EMERGENCY! Donate to Ariel's cancer fund
My coworker and good friend Ariel, a woman I've known for 15 years, is currently in palliative care for very serious, aggressive, and horrifically painful terminal cancer.
She is impoverished, and in desperate need of funding. Her bank account is $300 in the negative, and she owes $1200 in just a week to pay her rent and medical insurance.
Ignore the GoFundMe goal—Ariel set it only that high in the beginning, when she was more hopeful that maybe cancer wouldn't be as debilitating and endlessly goddamn expensive as it fucking is.
Bc cancer is an expensive, exhausting, humiliating, terrifying, and soul-crushing disease under the best of circumstances, and it burns through money like it doesn't even exist. Ariel just has so little to fight with at this point.
She works so hard—she works harder than anyone I know—and she is one of the brightest, kindest, funniest, and most compassionate souls I know.
I want so desperately for her to find some moments of peace before she leaves this world that doesn't fucking deserve her.
She sends me cards for every holiday, decorated with thematically appropriate stickers, and handwritten, personalized notes inside, and I still have all of them. She does those sorts of thoughtful, intentional things because that's the energy she puts into the world and what she loves doing.
She's one of us Classic Tumblr girlies, too—we have plans to glue a brick of dry ramen to her bald head and take pictures, because "it's gonna be May" is our love language. Watching the events of Dashcon unfold in real time was a Canon Event for her.
She got into Danganronpa because of me, and we made references to it all the time when we worked together. She wanted to cosplay Yamada lol! I still want her to play Undertale and share that joy with her; I want joy to be a part of her life as much as it can, and to ease her suffering and anxiety enough in order to appreciate everything she still has left.
She is utterly fucked if she can't make these payments.
Ariel has a hard time asking for anything—she works HARD, herself, for all that she has. She works hard for others. And, after her diagnosis, she has had to work hard advocating for herself, too, in a system that does not give a shit about impoverished fat women with cancer. She is so fucking tired.
My family has given everything we can, I've asked everyone I can to help, and, at this point, resorting to begging strangers on all corners of the internet is something I feel like I needed to have done way before now.
Please, please, please spread Ariel's GoFundMe, read her story, and donate if you can. I really appreciate any time you've taken to read this and to just learn that this dope-ass woman exists.
