This is the original text of my fundraiser with the unfiltered story…
Fundraiser title: Help washed-up near-quinquagenarian fling her books into the world
TLDR: Help a near-50-year-old woman crawling out of depression finally take a real stab at making her dream of selling her books come true.
In short, my hope with this fundraiser is to raise enough money to support myself for a year in order to make a real go at getting my books to sell. For more detailed information on how this all happened, you can read the sections below.
Anyone who helps, thank you. So much.
How It Started
I was one of those children always wandering around while stuck in the stories in her head. Drawing, writing, daydreaming…
I never daydreamed, though, of being a wreck of a person by the time I was nearing fifty. Not to mention divorced, childless, depressed, unemployed, and living alone with a bunch of spiders and a cat that has legit been diagnosed by her vets as having anxiety.
But here we are.
I tried. I worked for 32 years while writing books at night, in the mornings, on weekends, when I should have been living… in between getting married, divorced… and while I should have been sleeping. I worked 21 years for one company testing software, but in March 2024, after I endured four hellish years in a very NOT-ideal situation, the company ended my contract. I ended up burned out, suicidal, and with such severe depression that even now, after having help from a life coach, two therapists, and two psychiatrists, I still have trouble getting out of bed some days. But yay for being high-functioning, because I *look* so functional people still think I’m okay.
I’m wasn’t. I was such a mess that I had recommendations by two psychiatrists for me to apply for disability. I *did* do that, but it’s been taking forever, and there’s no guarantee I’ll get it, AND, this is important, my actual hope is not to need to rely on disability income at all, but to succeed at what I’ve always loved, and to walk the path that my drawing, writing, daydreaming younger self never wavered from: writing and getting my books published and read.
Suicide (skip this section if it might be triggering)
I’ve never talked deeply with anyone who’s been suicidal before, but for me, those months from March 2024 and afterward, when I was suffering from suicide ideation myself, were indescribably incapacitating. It’s like you’re reaching for a reason to live, asking yourself ‘why am I here?’, and the emptiness is utterly resounding. No reply your mind offers you is one your heart feels is worth living for. You’re in such a place of pain, or nothingness, that nothing is worth enduring it for. All my life, the passion at my core (to write) drove me to equally passionately want to live. To have that passion suddenly gone, not even my writing worth living for anymore… it was terrifying.
I am now in a better place. My friend was able to support me financially for a year and some months by means I didn’t ask about, and her support made it easier to live rather than die. Last summer (of 2025), my psychiatrist also encouraged me to come up with a plan for the next time suicidal thoughts encroach, and it helped immensely.
Most days, I am okay now. And I am determined to get better every day.
Depression
Imagine you care about everyone *except* yourself. That is how depression feels to me. I can cat-sit for my friend, help another pack up his flat; I can cut veggies for someone to cook. But cook for myself? Or even, at my lowest points, find the energy to eat when I was alone?
For months, I tricked myself into eating by putting ‘eat’ or ‘food’ on my to-do list so that I didn’t feel like it was an utter waste of time. Even with it on my list, I sometimes didn’t see the point.
My doctor was the first to ask me about depression. In May 2024, they tested me for a million potential health issues because I was impossibly tired and dragging all the time. Nothing showed up, so he gave me a psych test. It said I was mildly depressed, although he told me outright he thought I wasn’t answering entirely honestly, which I suppose I wasn’t, because at the time I was deadened from taking a supplement that was supposed to have helped with my anxiety but instead seemed to turn me off completely (or maybe that was just my soul at the time). Nothing seemed to matter to me, but things weren’t necessarily BAD, I thought, just everything was empty. I didn’t have any of the usual symptoms of depression because I was getting out of bed every morning and still making myself jog and work on my books, so how could anyone think I was depressed? And how could *two* psychiatrists diagnose me with depression when I had been smiling and (I thought) upbeat while talking with them?
Spoiler alert: being high-functioning can make you seem functional even when you’re not.
A Way Out?
Last summer, I vaguely noted that I hadn’t actually felt alive since who knew when. I was only going through the motions. Working on my stories made me almost happy, and writing excited me *tons* more than actual living, but once I stepped from my imaginary worlds and back into real life, everything just felt vacant. I was laughing and smiling, but none of it reached deeper than the surface.
That was when I understood my depression wasn’t overt, but pervasive. It ran underneath every second I lived. All the things I used to love (food, books, writing, even the idea of being in love), they barely stirred me anymore.
I needed to somehow find joy in living again. But how?
Depression is NOT self-pity. It isn’t a mindset. It isn’t dwelling on all the things that are wrong and *choosing* to feel hopeless. No one chooses this. I was constantly telling myself things would get better and wouldn’t be like this forever. I was going out with friends, joining groups, etc. this whole time. But underneath?
The depression was always there, making everything else a lie.
NOW
This past December, I don’t know what happened, but something in me sort of opened its eyes, and it was like, for a few moments, I was alive again, and not just 20% of me as it’s felt the past several years, but almost 100%, telling me that I CAN get out of this.
And I can.
But.
I can’t do it by doing the thing that broke me. I can’t go back to trying to work while barely making ends meet, while trying to eat less, sleep less, and function under constantly augmenting anxiety. I tried it for 32 years and it took a terrible toll on me when never, not once, was I able to do anything but live paycheck to paycheck. I never felt stable either mentally or financially.
I can’t get on my feet either while I’m unable to pay bills and constantly worried I’ll be evicted, and constantly stressed because I’m not paying my health insurance or any other bills, and while telling myself that I shouldn’t be eating because food costs money, and I don’t have the money to spend on it. I can’t get on my feet while constantly low-key despising myself that my friends buy me lunch and help me get food, and that it’s been like this for almost two years. It’s been too long to keep going like this.
In the past weeks, I have realized the above along with two other things:
1) In order to even try to focus on making myself a success, I need stability, at least a set time during which I don’t have to be terrified that I’ll be evicted, or fraught with anxiety that I don’t know what I’ll eat next. I can’t focus on building a future when my limited energy is constantly derailed by fear or stress and worry and trying to resolve every crisis.
2) I feel confident now that I *can* make my books a success (not world-resounding, but enough to support me in my little corner of it). I never, ever truly believed in myself before, but now, I think it’s going to happen, and I think it strongly enough that I am finally willing to ask others to help me achieve it. Because I *believe* I can achieve it.
What You Can Do
If you would like to help me raise enough money to support myself for a year and to pay my outstanding debts (health insurance, social…), I am hoping that, given a year of stability, my plan to get more people aware of and excited about my books will work (for more details about that, see the actual fundraiser here), hopefully I’ll even publish a few more books, and, most of all, achieve financial stability (maybe even with enough success that I’ll be able to give back to others). I’ll outline all expenses I can think of below if you’d like to know how much they are. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Also, My Stories! If You’re Curious
If you want to know how I write, there is a free story here: https://claims.prolificworks.com/free/DLmL1san. Or find below an excerpt from my online story The Proud Princess. Or just look me up online – Sonya Lano. I have books out on most retailers, in libraries, plus a website with lots of content to explore.
Excerpt from The Proud Princess:
His smile offered her his secrets without telling any. “You will discover all of my loves and weaknesses in time. You always do.” Laughing softly at her huff, he ambled toward the door. At a crook of his finger, the tray of sweetbreads and tea levered into the air behind him.
To Damarishka’s unspoken joy, the tray floated alongside them like a pet on a leash through the candlelit corridors and accompanied them into a dimly lit music room.
Here, a single candle flickered on a grand piano near an open window. Around the piano, sheet music fluttered like roosting doves on metallic music stands. In the dark wings of the room, cellos, harps, and other instruments formed rapt and shadowy spectators.
Every alcove hosted an air of waiting stillness, reminiscent of an audience of a thousand bated onlookers.
Darian slid onto the piano bench, followed by the faintest of angling his head. “Sit where you please.”
A cozy window nook beckoned, but something of Darian’s too-quick glance drew her instead to a veritable nest of cushions beside the piano. She settled there like a dragon on a tasseled pillow hoard.
Poising his fingers above the keys, Darian released an indrawn breath, and his hands descended.
But wait! My cat requests a lighter excerpt, and so:
“Fie, Master!” Whisker whisked up and fondly patted Damarishka’s hand with his kitty paw. “No dreary thoughts! We’ll do our best, my lady. Have a scone for courage.”
She almost choked on a laugh, and before she could regroup, in swished her cat.
He poised briefly on his hind legs, his black tail cutting the air, his pomposity cutting the company. “Claw has arrived!”
“The perambulatory wonder!” Whisker heralded, accompanied by a contrary rolling of his eyes.
Claw hissed.
Damarishka seated herself, undertaking to stamp down her gloom, and considered the silver trays and porcelain dishes arrayed at the center of the table before her. “Where were you last night?” she challenged her pet. “You always sleep by my pillow.”
“You did not acknowledge my presence in your sleep.”
“An oversight.”
“Unforgivable.”
“But you’ll forgive me.”
Claw tended to a paw with a delicate tongue. “I upped a hairball in a place you have yet to discover, O Neglectful One, and then I rose early in order to taste of the local rats.”
“Decadent fare, is it not?” Whisker inquired, flitting about like only wingless cats do.
“Voluptuous rats here,” Claw allowed. “Befittingly maintained.”
As the cats proceeded to advance their meticulous debate on the quality of local rat…
*
Whether you decide to donate or not, I wish you all the joys of life you wish.
Sonya
Sonya Lano 