And waste another year
Sep. 29th, 2011 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistGot another letter from Atos today. I'm due another medical 'assessment.'
I was actually warned of this yesterday in my latest heartwrenching appointment with the nice jobcentre lady. My heart sank to my shoes. The questionnaire should be arriving in the next month, she told me; I got it today.
I can't, I thought yesterday and think still. I can't go through this agian.
I think even she's given up on me ever getting benefits. "Have you thought about going back to work?" she asked in her kindly way. Her concern, like her question, is genuine however misplaced.
As if I don't think all the time about how much better my life would be if I were working. If I could get through a day without a nap, a crying fit, a migraine, a deep and abiding sense of self-loathing, of being not as good as the people who I know damn well have soldiered on in work despite depression or anxiety at least as bad as mine.
Sure they end up with alcoholism or weed or affairs or an inner life completely locked off from the outside world, or something equally dubious, but those kind of coping strategies don't seem so bad in comparison to this life I'm leading now, with all the misery and none of the financial compensation.
So it is that I need new underwear and a winter coat and I hold lofty ideals of how I'd like a holiday or to move house at some point, but instead we'll have to borrow money to get through the month, again, and next month will be worse as it is the gravity well for all our money, the time we have to buy plane tickets to see my family for Christmas.
I hate the way mental illness is treated, but I hate the way all illness is being handled under the current system. Everybody's disrespected, disbelieved, disenfranchised and dismayed. But if people who are dying of cancer are having their benefits cut and found fit for work, what chance do I have? Am I being stupid? Making a martyr of myself when (as I so often tell myself scornfully) it's not like I can't wrk and be mentally ill at the same time. I've done it all my adult life.
I don't have the energy to fight any more right now. The lack of money for so long, of clothes and nice things*, has added tremendous stress (not just on me but Andrew, who worked enough overtime to get his blood pressure dangerously high) and deteriorated my already-poor mental state. And yuo know what this means?
Atos are literally making me sick.
As I know they do a lot of other people. They keep so many people from dignity, from independence, even from safety: I am lucky to have an endlessly generous and loving partner, but there will be people who don't, and might have to remain financially dependent on bad people because they aren't deemed worthy of housing benefit and a few quid a week.
There is no one I don't think is worth that.
Immigrants, asylum seekers, single parents, brown people, fuck yeah, bring 'em on, I say. Not only are immigrants a net gain to the economy, but even if they weren't, I think about all the people who work for the DWP and HMRC who've flat-out lied to me on the phone, and been unhelpful, and fobbed me off. I think of Atos, who are a private company surely getting paid a buttload of money to deny people benefits.
I think of all the money being spent on people whose job is to monitor and jealously guard the tiny sums of money that can make the difference between life and death, or at least a life worth living, and I think if you split all that up among the people who claim benefits, no questions asked....we'd all live in a happier, healthier, better country.
Sure a few scroungers would sneak in. But they always will, and I'd rather have that than anybody in need go without. I hear Ed Milliband talk about how houses should only go to people who deserve them, and my blood runs cold. Anger will soon warm it up again, but at first I am scared, because I don't want to live somewhere where this is thought a good idea. A Labour gvernment made it more difficult for me to immigrate into this country, and it introduced the evil Atos.
I am grateful that my depression has never taken a turn towards self-harm or suicide. I have always loved life, mine particulary. But at times like this? I can totally see how the process makes people suicidal.
And what's worse, I know there are disability groups and charities that have been lobbying for a better system, marching in demos, calling Atos out on their horrible tactics even when it gets their websites shut dwn. I was thrilled that my fellow Lib Dems voted to halt some of the worst aspects of ESA limits and unfairnesses. It seems lke what can be done is being done, or at least that there's nothing I can add to the fight.
Or maybe that's just what I think right now. I'm having kind of a depressed day, you understand.
* I know people on benefits who get what they call a "nice things" fund; money they can only use to go out to restaurants and take holidays and stuff. When they went on a holiday earlier this year, one of them said it felt weird and wrong having to use benefits for that, but as someone who hasn't had anything like a holiday in years (I go see my family, but that's it), I can assure you it is the furthest thing from frivolous.
My house is dilapidated, untidy, and the scene f a lot of my worst bouts of anxiety and depression. Being unemployed only means I feel more responsible for the housework and chores and I have no refuge from where they happen. I am surrounded all the time by the ghosts of my own tears and an endless mental list of things I feel guilty about now doing -- the floors need vacuuming, the garbage needs taking out -- and I feel crushed under this psychic weight.
Meals in restaurants and little holidays in the UK don't seem frivolous to me at all; such things are absolutely essential for a person's well-being, I can assure you.
I was actually warned of this yesterday in my latest heartwrenching appointment with the nice jobcentre lady. My heart sank to my shoes. The questionnaire should be arriving in the next month, she told me; I got it today.
I can't, I thought yesterday and think still. I can't go through this agian.
I think even she's given up on me ever getting benefits. "Have you thought about going back to work?" she asked in her kindly way. Her concern, like her question, is genuine however misplaced.
As if I don't think all the time about how much better my life would be if I were working. If I could get through a day without a nap, a crying fit, a migraine, a deep and abiding sense of self-loathing, of being not as good as the people who I know damn well have soldiered on in work despite depression or anxiety at least as bad as mine.
Sure they end up with alcoholism or weed or affairs or an inner life completely locked off from the outside world, or something equally dubious, but those kind of coping strategies don't seem so bad in comparison to this life I'm leading now, with all the misery and none of the financial compensation.
So it is that I need new underwear and a winter coat and I hold lofty ideals of how I'd like a holiday or to move house at some point, but instead we'll have to borrow money to get through the month, again, and next month will be worse as it is the gravity well for all our money, the time we have to buy plane tickets to see my family for Christmas.
I hate the way mental illness is treated, but I hate the way all illness is being handled under the current system. Everybody's disrespected, disbelieved, disenfranchised and dismayed. But if people who are dying of cancer are having their benefits cut and found fit for work, what chance do I have? Am I being stupid? Making a martyr of myself when (as I so often tell myself scornfully) it's not like I can't wrk and be mentally ill at the same time. I've done it all my adult life.
I don't have the energy to fight any more right now. The lack of money for so long, of clothes and nice things*, has added tremendous stress (not just on me but Andrew, who worked enough overtime to get his blood pressure dangerously high) and deteriorated my already-poor mental state. And yuo know what this means?
Atos are literally making me sick.
As I know they do a lot of other people. They keep so many people from dignity, from independence, even from safety: I am lucky to have an endlessly generous and loving partner, but there will be people who don't, and might have to remain financially dependent on bad people because they aren't deemed worthy of housing benefit and a few quid a week.
There is no one I don't think is worth that.
Immigrants, asylum seekers, single parents, brown people, fuck yeah, bring 'em on, I say. Not only are immigrants a net gain to the economy, but even if they weren't, I think about all the people who work for the DWP and HMRC who've flat-out lied to me on the phone, and been unhelpful, and fobbed me off. I think of Atos, who are a private company surely getting paid a buttload of money to deny people benefits.
I think of all the money being spent on people whose job is to monitor and jealously guard the tiny sums of money that can make the difference between life and death, or at least a life worth living, and I think if you split all that up among the people who claim benefits, no questions asked....we'd all live in a happier, healthier, better country.
Sure a few scroungers would sneak in. But they always will, and I'd rather have that than anybody in need go without. I hear Ed Milliband talk about how houses should only go to people who deserve them, and my blood runs cold. Anger will soon warm it up again, but at first I am scared, because I don't want to live somewhere where this is thought a good idea. A Labour gvernment made it more difficult for me to immigrate into this country, and it introduced the evil Atos.
I am grateful that my depression has never taken a turn towards self-harm or suicide. I have always loved life, mine particulary. But at times like this? I can totally see how the process makes people suicidal.
And what's worse, I know there are disability groups and charities that have been lobbying for a better system, marching in demos, calling Atos out on their horrible tactics even when it gets their websites shut dwn. I was thrilled that my fellow Lib Dems voted to halt some of the worst aspects of ESA limits and unfairnesses. It seems lke what can be done is being done, or at least that there's nothing I can add to the fight.
Or maybe that's just what I think right now. I'm having kind of a depressed day, you understand.
* I know people on benefits who get what they call a "nice things" fund; money they can only use to go out to restaurants and take holidays and stuff. When they went on a holiday earlier this year, one of them said it felt weird and wrong having to use benefits for that, but as someone who hasn't had anything like a holiday in years (I go see my family, but that's it), I can assure you it is the furthest thing from frivolous.
My house is dilapidated, untidy, and the scene f a lot of my worst bouts of anxiety and depression. Being unemployed only means I feel more responsible for the housework and chores and I have no refuge from where they happen. I am surrounded all the time by the ghosts of my own tears and an endless mental list of things I feel guilty about now doing -- the floors need vacuuming, the garbage needs taking out -- and I feel crushed under this psychic weight.
Meals in restaurants and little holidays in the UK don't seem frivolous to me at all; such things are absolutely essential for a person's well-being, I can assure you.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 12:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 06:39 pm (UTC)I have been known to clean friends' houses for bits of cash here and there, just saying :) Good luck with the parents thing, either way.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 12:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 01:52 pm (UTC)Am preeeety close to giving up.
But we can't, can we? We gotta just try and soldier on as best we can. I'm so sorry that you haven't even been given the assessment rate AS YOU ARE BLOODY ENTITLED TO and that their fuck up is taken out on you. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 06:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-30 01:09 am (UTC)When it went to Independent Arbitration, having heard the case/interviewed my friend, tribunal took 5mins deciding time max to award her *31* points. They awarded her 16 points, the qualifying score, on one criterion *alone*
I have limited energies myself, but I do know a fair bit about this stuff so if I can be of any remote help, please do get my email from H.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 04:04 pm (UTC)sympathise so so much (have in fact just returned to the computer after sitting and crying about how it feels like nothing is ever going to change or get better, and even if it does i'm entirely reliant on other people for it. all this reinforced by my therapist :( sorry don't mean to rant)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 06:48 pm (UTC)and it often helps to sit down and think about what I can do to change (whether it's eat a meal or start taking steps to apply for an educational course), and when I start in on doing them I almost invariably feel better. Even if I don't feel better, I've done something :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-30 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 06:05 pm (UTC)And many people love you, particularly. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-30 07:40 am (UTC)(And I know I don't really deserve it; I'm usually quite convinced of my own greatness, loveability, etc. it's just sometimes...)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-29 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-30 07:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-30 01:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-30 07:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-01 11:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-03 08:42 am (UTC)