My hope was that Pittsburgh would be my forever home. Alas, life did not work out that way. That’s why, early this autumn, I swallowed my Steelers fan pride and made the move to a rival city, saying to Pittsburgh: Nevermore.

I grew up in Delaware, then moved to Erie at age 31. I came south to Pittsburgh eight years ago, seeking good medical care, serviceable transit and affordable living.

The first thing I did was look for housing.

The key to feeling safe in a rental property is great management. When people care about your living experience, and environment, it contributes to good mental health, emotional health and even physical health.

You also have to be able to afford it — and I’m on disability.

Upon moving to Pittsburgh, I discovered that the rents were high – even four years pre-Covid. I transferred my Section 8 voucher from Erie to Pittsburgh, but ended up seeing the same damaged properties over and over again. The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh’s properties looked much more promising, and I ended up in the authority’s tower on Pressley Street.

I had PTSD from more than 30 years of recovery from domestic violence. And here it was, again, in this entire building, an overwhelming tornado of domestic violence on 16 floors. I held onto my emotional recovery for dear life. Many in my neighborhood wondered how I managed to stay recovered there.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, one needs to feel safe and secure in order to climb up the triangle, eventually to self-actualization. No growth can happen if you don’t feel safe. I don’t know at what point it happened, but at some time I no longer felt safe in my neighborhood, my apartment building or even my apartment. What happened growing up, was now happening here — times 16 floors, instead of in one house. 

I kept to myself, locking myself in my apartment for as long as I could.

The Tell-Tale Heart

You’re asking: “Why didn’t you move?” I thought about it. But all the so-called “safe” places are $1,400 a month, or worse … with three months down up front. It seems Pittsburgh is trying to become the next New York City.

So I became an advocate for security in the building. I always felt that the Housing Authority looked at me as if I was like the detested old man’s eye in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

It took a grave toll on my mental health. Two years after my mother passed, with no more paperwork to do, feelings rose to the surface (finally!) and I could ignore them no more. I knew I needed help. I called grief counselors and therapists to no avail.

Eventually I decided to 302 myself into UPMC Western Psychiatric. I went there one day, and was told: “You’re too well-adjusted to be here.” WHAT?!? Lady, I just 302’d myself. Nope, she wasn’t kidding. She told me to go home and keep looking for therapists.

That search took years. Almost no one wanted to accept Medicare clients.

Following my mad muse

There are those few who edge between madness and genius, eccentric enough to bypass societal mores and norms and yet still make a difference in the world. Labeled eccentrics, some become the authors and artists of the world. I wanted to know how Edgar Allan Poe, one of my great literary heroes, did that. I was introduced to his works in seventh grade and was enthralled with him. 

Poe was born poor, but raised (though never formally adopted) by an upper-class family. He had financial problems, but supportive relatives. Suffice it to say, our situations weren’t entirely parallel.

Somewhere there had to be a place that cared equally about affordable housing and mental health. Surely that is not Western Pennsylvania. I could go to Eastern Pennsylvania, but nah; 17 years in the state took its toll on me. I needed a change.

I had to get my ravens in a row.

Preparing to fly

A friend of mine told me about a place in Maryland where there were many hospitals and people cared about mental health. This got my attention. I did my research and got the impression that I was already wanted by the psychiatric community down there

It struck me: If Poe could make it in Baltimore, then surely there might be a solution there.

Baltimore is Poe’s city. There is a speakeasy named after him, many businesses bear the names of his poems or short stories, and of course the NFL team is named for his poem “The Raven.” Many nights I looked at the map and wished to be near the site of his original grave, just so I could visit.

I researched hospitals, doctors, grocery stores, pharmacies, transit lines and walkability. Since I’m LGBTQ+, I learned about the laws that can often make the difference between a place to thrive, and a place to die. Everything checked out.

Upon getting to Baltimore, I did three things:

• Ate a Maryland crab cake and Maryland crab soup for lunch at Faidley’s Seafood
• Visited Poe’s grave and left a poem (for I had no rose or penny)
• Surrendered myself to Sheppard Pratt, a private, nonprofit behavioral health provider, for mental health care.

Because I certainly wasn’t getting mental health care in Pittsburgh. I had called Sheppard Pratt on four different occasions while still in Pittsburgh; each time, their answer was the same: “Yes, we accept Medicare. C’mon over.” It was hard to realize that I was worthy of a “yes.”

I was scared. I hadn’t been in a psych ward in over 20 years. I wondered if Poe had ever been in an asylum.

Normal has never been in my vocabulary. I just wanted to be able to manage my madness, so I could go back to my life as I once knew it. Sheppard Pratt’s partial hospitalization program [PHP] was perfect for me because I’m an academic at heart, and its classroom-style groups worked well for me. 

I had severe flashbacks while in PHP, though, as therapeutic conversations revived painful memories. I had to be admitted to the inpatient trauma disorders unit – which felt like an elite-psych-ward-meets-correctional institution – for an intensive 13 1/2-hour session, followed by an additional 3 weeks as an inpatient. 

I was an insomniac before coming in. Now, I was ready to live among the day people again. 

Before moving out, I researched everything. Zillow, Rents.com — if there was an app for housing, I downloaded it. I came across an interesting prospect called Vivo Living, which rents regular apartments, converted from old hotels, beginning at $940. They worked with me while I was in Sheppard Pratt, and gave me a queen-sized bed, lamp and nightstand, for I had none.

I pay 60% of my income — twice the portion the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh demanded. It is tough, especially financially, but more importantly, I can get the help I need. I can only have faith that my finances will eventually sort themselves out. I am determined to make this work, even if it means that I am taking on more debt than I am used to handling.

Even my physical health has improved! Two weeks into Baltimore, I had bloodwork done. My glomerular filtration rate, a measure of kidney effectiveness, went up by 40 points — a huge improvement. I could only attribute it to the move.

And I’m about four blocks away from the final resting place of my deceased muse. 

You couldn’t pay me to return to Pittsburgh.

Aim T. Comperatore is an e-published freelance writer who loves writing about a good cause. In addition to being a writer, Aim does poetry, and can be reached at atcomperatore@gmail.com.

The post Faced with Pittsburgh housing and mental health care, I left the nest appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Today, I celebrate being gender-neutral and trans-masculine. Yes, you can be both. And if your identity doesn’t fit into a preconceived linguistic construct, why shouldn’t you explore alternatives? 

Pronouns are not just he/him, she/her, they/them. These are more traditional pronouns. 

But even half a century ago, people were thinking about gender-neutral pronouns and coming up with the system that I stumbled upon, decades later, which seemed to fit me better than any other.

In 1975, Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, won a contest put on by the Chicago Association of Business Communicators, the results of which were published in an article by the Chicago Tribune

Christine proposed replacing he and she with “ey,” him and her with “em” and possessive his and her with “eir.” Basically, she took the “th” off of each of the plural pronouns. Genius! Ey, em and eir are all pronounced as one syllable just like he and she. To those of us who are geeks of the English language, “they” and “them” just don’t feel right as singular forms, even for me. Yet “ey” fulfilled that spot in my heart that “they” could not. 

This story is a part of Selves, a newsletter about gender and identity by PublicSource.
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(Yes, I was that kid in school who enjoyed diagramming sentences and editing and typing up other people’s reports in college.)

Ey isn’t too familiar to most folks. Even Zoom still has traditional pronouns, so I must call myself a they instead of an ey.

From elementary until high school, I was bullied because I looked androgynous. Many times I was pointed at by kids, or their parents, who asked, “What is it?” They would ask that to my mother, or me, or their parent. I was the child called “It,” before the book was ever published. 

The first time I knew something was really different about me was when my mother took me to Rehoboth Beach and a man asked me, directly, the question, “What are you?” His look was tender and loving. His question had meaning. You could see it in his eyes. Mom came over, sensing the question. “Is he saying something mean to you?” I can still hear it in her voice. And I can still hear my reply to her, “No, mommy, he just asked me a question.” I had never been asked in that fashion before. It has remained with me ever since.

Growing up as a very sheltered Gen X’er, it wouldn’t be until later in my life that I would be exposed to unconventional pronouns. So don’t feel bad if this is your first time with materials like this. 

The very first time I came across these pronouns was at Central Outreach Wellness Center [COWC], on the North Side. I had always seen the pronoun buttons some folks use to express their identities, but was afraid to ask what they meant. I knew the typical he/she/they versions, but ey/em/eir, ze/zem/hir and xe/xem/xyr were totally new and foreign to me. Surely, I thought, these were made-up words. 

One day, after going to COWC for nearly five years, I decided to ask someone at the desk. I was two years into my non-binary journey, These new pronouns looked appealing. I wanted to know their meaning. The person who I talked to said they were neopronouns, and that I should look them up when I got home. Of course I did. 

Ey, em and eir make non-binary a much easier fit with my love of English. I’ve had friends say to me that they couldn’t claim to be non-binary because of they/them pronouns. Ey, em and eir are the perfect replacement for me. And I believe it can be the same perfect replacement for others who choose it.

There are many more forms of pronouns that you can look up at on the internet. We’re just breaking the pronoun ice here.

For those thinking that this is just a 70’s thing that took off, did you know that there is a set of pronouns that was first used in a 1920 novel called “A Voyage to Arcturus” by David Lindsay? The pronouns were made for an alien race that was born from a third sex and the element of air. That pronoun set is ae/aer.

Much later, neopronouns were born. Wait! What’s a neopronoun? So glad you asked!

Ze/hir/hirs or ze/zir/zirs are neopronouns. Ze/zer/mer goes back to 1997, used by Richard Creel, a philosophy and religion professor at Ithaca College. 

In 1998, Kate Bornstein published the book “My Gender Workbook,” and thereby created zie, sie and hir. 

One of my favorite books is Ashley Mardell’s “The ABC’s of LGBT.” The author, now named Ash Hardell, also has a YouTube Channel that was my entryway into learning about myself and the definitions in our varied communities in the rainbow.

Pronouns (or neopronouns) do not necessarily indicate a person’s gender identity. Gender identity is a rather private, personal thing. Sharing gender identity means I feel vulnerable to open up how I see myself to you. It means I trust you – which means I trust you to not intentionally misgender me. I’ve opened up to people who I thought I could trust with my gender identity, who then only served to misgender me every single time they saw me. One person bullied me with misgendering for seven years, here in Pittsburgh. I kept sticking up for myself, and it finally came to an end.

I gave many people time to adjust to my pronouns. Seven years is a long time to be “out” to the people you know. If that isn’t enough time to get someone adjusted to your new way of perceiving yourself, I don’t know what is.

Gender identity can be fluid, hence genderfluid. As a non-binary (which is considered as a third gender), trans-masculine, demi-sexual, I’m a little bit on the rarer side of the spectrum. Before a demi-sexual, like me, gets into anything physically sexual, we have to have a deep feeling that we resonate with this person. Mardell defined demisexual as a person who only experiences attraction to people with whom they have formed a strong emotional bond. 

I can almost hear some of you muttering: “What did you just say?” Stick with me.

So many of us, when we begin our journeys into transitioning, cross the line of androgyny. In the trans community we have Female to Male (FTM) (that’s me!) and Male to Female (MTF). Trans-masculine individuals (who take testosterone), like me, are much less in the population than our transfeminine counterparts (who take estrogen). 

People can also use multiple types of pronouns. I’ve gone through he/they through the years. Having the courage and confidence to tell people your new pronouns is sometimes hard. Other times it is easier. It depends on who you’re telling.

When you find who you really are, what is at the core of your essence and soul, what pronouns really define you, it is an amazing and fulfilling experience beyond words. 

To find a verbiage that reflects your insides to your outsides makes you feel like you can scream to the world, “This is me!” Our real selves come out and truly reflect who we are. It is then that we know true happiness. 

When we have the language — our pronouns — to know who we are, and who we are not, we effectively produce a core of intimacy in humanity. That seed of intimacy, through the use of proper pronouns, gets planted in every life that touches ours — especially when our pronouns are properly respected. The experience of being human becomes better because I know what kind of human I am, and now I get to share that with others. 

Note: Some of the information for this article was taken from www.pronouns.org, and the Pronoun Wiki at www.pronoun.fandom.com.

Aim Comperatore is an independent advocate and writer with degrees in criminal justice and a love of legal research.  If you want to reach Aim, email atcomperatore@gmail.com  or firstperson@publicsource.org.

The post Fear not gender-neutral pronouns! They can be fun. appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

I was born to follow my maternal grandfather and his legacy of advocacy. I couldn’t have guessed, though, that it would take decades and life-or-death medical needs to place me in a city where his impact was felt, and where my own activism could flourish.

An organizer during the New Deal era, my grandfather, Victor Richard Osuchowski, connected Pittsburgh workers with the steelworkers union while it was still just a committee, and helped put sweatshops to an end throughout Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey. His spirit and legacy live through me, in my work. I seek to empower people in the same manner that he did. 

As a child growing up in Delaware, I advocated for children like me with the Epilepsy Foundation of Delaware. I tried to educate teachers and be a peer mentor to students with epilepsy. 

It was at age 31 that I made the eight-hour move to Erie, seeking to escape toxic roots from my childhood that just wouldn’t let go. Erie felt perfect — I loved the snow and independence, and began advocating for better transit.

But my years in Erie took a toll on my health. Managing my seizures, lupus, Sjögren’s syndrome and chronic kidney disease means that just staying alive comes at an incredible price. I’d likely be dead in two or three months without my medicines. My Medicare plan quite literally keeps me alive by granting me access to hospitals, medical care and my pharmacy, even though it prevents me from taking a job — or moving up in the world like I’d love to — for fear of disrupting these benefits.

Ten years after moving to Erie, I was told I’d need to go to Pittsburgh or Cleveland for additional medical care. My first response was, “Why do I need to go somewhere else for the medical care I need? I ought to be able to have sufficient care right here, in Erie.” I didn’t want to leave the city that had become my home. 

Sometimes, though, we must let go of the things and people we love in order to better ourselves. And it didn’t take long to love Pittsburgh and her people, too. She saved my life. 

When I was deciding where to move to, the idea of living in Pittsburgh was enticing enough. As a lifelong Steelers fan, the thought of sports did pop into my head. Being able to go to a game in my own city would be divine. 

More importantly, Pittsburgh stood out for the AHN Lupus Center of Excellence. “Center of Excellence” is a bold statement for a center focused on lupus, but it’s what helped me decide to make Pittsburgh my new home. I had many friends in Erie whose lives were extended tremendously because they received care in Pittsburgh, and that made a lasting impression.

I officially moved in 2016. With that, a descendant of my grandfather found their way back to a city he advocated for.

Every day there is someone trying to make Pittsburgh their home. That success depends on many things: people, connections, the compassion of those connections and the belief that this person is worth investing in. These are just a few of the things that I encountered as I made my way into our great city. 

Only those who have looked up the full prose by Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” will know that the Statue of Liberty’s name is Mother of Exiles. Pittsburgh is another mother to all who wish to live differently. She took me in and nurtured me. I see Pittsburgh as a place where dreams become reality, and I want to help others experience that reality.

What does advocacy mean to me? Empowerment. For myself, to have knowledge is power, and to have freedom is divine. Having a reason to fight for something confers purpose. To see purposes fulfilled is proof that with enough organization, anything can be accomplished.

Humanity is nothing without first being humane toward other humans. 

This is why I want to help Pittsburgh. 

The city’s beauty ought not to be only for those who can afford high-priced apartments. So I advocate for those living in substandard housing, especially for all of the tenants at Pressley Street High Rise and the almost obsolete condition of our building. I believe true, affordable housing is a civil right. I am concerned that the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP], instead of making improvements in places like Pressley or breaking new ground for current tenants, is spending funds to create mixed-income apartment buildings. I believe everyone, regardless of income, ought to be able to have housing that they can be proud of, and I take this message to HACP, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and Pittsburgh City Council. 

[Editor’s note: A spokesperson for HACP said the agency said its properties are kept in “habitable and proper working condition,” with repairs, maintenance and capital improvements made to its portfolio on an ongoing and as-needed basis. “We are trying to meet the housing needs as fast as we can,” the spokesperson added. “Our mission is to provide multiple types of affordable housing to everyone, as creatively as we can.”]

Before I moved to Pittsburgh, I researched its transit options because that, and walking, would be the primary ways I’d get around. These were the days of Port Authority (not yet renamed Pittsburgh Regional Transit) being reliable 24/7. I had never seen a transit system more reliable. I loved how Pittsburgh treated her people, because by loving transit, Pittsburgh loved all of her people. 

Those days are far gone now, with how Pittsburgh is treating her transit riders. I’ve been with people who were waiting an hour or more at a stop for a bus that never came — and the next one won’t come for at least an hour, if not more. So many times I see on Twitter, several hours ahead of schedule, that a bus line is out of service.  

I attended a Pittsburgh Regional Transit [PRT] information session a couple of weeks ago, which was enlightening and horrifying at the same time. I spoke at the Jan. 18 public hearing regarding the Bus Rapid Transit [BRT] system which would end several bus routes that are both desirable and flexible.

[Editor’s note: PRT has indicated that its staffing shortages, and resulting service reductions, mirror those experienced by most other transit agencies. The agency has loosened hiring practices, offered incentives and recruited a large operator class, according to a spokesman. The spokesman added that BRT aims to improve transit service and reliability.]

Yet, I persist in showing my love to Pittsburgh through transit advocacy. I know the days of reliable transit can come back to Pittsburgh, when we the people stand up as a whole. Of course, this would also require PRT to listen to — not just hear — people.  I encourage anyone affected by PRT, who has not felt listened to, to please get in contact with the Federal Transit Administration’s Region 3 Office. I used to work with Region 3 officials when Erie’s transit riders were not happy when the Erie Metropolitan Transit Authority [EMTA] went through changes.  

When one person prospers because of livable conditions, it is a success story.  When an entire population prospers, it is a beacon of light to millions of people who still struggle. It says, “Come here! You can live here and thrive here. You can prosper here . You can ensure the viability of your families for generations to come here.” This is what viability and livability really mean.

I love this city, and I know the system can change to help all her people. I will help change it to do just that: Help all of her people.

Aim Comperatore is an independent advocate and writer with degrees in criminal justice and a love of legal research.  If you want to reach Aim, email atcomperatore@gmail.com  or firstperson@publicsource.org. 

To reach the Federal Transit Administration’s Region 3 Office, covering Pennsylvania and nearby states, call 215-656-7100 or write to FTA Region 3 Office, 1835 Market Street, Suite 1910, Philadelphia, PA 19103. At this time, there is no direct email address. To reach out to the Federal Transit Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590 or 202-366-4043. To reach the FTA’s Office of Civil Rights, call 1-888-446-4511.

The post Pittsburgh: Why I love you appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.