Fleeing the United States

This article will be longer and more personal than anything I’ve posted on this site before, and a bit traumadumpy. I hope you can bear with me. Feel free to skip any sections you’d prefer not to read.

Introduction #

So people that may have been following my projects, such as ITD and LURE, may have noticed that they suddenly stopped getting commits, and a little over a year ago, my services all went down for months and never fully recovered.

This was a period of extreme turmoil in my life, but everything finally seems to be settling into place. I’m writing this post to explain what exactly happened and hopefully to give others the courage and assistance to get out of their own similar situations.

Background #

If you knew me from before a few years ago, you’ll have noticed that all my domains and all my usernames changed at one point. That was when I came out as transgender. Coming out was one of the best decisions of my life, but also put into motion everything that led to what this post describes.

I was 18 at the time I came out, so I was still living with my parents and had no job. I didn’t initially want to tell my mom, but she managed to pull it out of me by emotionally manipulating me with threats of hurting herself (if anyone reading is in a similar situation, do not do what I did, keep it secret for as long as you can if you know your parents are transphobic). From there, I experienced the classic transphobic parent story, but it went even further.

What actually happened #

Illegal disclosure of medical information #

Since I didn’t have a job, my parents were able to control practically every facet of my life, including health insurance. My mom used that to restrict the doctors I could see to ones she knew personally, threatening to remove me from her plan, and forced me to go to a new doctor she was personally friends with.

Shortly after I turned 18, my mom scheduled an annual checkup with this doctor, which included a blood draw, but I later found that my blood was tested for sex hormone levels and chromosome karyotype without my knowledge or consent. The doctor also lied to the lab about the purpose of the chromosome analysis, and the results included a note from the geneticist stating the type of analysis could not be used for the purpose stated.

I discovered this when my mom gave me access to her email to set up a service and I noticed an email from my doctor containing a full unredacted PDF of the blood draw results. Since I was 18 and had signed no HIPAA release form, it was a clear illegal disclosure of my private medical information.

Later, my mom took me to another appointment where the doctor used high blood pressure as a false pretext to test my hormones again, and when she read the results, she said my estrogen levels were high and tried to scare me by claiming my “brain hormone” (LH and FSH) levels were low (anyone who knows anything about estrogen monotherapy for trans women would know that’s the goal), while she repeatedly pleaded for hours for me to give permission to share information with my mom (presumably to cover her ass) until I just refused to ever go there again. My mom then “deduced” that since I stopped going, I must’ve been on HRT.

Stalking and my legal name/gender change #

Around this time, my amazing friends decided to crowdfund the $800 or so for my legal name and gender change. I collected all the court forms I needed to fill out, spent hours reading the law and other people’s cases to figure out how to fill them out properly, finally finished filling out all 7 forms, and told my parents I was going to pick up food, where I met with my friend and gave her all the forms which she then filed with the court for me. I then published all the information I learned in the process at https://thecodex.gay.

My mom decided she should try to prevent me from taking steps to transition, so she placed trackers on my car, on my keys, and on my phone. Of course, that would make it difficult to do all the next steps of the name/gender change, so I had to get creative.

After the 6 week waiting period, the judge signed a court order recognizing my name and gender change. Thinking about how I could play this to avoid suspicion, I looked up the courthouse’s address and noticed it was near the university where my friend lived in a dorm room, so I told my parents I was visiting my friend to help him set something up. Knowing I was being tracked, I actually drove to the university and parked there. Then, I waited about an hour and told my mom we were going to go buy a cable my friend needed. I then drove to a shopping center down the street from the courthouse, parked there, left my phone in the car, took the car key off of the keyring with the tracker, and walked over to the courthouse to pick up copies of the order.

With the copies in hand, I drove back to the university to trick my mom who was actively tracking me into thinking I had bought the cable and driven back. Sure enough, as soon as I got back, she sent me a text asking if I was back. I then stayed parked there for a couple hours, in which I video called a friend and explained how to do her first HRT injection. Then I told my mom that my friend needed to drop something off at the post office, so I drove to a place that had a UPS store and a post office nearby, had the UPS store notarize a document, and then went to the post office to send that and one of the copies I got to the California Department of Public Health to update my birth certificate. Then, I drove back home, my parents none the wiser.

Clearly my mom had some sort of feeling that something was wrong, however, because while I was on a walk in the park, I noticed my dad’s car (I knew it was his because I’d memorized his license plate), and then I saw my dad on the phone across the street, presumably telling my mom what I was up to. So my parents were now not just tracking but also stalking me, so I had to get even more careful.

By now, some time had passed, and about a year before my escape, I got an internship at Santa Monica College. So, I decided to use that to my advantage. I would go to my internship, then on the way back, I’d go send some forms or visit government offices by planning my route such that I’d be able to stop at these places without arousing suspicion.

For example, on the way back from my internship one day, I stopped at a social security office to change my information in their database. I took my documents in, went through the security procedure, provided all the documents, and then was back on the road within abour 30 minutes. I knew my mom would be getting worried since I was driving for so long, but the way back home was known for always having extreme traffic, so I called her and told her I was stuck in traffic that was barely moving and that’s why it was taking so long.

Then, I got lucky. My parents were going to Croatia for a wedding. Using the opportunity to its fullest, I went to the DMV to update my license, got passport photos taken and sent in my passport for an update, updated my bank details, etc.

At this point, it was impossible for my parents not to find out, so in order to keep control of the narrative, I told them myself while they were still in Croatia. Predictably, they freaked out, but they were in Croatia, so my mom couldn’t yell her brains out, and my dad couldn’t hurt me on impulse (a thing I was deathly afraid of due to things he did to me in childhood) and had time to cool off before seeing me.

My escape #

This was now 2024, and Trump had won the election. I could see the noose tightening around trans people’s necks. I could see my parents getting even more strict, even stealing all my meds including my HRT at one point. I saw the writing on the wall, and I was scared and didn’t know how I could continue living like this.

At this time, the same friend who I helped with HRT earlier in this post told me she could help me move to Germany, where she lived. I didn’t want to accept it at first, but with all this happening and my job search going nowhere, it became clear I had no other option. Another friend paid for my plane ticket, and I started planning.

Two days before the flight, I waited until my parents went to sleep, and waited about an hour longer so they’d actually be asleep. At 1 AM, I started packing. I took everything important to me, including all 14 of my servers. That’s why my services went down. I managed to pack a backpack and two large bags full of stuff. It was around then that I noticed that my mom had stolen all my documents.

Obviously, I couldn’t take an international flight without my passport, so I went into her room and did something I really really didn’t want to do. I turned on the flashlight, woke her up, and told her in no uncertain terms that she’d have to give me my documents now or I would call the police and make her give them back. This was ultimately why I did this two days early, to give time so that I could try again if something went wrong. My mom ended up giving me my documents back, I called a lyft, and I was off to meet the friend that paid for my plane ticket.

She was amazing. She took me to her place, gave me some suitcases so I could move everything from the random assortment of bags I happened to find in a rush, let me sleep there. The next day, my other friends picked me up and we went out to say goodbye to each other because it would be a long time before we’d see each other again, and the next day I called another lyft, and was off to the airport.

I’d stopped all contact with my parents as soon as I left, so they were under the impression I was already gone, so they wouldn’t go looking for me around the city. My German friends met me at the airport and drove me and all my stuff to my friend’s place. It turned out her roommate had decided to move out, so I even had a room ready to move into.

What happened next #

I had 90 days to find a job in Germany before my visa would expire. I had no money, but I was really lucky, because after asking in some communities I’m a part of, I got way more donations than I thought anyone would ever give me: over $2,000. So, I had enough to survive for 90 days.

The original job I was going to be working at decided to reneg on their offer after I got here, so I needed to find a different one. With the 90 days quickly drawing to a close, I cold emailed all the chapters of the Chaos Computer Club for which I could find contact information. Responses were really nice, and I got a few promising leads. One of those leads ultimately panned out, and after some back and forth and an interview, I got a job as a DevOps engineer. Although my main passion will always be programming, I do enjoy some system administration and DevOps as well (that’s why I have all these servers lol), so it worked out quite well.

My job secured, I read German immigration law and filled out all the forms I’d need to turn the contract into a residence permit allowing me to stay and work in Germany. A couple weeks after submitting all my paperwork, I got an email response saying my permit was approved and scheduling an appointment to sign the documents needed to get it. I went with my German friend, we went through the papers and I signed them, and they even gave me a Fiktionsbescheinigung even though my permit had already been approved so I could start work immediately.

A month later, I went and picked up my residence permit, which they’d issued for 4 years, which means I won’t need to ever extend it because I’d be eligible for permanent residence by the time it expired.

I felt a weight lift off my shoulders because I knew that I was finally free. I was finally in control of my own life. The next months went by in a blur. I started working, the friend who helped me move here became my girlfriend, and I went on a vacation for christmas. It was then that my girlfriend and I got engaged. Long story short, after a recent trip to Denmark, we’re now married :3

What happened to my servers/services #

Around the time we were planning our wedding, I also decided to redo my entire cluster from scratch. I’d set it up tentatively soon after moving to Germany just to get everything running as soon as possible, but it was a mess, and not everything had survived the move.

So, I ordered a server rack, power equipment, networking equipment, and a bunch of other stuff, and moved all my servers into the server rack, wiped them clean, and started from scratch (after backing up my data of course). The cable connection in my place wasn’t exactly reliable, so I got a 5G modem as a secondary connection which shot my uptime up from around 60-70% to 99%. I set all this up with OpenWrt and a used HP Enterprise switch, and then got to work retooling everything. For example, I now use Forgejo instead of Gitea, and I use Forgejo Actions instead of Woodpecker, which means a lot of stuff had to be redone. My wife helped a lot when I got overwhelmed, and it’s only thanks to her that I was finally able to get things back to a workable state.

Where do we go from here #

Right now, I’m working on my git repos. I need all the CI pipelines back in working order. Then, I’m going to start picking my projects up again, one by one, starting with the ones requiring the most attention (currently ITD is likely to be the first).

Hopefully, by next year, everything will be figured out and back to normal again :3

I’d like to thank my friends and my community members for never losing faith in me through this long and difficult time in my life. I don’t know where I’d be without you all.

Thanks to you all, and stay tuned because updates are coming :3