QueerCoyote
granola punk
So I never actually posted an intro here to my knowledge, though now I've been here a while. I apologize if this is verbose, I've had a really rough day/week and am kinda loopy on my pain meds right now, tramadol turns me into a sappy puddle of feels.
Hillbilly Castro / Andy told me a long time ago that I should check out STP, that I would probably like it... eventually I did, and I'm still here.
I met Hillbilly in Syracuse through a friend, and we ended up spending a lot of time together while he helped out his mom for a few months. He met me shortly after I got out of a gaslighting relationship that I had entered into after dropping out of college at 84 lbs with bad anxiety, an overwithdrawn bank account, no food, and physical health issues, having sex with photographers for money to pay overdue rent. He fed me and we had deep conversations about life and ethics, we took drunken long walks at 2 am and found ourselves looking at stars and watching our breath frost sleeping in tarps on local state land. Eventually I was able to feel like a person again and like life was worth something. I fell in love with his two younger brothers and became pretty good friends with his mom.
Eventually winter came and Andy left for warmer places, I went back to college and my health improved to the point that I was able to work full time to pay for it and rent, even it put my disabled body through hell. Every few months he would stop by and regale me with his tales that kept me going with the knowledge that the world was larger than the tiny bubble I was forcing myself to endure. I joined dirty kid and traveling groups, I befriended all the homebums in Syracuse and started under the table food, clothing, and gear drives for them and others that wouldn't/couldn't go to the local mission or who were overlooked by local charities. I found meaning. I got involved in defending other poor people in our highly segregated southside and westside against prejudice in city planning and locally unwanted land uses. I found local urban places that I could escape to with my tarp and sleeping bag when living with others and inside walls became too much, buildings I could scale to sleep with the stars above me, water towers I could trip next to at night and watch the city light change on a timer while the city slept. At one point I moved into the woods, two miles up a dirt road to a shack of a cabin and lived off the grid with my dog and cat raising ducks and showering with cold well water under a perforated milk carton eating food I foraged or earned by working at a neighbor's homestead. I learned to fight tooth and nail for my right to be recognized as queer and not tolerate shit for it. One night I had a shotgun rifle pointed at me just for walking in state woodland at night and looking untraditional and shouldered past the man confident that I could handle it. I learned to be self-reliant without money and to trust that no matter what I could have my own back.
Last summer I worked my first paid biology research job. This semester I took a graduate course on environmental justice, racism, and poverty and the professor tried to convince me to change my studies to do a grad degree under him (I didn't but his approval was so necessary for my confidence), and had conducted my own self-directed environmental conservation research in Pennsylvania. Yesterday I walked across the stage for my Bachelors of Science, and assuming I pass my finals and my research paper is approved I graduate with honours.
I'm not a traveling kid by lifestyle, and I'll always be a bit of an outsider because my passion and goals drive me to situations where I'm housed up if not close to it. If I wasn't constantly finding friends willing to rent to me for half of what rent should be I would be homeless and have been homeless out of my car for short periods of time in between these scenarios. I love and heavily relate to y'all. My goal is once I'm an established research biologist is to create an environmentally-minded sustainable intentional community off the grid with anarchist ideals and a family feeling for transients and long-term residents.
I hope you're all warm, fed, and safe from fires. If you ever need food, hit me up, if you ever need a place to sleep, hit me up. If you just need someone to talk to at 3am to keep you from bad decisions, hit me up. I firmly believe human kindness is a life-changing superpower, as it's certainly kept me alive in this world when otherwise I would have opted out long ago.
So yeah, hi. I'm coyote (sorrel if you know me irl) and I like being here. I'm queer, an anarchist, and I try to do my best by everyone I meet and whatever I have is yours so long as I can spare it. I'm crying right now writing this as I recognize how far I've come and just what I've come through, and shit is really rough right now but looking back I know if I got through all that then I can definitely get through this.
Hillbilly Castro / Andy told me a long time ago that I should check out STP, that I would probably like it... eventually I did, and I'm still here.
I met Hillbilly in Syracuse through a friend, and we ended up spending a lot of time together while he helped out his mom for a few months. He met me shortly after I got out of a gaslighting relationship that I had entered into after dropping out of college at 84 lbs with bad anxiety, an overwithdrawn bank account, no food, and physical health issues, having sex with photographers for money to pay overdue rent. He fed me and we had deep conversations about life and ethics, we took drunken long walks at 2 am and found ourselves looking at stars and watching our breath frost sleeping in tarps on local state land. Eventually I was able to feel like a person again and like life was worth something. I fell in love with his two younger brothers and became pretty good friends with his mom.
Eventually winter came and Andy left for warmer places, I went back to college and my health improved to the point that I was able to work full time to pay for it and rent, even it put my disabled body through hell. Every few months he would stop by and regale me with his tales that kept me going with the knowledge that the world was larger than the tiny bubble I was forcing myself to endure. I joined dirty kid and traveling groups, I befriended all the homebums in Syracuse and started under the table food, clothing, and gear drives for them and others that wouldn't/couldn't go to the local mission or who were overlooked by local charities. I found meaning. I got involved in defending other poor people in our highly segregated southside and westside against prejudice in city planning and locally unwanted land uses. I found local urban places that I could escape to with my tarp and sleeping bag when living with others and inside walls became too much, buildings I could scale to sleep with the stars above me, water towers I could trip next to at night and watch the city light change on a timer while the city slept. At one point I moved into the woods, two miles up a dirt road to a shack of a cabin and lived off the grid with my dog and cat raising ducks and showering with cold well water under a perforated milk carton eating food I foraged or earned by working at a neighbor's homestead. I learned to fight tooth and nail for my right to be recognized as queer and not tolerate shit for it. One night I had a shotgun rifle pointed at me just for walking in state woodland at night and looking untraditional and shouldered past the man confident that I could handle it. I learned to be self-reliant without money and to trust that no matter what I could have my own back.
Last summer I worked my first paid biology research job. This semester I took a graduate course on environmental justice, racism, and poverty and the professor tried to convince me to change my studies to do a grad degree under him (I didn't but his approval was so necessary for my confidence), and had conducted my own self-directed environmental conservation research in Pennsylvania. Yesterday I walked across the stage for my Bachelors of Science, and assuming I pass my finals and my research paper is approved I graduate with honours.
I'm not a traveling kid by lifestyle, and I'll always be a bit of an outsider because my passion and goals drive me to situations where I'm housed up if not close to it. If I wasn't constantly finding friends willing to rent to me for half of what rent should be I would be homeless and have been homeless out of my car for short periods of time in between these scenarios. I love and heavily relate to y'all. My goal is once I'm an established research biologist is to create an environmentally-minded sustainable intentional community off the grid with anarchist ideals and a family feeling for transients and long-term residents.
I hope you're all warm, fed, and safe from fires. If you ever need food, hit me up, if you ever need a place to sleep, hit me up. If you just need someone to talk to at 3am to keep you from bad decisions, hit me up. I firmly believe human kindness is a life-changing superpower, as it's certainly kept me alive in this world when otherwise I would have opted out long ago.
So yeah, hi. I'm coyote (sorrel if you know me irl) and I like being here. I'm queer, an anarchist, and I try to do my best by everyone I meet and whatever I have is yours so long as I can spare it. I'm crying right now writing this as I recognize how far I've come and just what I've come through, and shit is really rough right now but looking back I know if I got through all that then I can definitely get through this.