What If No One Donates to My GoFundMe

—a panic attack in five acts with poor lighting and worse timing

I woke up from a nap one Saturday with that familiar pit-of-the-stomach dread.

Not the sexy kind of dread you get when you text your ex and they start typing back.

No.

The kind of dread that feels like it’s sitting on your chest, smoking a cigarette, scrolling Zillow listings in your hometown for houses you’ll never afford again.

By the time my partner got home from hunting—yes, hunting, which is a sentence I never imagined myself saying outside of a dystopian YA novel—the dread had mutated into a full-blown panic attack. I was standing at the sink, washing dishes while The Big C played in the background—because nothing soothes a spiraling cancer patient like a show where Laura Linney dies on screen with better lighting than I’ve had in years.

He asked, “What’s wrong?”

I said, “Nothing.”

Because that’s the choreography.

That’s the correct answer when your brain is imploding but your hands are still sudsy and moving, like if you just keep washing enough dishes, maybe the existential terror will rinse off, too.

But I say it eventually. Because I’m not normal.

Because I’m alive, uninsured, emotionally unstable, and doing math on how many tumor jokes I need to tell before someone donates out of pity.

“What if no one donates to my GoFundMe?” I blurt, like a character in a Netflix dramedy who gets killed off mid-season to make a point.

I show him the numbers. Not mine. My cousin’s. Thirty grand. Five days. Boom. Done. For a house fire with insurance.

And look, I’m not saying house fires aren’t traumatic. They are. But when my dad almost died in his house fire no one came knocking with donations. I’ve lost my housing to water damage and black mold. Lost both my parents. My job. My sense of safety. But never in a way that made people want to donate.

Not many did after my mother’s suicide.

What if my cousin just has better friends?

Better people?

What if I’ve spent my whole life being liked just enough to be invited to baby showers… but not enough for people to fund the possibility of my continued existence?

And worse: What if people do see it—read every line I labored over like it was a fucking cover letter for my life—and still scroll past?

What if the algorithm decides I’m not algorithm-worthy?

What if I have terminal cancer and no social capital?

What if I die and the post only gets seven likes, and one of them is from someone who comments “sending prayers” instead of five actual dollars?

I start doing mental math.

I went to her bridal shower.

I bought her toddler a weird wooden toy off that overpriced wish list.

I plugged her art gallery.

I donated to help a war refugee become a United States citizen.

I’ve been polite. I’ve shown up.

Where the hell are my casseroles?

And then it hits me:

What if people saw it… and chose not to help?

What if my GoFundMe is a litmus test for how tolerable I’ve been as a human being?

What if it’s not even about the money anymore, but a silent referendum on my worthiness?

What if I die because I used Comic Sans on my blog that one time and the universe never forgot?

I know, I know. It’s gross to talk about money.

It’s grosser to need it.

So yeah.

That’s what was wrong.

A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer