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IMPORTANT- PLEASE REBLOG!!! (Warning: content includes vague mentions of back surgery and emotional abuse)

This is my friend Melissa. A few weeks ago I learned that, though she was in the midst of recovery from multiple surgeries (including one to alleviate two ruptured discs in her spine), her boyfriend was kicking her out of his house with only a week’s notice. I’d like to say there are great reasons for him doing this, because he was an old college friend of mine and we’d been hanging out for over a decade. However, it really is as heinous as it sounds; he broke up with her out of the blue, and then made her move out as quickly as possible, so that he would no longer have to deal with her lengthy and painful recovery. It’s been suggested to her by several of his friends that he was secretly seeing other women while they were together; whether this is true or a factor I honestly cannot say, but it is very interesting that others close to him have been bringing it up.

There’s a lot of things I can say about this, a lot of different angles that I could take. I could talk about the stigma against disabilities and the lack of proper support for people who suffer from them. I could talk about dependency in relationships and control/power issues, especially as they relate to male-female dynamics. Or the simple question of how someone could be so cruel and unfeeling to do that to another human being, relationship problems or no. But this isn’t a time or place for agendas; what’s really important here is that my friend needs help.

Melissa had to move back in with her mother, a good two-hour drive away from her doctors, her job, and the support network she had begun to grow for herself. She is currently on disability leave and cannot afford her follow-up appointments, though she desperately needs them in order to heal. And above all she is in a lot of physical and emotional pain. She was relying on her boyfriend for love, monetary support, rides to appointments, and help with managing her condition— all things that she was led to expect by his moving her in and agreeing to support and finance her during her recovery. What ended up happening was that he mocked her physical condition, let her pay her own way without insisting on her saving her money, refused to allow her family to help her while she was nearly incapacitated from pain, and once she ran out of money he treated her like damaged goods and kicked her out. The one thing she needed was stability during this time, and regular support, and after everything she gave him it’s all been taken away from her. The stress of making all these sudden changes has only worsened her back pain, to the point where yet another surgery may be recommended.

What Melissa needs right now is money to pay her medical bills and get back on her feet. Donating to big-name causes has become standard for many of us. But oftentimes we forget about the smaller, personal ones that are right next door. What I can tell you about Melissa is that she’s a clever, independent, savvy video game designer, sweet and trusting as anything, willing to lend a helping hand, and honestly grateful for any help sent her way. Her friend Katie has already written up a beautiful post I could never beat, with far more details than I’ve mentioned here. I am just trying to boost the signal.

Please consider helping Melissa by doing one (or both!) of the following:

1) Monetary donation. Her Paypal address is beegrrl [at] gmail [dot] com (two r’s and no i). This is obviously the most direct method. However, not all of us have the money to spare, so there is always:

2) Boosting the signal like I have done. Re-blog this. Write up your own blog post. Link to this one (or to Katie’s) on Twitter, Facebook, etc. The possibilities are endless.

If you do choose to help in any way, Katie would like to keep a running list of y’all so that we can show Melissa how much she matters to us and to the world at large. If you’d like your contribution to be on this list please visit her page at http://singlesandpairs.blogspot.ca/2012/04/psa-melissa-needs-our-help.html to let her know!