local and international artists in front of throngs of captivated crowds. You have never witnessed anyone burn so brightly, nor so completely out of control. The world knew me as Cataclysm, and the way in which I lived was a testament to my namesake. A slave to a hollow performance, I woke up most days praying that the lie I was living would soon destroy me.

Everything changed in the aftermath of losing my abled body. Especially once I could barely stand at an easel or hold a pencil any more because that pain was so intense. With nothing else left to do but turn inward, I sequestered myself for nearly a decade in order to heal the unspeakable trauma and pain at my core. I humbled myself before teachers and master healing plants with far more wisdom than I, dragging my broken body across stone floors to drink bitter jungle medicine and purge away layer after layer of abuse and neglect and violence and shame to finally muster the strength to admit the naked, hideous, terrifying, beautiful truth.

Something I have always known.

Something that this world very quickly taught me was dangerous as hell to be.

I was, and have always been, a woman of trans experience.

This was not the sort of truth that a ferociously intelligent, vibrant, autistic child of divorce born from a mixed family in a conservative backwater klan-addled mid-80’s bible belt shithole really had the luxury of admitting, let alone embracing. I learned to hide until the labor of concealment and the exhaustion of ceaseless and exhausting performance broke my body and left me locked alone in a room and forced me to confront myself long before the pandemic would force so many like me to do the same.

And so, I chose to release all parts of the lie I was living in order to live authentically. At 35, I finally came out. Only a few short years before america would fall to a fascist regime that has made erasure and eradication of trans people like me one of its highest priorities in the effort to build a white, cisgendered, heterosexual christian ethno-state.

After fighting tooth and nail and blood and bone for five years, jumping through endless hurdles as every system that I depend on for support failed me, I have only managed to have a third of one single procedure completed. Instead of receiving the care I needed for horrific and dangerous levels of distress and dysphoria, I have been abandoned by an incompetent surgeon who lied to me about getting the entire procedure authorized by insurance before beginning a three part staged procedure that he KNEW could not be stopped or left incomplete without causing grievous and irreversible harm. I am now left with complications that now require revision, additional mental health support, as well as the added stress of fighting the provider and insurance in a lengthy court battle for their negligence, discrimination and malpractice.

And yet, I know that there is still hope for me. In the last year alone, I have made incredible strides towards recovering and actualizing the life that I had always hoped to live. What little care I have managed to get has helped so much. I look forward to my future congruence and safety. The girl who was told she’d never be able to walk again and would be dependent on mobility aids has recently been well enough to skate again. I have started performing as a video dj again. I just completed my first large piece of art work in about six years. I am working as a Pro Dominatrix and finding deep fulfillment in my efforts to marry my art and performance with this path. The vision I’ve secretly held for myself since I first took the stage is quickly becoming a reality.

But still so much hardship lies ahead, and it has become painfully apparent that I will have to access this care through fundraising. With medical tourism not being an option due to disability, high support needs and deeply complex chronic health conditions, I must access these procedures locally, in Los Angeles, where the abundance of providers who do these kinds of procedures charge a premium for their expertise.

This means that I must raise:

$17,000 for top surgery/chest reconstruction

$20,000 for body feminization and contouring

$20,000 to begin bottom surgery in a way that will allow me to decide at a later date to proceed with some other options.

and up to $100,000 to complete my facial feminization.

If every follower I had across platforms gave $15, this would be funded instantly.

Instead, I am constantly operating under threat of erasure, censorship, and deplatforming because of the ways in which my body and my identity are politicized and punished on social media, where I am often subject to relentless harassment for simply existing.

The faster I can access this care, the safer and happier I will be.