I want to explain what my situation actually looks like because from the outside I think people see a person asking for help online and assume there must be some simple solution I haven’t tried.

There isn’t.

I used to Doordash for a living until my car broke down. I’m a Katrina survivor and my family lost everything in Katrina and I lost all of my family in the years after. Katrina also destroyed my community and I’m the last Creole in my area.

My wife and I are living in an extremely unstable situation with no family, no transportation, no permanent housing and very little support around us. I’m trying to find work, housing and a way to get transportation back but every one of those things is connected. My area has no public transportation. Without transportation it’s impossible to get work. Without stable income it’s impossible to get housing. Without housing and reliable food and rest, it’s impossible for me to recover physically.

And right now I’m already dealing with extreme malnutrition and the effects of prolonged nutritional deprivation. One of the hardest parts has been trying to recover while simultaneously having to fight for basic survival.

There is also a frustrating reality I’ve run into repeatedly: if you don’t look like the stereotypical picture of someone who is severely malnourished, people dismiss and mock you. Modern medicine doesn’t focus on this. Modern medicine only recognizes the stereotypical skinny malnourished. I’ve had my concerns dismissed because I don’t apparently look the way someone expects a severely undernourished person to look. So even though I’m dealing with extreme disabilities because of all of this I am unable to get any government assistance or assistance from anyone.

So I’m trying to rebuild my nutrition and my health while living in an environment where I’m constantly worried about where we’re going to sleep, how we’re going to get somewhere, how we’re going to make enough money and what we’re going to do next and constantly being attacked.

I’ve reached out to churches, charities, organizations and local resources. I’ve asked about housing. I’ve asked about transportation. I’ve asked about employment. I’ve tried to find programs that actually fit our circumstances.

Again and again, I’ve found that there simply isn’t a program designed for people in our particular situation.

And when I’ve tried asking locally on social media, it hasn’t resulted in help. I’ve been attacked, accused of things, mocked and treated like the fact that I’m struggling somehow makes me a bad person and I’ve had people take advantage of me. I had a woman who reached out to me on Nextdoor offering me a car in exchange for painting and scraping her house. I did the job and she signed the car over to me and the car broke down on me on the way home and luckily I was able to get it to the motel and I tried to work on it but I couldn’t afford to fix it and then I had to sell it. Instead of people lending a hand and helping me get my car fixed people just took advantage of me because they knew I had no other choice but to sell it for cheap. Same thing happened with my original car that broke down that put me in this situation.

I’ve also done TikTok lives trying to explain what we’re going through. That brought another problem: scam-awareness pages and other accounts found me, started making videos about me and mocking me and now I can’t go live without being harassed by hundreds of trolls and they scare off people that are willing to help. That’s the part people don’t see.

I’ve had job opportunities nearby within walking distance that ghosted me after they found out I didn’t have a car. I deal with so much extreme gatekeeping and derangement.

I’m trying to recover physically while simultaneously trying to survive financially. I’m trying to find work without transportation. I’m trying to find housing without stable income. I’m trying to navigate a system where the resources available simply aren’t afforded to us. And when I speak publicly about it, the response is more hostility instead of help.

I’m trying to survive long enough to get to the other side of this. Right now I’m less than 5 hours away from homelessness in a very hostile area. My vision is dimming from malnutrition and the stress is making it worse.

I just wanted to share with you all the hell that is my life and maybe get some understanding.