Hey everyone. I know I have a lot of mutuals on here and they have always been so supportive and kind - I figured I would try out my luck on this outlet because its difficult to share my story anywhere else. I’m seriously desperate and I need any kind of help anyone could offer.

So, for those who know me, I recently was able to briefly live in the US due to my schooling, but because of the pandemic, I have been forced to return to my parents home.

One of my parents has been threatening to kick me out of the house, and right now has forced me back into another abusive situation involving my biological father. This has been ongoing since June. She has physically assaulted me multiple times and most recently, she has tried to take away my laptop and phone, my only means of communication. I had to wrestle them out of her hands just to have access to any kind of support.

My stepdad has verbally abused me and has been physical as well. This is all in spite of me trying to keep to myself and avoid both parents, in order to avoid problems. Even the act of getting food from the fridge and cooking it can set my mom off into a crazy rage.

I can’t receive support because domestic violence is not taken seriously in the country I am in. I have friends who are emotionally supportive, very few of whom are in my country. I have not been able to find a job with my bachelor’s degree and am running out of options.

I started a GoFundMe because I am incredibly desperate to buy a plane ticket to go to the US. I am a graduate student (my mom has financed me in the past, but now has refused to continue paying for school). I need to buy a plane ticket and hopefully from there I can figure it out. For the meantime when I reach the US, I am planning to stay with my best friend who has been so kind and generous to let me stay with him at his house.

Living in the US has helped me tremendously and I know once I get there I’ll be able to manage. I know everyone is going through a lot right now and it was difficult for me to set this up, but I am truly in need of this. I have been struggling with my family for most of my life and this is my chance to get out for good.

Thank you for reading this far, even just sharing this might help me. I hope you are all well and safe.

P.S.: I have changed my name and hid my face for protective reasons

https://gf.me/u/yzix9t

Paypal: paypal.me/katar5airkom

Venmo: yara-29

There’s a running joke among people who know me personally that I unwittingly go out in public with a sign on my forehead stating “I Am Non-Threatening. Come Talk To Me.” Because if there’s a chance a bizarre conversation with a total stranger is going to happen, I’m typically the person it happens to.

Some context: I have been pretty darn sick this week. (It’s not Coronavirus, don’t worry.) Since the work in my queue for my day job is comprised entirely of audio narration right now, and I currently sound like a waterlogged Demi Moore, I haven’t been able to work these last couple of days. As a result, I’ve been using my down time to knock out as much of Manu’s redesign as possible. Today, to ensure I didn’t spend the day languishing in sinus misery, I medicated the crap out of myself and took Manu to the Starbucks down the block from my son’s day care.

I hit the bathroom, then picked an empty table, but as soon as I sat down with my venti Comfort Tea and started tweaking the inks on my iPad, I felt the eyes of the man next to me looking over my shoulder.

When I looked up, he had his phone out. “I’m sorry,” he said (in a thick accent I couldn’t place geographically), “I don’t want to disturb. I notice you art. You are artist!”

I tried to smile. “Yes, I’m... Well, I’m trying to be,” I croaked.

He leaned in, like he was sharing a secret.

“I am artist, too.”

He stuck out his hand.

I gently took it, grateful for the bathroom trip I just took in which I washed the scourge off of my fingers.

“Can I?” he asked, holding his phone up.

“Take a picture? Uh... sure,” I said. It’s not like he would be able to steal Manu out from under me or anything, I figured. The panel I was tweaking was magnified out to Guam.

“I am artist. Architect and Designer,” he clarified while he steadied his phone over my iPad. “I am Ilker. What is your name?”

“I’m Venessa” I said, trying to be polite. This, I thought warily, is precisely how I get myself into trouble. I’m too damn nice.

“You know, I come to America twenty years ago from Turkey...”

I put down my stylus. This was going to be a while.

“I like Turkey,” he explained. “I like the country and I like the people. But I am artist. I am not... religious man.”

I nodded.

“I told my wife I was going to go to America and she said, “what are you going to do? You don’t have job! You don’t have money! No Visa!” And I said, “I am artist and architect. I will paint and sell my paintings.

“So I come to America alone. To New York City. I sit outside, and I paint. And people, they liked my paintings. They bought them. This one for $30, that one for $50.

“One day, a man comes over to me and he say, “I like your painting. I see you are also architect.” And he gives me his number and asks me to go to meeting at his office. Because he wants to offer me a job. He starts to talk about a building contract.

“I tell him I don’t know anything about contracts. I have no Visa. I am not American citizen. But he says, “That’s okay. I will take care of everything. You will have nothing to worry about.” And this man, he gave me a job. $173,000 a year. And my wife, he gave her a job too. She was project assistant. I bring her and my two daughters over from Turkey.”

“Wow,” I said, not fully believing the veracity of what sounded like a full-on immigration fairy tale.

“Here,” said Ilker, unlocking his phone and opening up his Facebook app. “I show you my work.” He paused and looked up at me. “I am interrupting. You don’t mind?”

At this point, I was invested. I had to see. Because whatever he was about to show me would either prove or disprove this yarn he was spinning. “Please,” I said, gesturing for him to go ahead.

He opened his photos and my jaw dropped. His work... was UNREAL.

“This is building I designed on Madison Ave.... And this one in Chelsea...”

Holy crap. I had just been to Chelsea with my sister last month on a trip to see a broadway show. I had crossed the intersection of the building he was, at this moment, telling me he designed.

He flipped through more buildings. These, he’d designed in Washington, DC. In Bethesda. In Arlington. All beautiful, streamlined, modern structures I had visited and parked my car in front of. He told me he did much of his concept work freehand. That he worked exclusively in natural media. His preferred media was pen, ink, watercolors, and chalks.

Between photos of his wife and daughters, he went on to show me photos from the RUSSIAN EXHIBITION OF HIS ARCHITECTURE ARTWORK.

Y’all, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe the talent I was sitting next to. Scattered among these gloriously rendered images of some of the most beautiful building concepts I’d ever seen were paintings of scenes in Central Park, the National Mall, and nudes from a life-drawing session he attends from time to time.

When he was done flipping through his phone, he looked at me and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind that I interrupt you. I show you all this because what you are doing is very good. And you should be encouraged. To draw is to make beauty.”

I nodded, a lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I managed. “Your work is astonishing. I don’t even know what to say. What is your name again?”

He held out his hand once more. “Ilker Kocahan,” he said. “I am getting more coffee. Can I get you one?”

I looked at my still-full venti cup. “No thank you. But here, please take my card.”

He held my dinky business card like I’d handed him a treasure and thanked me.

Then Ilker got his coffee, and left the coffee shop.

At some point in his ramblings he talked about America as a place of dreams. How he credits this country with helping him rise to the top of his field where he is now able to sell his paintings for $800-$1000 a piece now that he’s retired. My heart ached to hear him talk about that, knowing how our leadership’s positions on immigrants have taken such a dark and horrifying turn.

Imagine the buildings and museums and public places that would never have been if a business man in the park hadn’t lifted up a Turkish painter who spoke little English.

And now that painter was paying it forward on me.

I still feel pretty darn sick. I’ve still got body aches and a nose that has taken the rest of my face hostage.

But today was a really good day. And I just wanted to share it with you in case you are looking for reasons to keep drawing/painting/dancing/writing. It all counts and it is all good.

If you would like to see Ilker Kocohan’s work, please click here.

As luck would have it, I saw Ilker one last time before my area received the mandate to start social distancing. I came into the Starbucks to work on the “Simon Is On the Ground” comic while waiting to pick up my kid from day care, and there he was, happily chatting with the Starbucks manager, who gifted him with a Starbucks hat while I ordered my tea.

A week had passed since our first meeting, so I wasn’t sure he’d recognize me. Lo and behold, as I turned the corner, I caught his eye, and he waved at me. This time, I asked if I might sit with him, and he warmly offered the seat beside him.

While I settled in, he told me that his project was being delayed and that he was going to leave the area and fly home before COVID-19 could make it impossible to travel. The hat was for his wife, whose only understanding of Starbucks was that Ilker really liked the coffee.

As one might expect, we immediately fell into another conversation about art, except this time, I eagerly abandoned my work to hear him talk.

And friends, did I ever get a master class.

He pulled up a painting on his phone which he’d sold for $800. It was a life drawing in ink and watercolor of a woman in a demure gesture, barely detailed and colored in but for her rose-tinted lips and the shadow cast across her neck. He said he felt sad that he’d sold it because he really loved how it came out.

“This is no detailed like yours,” he said, comparing his painting to my panel of Simon and Baz. “Mine is simple. But in a few strokes, I can capture the life of the lady.”

He took his napkin, turned it over, and pulled a pen out of his chest pocket. “Look there,” he said, pointing to a man sitting a few tables away. He began to scribble away on the napkin, lines and lines and more lines. “You see,” he murmured as he ran his pen over the napkin, “I can, with speed, capture the man. I don’t have hours to ask him to sit. I must let go of the planning.”

In seconds, the man across the room took shape on the napkin in a series of confident if also messy lines. It was incredible to watch.

I could instantly see what he meant. He had not produced a photorealistic version of this person on the napkin. But he had captured the man’s essence. The aura of a real person sitting contemplatively with his coffee while reading the Washington Post. I could feel the life of the drawing radiate from the paper.

(When he was done, to my horror, he crumpled up the napkin.)

I shyly mentioned that I’ve been working hard on my own gesture drawing, but had a long way to go, so he asked to see my sketchbook.

I mean... is there even a word in the English language to describe the combination of dread and embarrassment that precedes showing an art master your crap-ass sketchbook that no one sees but you? I didn’t know what to do with myself as he sat there and flipped through the pages.

Eventually, he nodded approvingly and said, “Okay! Is good. But this is sketchbook like every other.” He gestured at the page. “Where are you?”

I was lost for how to respond, but lucky for me, he’s a talkative guy seemingly incapable of awkward silences.

“The world needs to see you in the lines,” he explained. “Someone can look at my work and know, ‘that painting is from Ilker Kocahan.’ You need to draw more and more so that when people look at your drawings, they will know: this work is Venessa’s work.” Then he shrugged and said, “And who knows. I will maybe see you in two years at this Starbucks, and by then, your drawings will be truly yours.”

I’ve shared this story with some close friends who took mild offense on my behalf at his observations, but I really think it took sitting there watching him draw to understand exactly what he was talking about.

Ilker Kocahan has no imposter syndrome. He is supremely confident in every possible way where his art is concerned. The lines that flowed from his pen were fueled by his soul, not his brain. I didn’t think artists like him existed anymore until I was sitting there looking over his shoulder while he scribbled a man into existence, like it was nothing. When I asked if he plots out the perspective on his building sketches in advance, he shook his head no and doodled this on my cake pop wrapper while he rambled on about the components he likes to include in his architecture concepts:

(Don’t worry. I kept it.)

So when he talked about “finding me” in my sketches, I really think he could sense—by the light scratch of the pencil, the trace evidence on the paper of my erasing and failed attempts—my own lack of confidence, my second guessing and self-doubt. My desire to be as good as other artists instead of my desire to express myself.

And in that sense, everything he was saying about my sketchbook was correct. He urged me to get off the iPad as often as possible. To sketch with ink, which is riskier because you can’t erase it, and in that way, give myself no choice but to commit to the lines.

The conversation turned to lighter things after that. He’s apparently an extremely talented basketball player who loves hanging out with his wife and kids. His daughters are both designers. He thinks quirky viral videos are the best thing about the internet. (I agreed.) He’s weak for New York pizza.

Eventually, he bought me a refill for my tea and asked if I would meet him again in a couple of days so he could talk to me about my artwork and help me with my sketching. He even added me as a Facebook friend. When I left the Starbucks to pick up Colin, I was so excited and overwhelmed and grateful to the universe for bringing me into his acquaintance, I texted everyone in my family about it.

But as fate would have it, that night, the local government released its mandate regarding social distancing. He’s likely in Belarus right now with his wife.

I won’t lie and say I’m not devastated that I lost the chance to be his student for an afternoon. But the impression these coffee shop chats left on me was profound. I think about it all the time. For one who struggles with feeling like the artist version of Pinocchio waiting around for permission to be a real boy, it makes all the difference in the world to linger in the huge, unstoppable energy of someone who lives without an inner critic.

I hope I get to see him again after the quarantine is over. I’d love to see if I can fulfill Ilker’s prophecy and meet back at that Starbucks in two years with a different sketchbook in tow. One that I can hand over knowing without doubt or trepidation that anyone looking for me in the work need look no further than the bold stroke of my hand.

Taken the last time we chatted:

obvious warnings for discussions of death

pollution

there are mountains of literal shit on everest. i can only assume people forget that everest is freezing and so poop wont break down the same way as it will when youre camping (or that they dont want to carry bags of poo around). this contaminates glaciers which has began to cause damage to the water supplies of nearby local villages

similarly there are mountains of rubbish. in 2015, it was reported that yearly clean up efforts had removed 15,000kg of rubbish and 800kg of human waste from everest.

because of the high altitude, a bag of poo or rubbish becomes so heavy to carry that it would be deadly to do so.

pollution thanks to littering is a growing problem and one that is hard to fix because of the above point – “Even picking up a candy wrapper high up on the mountain is a lot of effort, because it’s totally frozen and you have to dig around it,”

tourist privilege 

to the average english speaker, “sherpa” has come to mean guide, despite the fact it is a name for an ethnic group.

300 people have died on everest and the last year without a death was 1977. 111 of those deaths are people from nepal.

sad as it is to say, for tourism and money flow to keep coming in, it looks better for native guides to die than for the tourists to die. sherpas bend over backwards trying to help those they are assigned to

sherpas are often treated incredibly poorly by those they are assigned to, despite breaking their back (and risking their lives) to try and help

sherpas often have to support inexperienced tourists (who are on everest for some fuckin reason), making the already dangerous summit even more so. some of these tourists dont even know how to tie basic safety knots.

many sherpa guides work in the industry not because they want to but because they can make 10x the average wage in nepal doing it.

many of the deaths of tourists are down to doing extreme things for an ego boost, such as climbing without oxygen. 

the corpses

should you die on everest you will likely remain there. “A dead body that normally weighs 80kg might weigh 150kg when frozen and dug out with the surrounding ice attached.” the risk to others isnt worth it, in most cases

furthermore, if you cant be found or your family cant organise rescue quickly, rescue may become impossible due to you literally becoming stuck to the mountain.

sherpas have reported how emotionally and mentally difficult finding these bodies is and plenty of them have died trying to bring people home

the difficulty in retrieving corpses means that many are left, mummified and frozen, in public view. it is common to find bodies when climbing which has proven to be difficult for many climbers

people who have climbed everest have gone out their way to say the media isnt being sensationalist about this, for once, and its as deadly and filled with corpses and rubbish as it is reported to be.

death is incredibly normalised on the mountain. a british man, famously, huddled with a corpse in a cave bid to survive. 40 climbers passed him and very few attempted to help, despite him being alive. why? most assumed he was a corpse and so didnt check. 

this normalisation is why some corpses have gained names and become markers. green boots is the most famous, but the german woman and sleeping beauty are other examples. a stretch of the climb has been called “rainbow ridge” due to the bright colours of jackets belonging to corpses that poke through the snow.

tourism

more than 4,000 have climbed everest. while thats barely any compared to the overall global population, it definitely isnt the impressive, one of a kind feat it once was.

most people actually die AFTER getting to the top, not on the way there.

2019 was the deadliest year on everest since 2006, excluding years where deaths were largely due to natural disasters.

tour companies do not screen you for experience, anyone can sign up to go up mount everest. this means incredibly inexperienced climbers have become common, causing danger to themselves and others. 

nepal also has no rules for who can climb the mountain.

until this year, the nepal government turned a blind eye to most of this. presumably, for them, the money income was worth it. 

in 2012 it was reported that overcrowding was becoming a major issue, causing many to die that year. congestion caused by inexperience was blamed. nothing was done. in 2019 we heard the same story.

2019s viral photo of the crowd climbing. people died waiting in this crowd. people stepped over the dying and dead to make it to the top. congestion caused by inexperience was blamed, once again.

people fight to take selfies at the top

theft has been reported by climbers on the mountain

the demand has meant dodgy equipment has found its way onto expeditions. climbers reported oxygen tanks leaking and exploding.

psychology

people who have been rescued have been reported saying that they wished they had died; that the disfigurements to their body and the way such has changed their lives werent worth it

people have had their families die struggle never getting a body back

climbing over dead bodies, using them as markers, and even sharing a tent with one, has proven to be difficult for some who climb

the family of the man thought to be green boots has discussed how horrid it is to them that their sons dead body is posted online.

these thoughts were echoed by the family of the woman who came to be called the sleeping beauty.

you really think all that is natural and normal? 

It’s been 10 years since this iconic awkward interview.

AND the series is smart and funny and very watchable for all ages—i tend to not really watch new shows aimed at a younger audience, but i watched all of season 1 in one day. it’s rated at 100% on rotten tomatoes right now, and that rating is well deserved.

The homophobic gag in that rom com,

the racist side character in that coming of age story,

so transmisogyny is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, which should be obvious but some people don’t like to listen. its another layer of oppression past the transphobia that transmascs have. every transfemme I’ve talked to and befriended has had some experience with feeling predatory for having feelings for someone (generally affects trans wlw more) or infantilized themselves and acted very gentle and passive in order to not feel as though they’re predatory. (I’m still working through the first one and used to deal with the latter)

we’re taught to be afraid of our own bodies, especially our genitals. it’s as if we’re monsters for being women born with penises, as if that in itself makes us gross. there’s a reason that all the transphobic bathroom arguments come down to a “man dressed as a woman” preying on women. this goes a million times as far for black trans women, who have the added intersection of blackness. that paints them as even more masculine and aggressive despite how far that is from the truth.

I developed my eating disorder because i felt like my body was too big and masculine, that i would look more feminine if i were skinnier. thats obviously something cis women face, but its not the same for us. we’re told we have male bodies and that we need to make ourselves smaller to fit in with “real women”.

we’re excluded from women’s spaces for “not having the same experiences” or “invading” or whatever other transphobic reterric they want to use to allow trans men in but not us. we’re alienated from trans/LGBT spaces due to the heavy focus on transmasc and tme nonbinary people in discussions of transitioning. for every 20 resources on how to bind and its dangers i get on my dash, I see 1 or 2 on tucking and its dangers. for every 20 binder giveaways i see I’ve never seen a gaff giveaway. I bet some of you don’t even know what a gaff is. (its what we use to tuck)

the amount of times I’ve seen jokes about men in dresses, the amount of times i’ve heard words like femboy and tranny thrown around by tme people as if they’re not harming us by doing so sickens me. every time you make genderbent fan art, draw a guy looking embarassed in a dress, or make a femboy friday joke, you are contributing to the stigma that follows us wherever we go.

Did you know it’s not uncommon to lose a shoe size or two? Or to shrink a couple inches because your entire pelvis rotates after a while (which hurts like a motherfucker, I might add)? Or that it’s very possible that you’ll suffer some of the symptoms of PMS every month even though you can’t menstruate? Did you know your tastes in food might change because your sense of smell changes? Probably not, because barely anybody researches or published information on this stuff. And who even fucking knows what you can expect after surgery because hearsay reports vary wildly and there’s basically nothing out there.