I thought winning my benefit appeal would be an end to the worst of my troubles. I’ve been focusing on that for so long but now it’s here, nothing really feels better. I’m still waiting for the rest of my backpay but given the amount of debt I’m in and the interest that’s built up, the backpay won’t cover it. Overdraft, interest, backrent plus various amounts like a lot of petrol money I owe my landlady.
And she can’t even be blamed or criticised for wanting repayment, she’s kept me living here with no rent payments for like a year and a half, driving me around, mostly paying the petrol out of her own pocket (apart from when it was supplemented by a few mutual aid requests when times got too hard), and being on a low fixed income herself, an old age pension, she’s got into debt because of this. So of course I need to pay her back so she can pay off her own debts.
So instead of my problems being over I have these debt payments stretching out ahead of me and only two years of guaranteed benefit payments before I get reassessed all over again. So I have my normal rent and share of the utilities to pay, plus paying off backrent and other debts like utilities and petrol, paying off the overdraft and massive interest, transport because although I have a disabled person’s bus pass, the nearest bus stop is nearly a mile away and my mobility isn’t good enough for that walk so I still need to pay my landlady’s petrol for driving me around.
On top of this my landlady’s daughter has become ill and is in hospital so my landlady will go and stay with her, maybe for weeks, when she comes out of hospital. Who will drive me to all my hospital appointments and to the supermarket? I will have to pay for taxis and food delivery and my benefit payments already aren’t enough for all this. I have lots of medical appointments coming up like the physiotherapist, podiatrist, ophthalmologist and others and some are in hospitals in other towns, it’s expensive getting to them all. I’m not eligible for free transport like the St John’s Ambulance (as I don’t have the required medical conditions to qualify) and you have to pay for hospital transport.
My clothes are basically rags, I thought I’d buy new clothes after winning my appeal but nope. I thought I’d be able to have some actual pleasures once the appeal was over but that’s a pipedream. My landlady took me to an appointment this morning and as we drove past the harbour on the way back I saw all the people sitting there, eating fish and chips and thought how I would like to do that but still can’t even afford something as simple as a portion of fish and chips. And I’m just today coming to terms with the fact that this is permanent. It’s not going to change. Society says I’m a useless eater and useless eaters should get barely enough to survive on, if anything. This constant anxiety about money is something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. Why does everything in our society have to be money, money, money? Why does Jeff Bezos have the UK government paying his staff benefits out of taxes so he can underpay them and keep more profits for himself while I have to beg for mutual aid?
Money is the whole reason I’m disabled to start with. Coming from a low income family I wasn’t fed adequately as a child and so later went on to develop a malnutrition-related cancer which has ruined my life. Then when my symptoms started it took the NHS nearly 4 years to diagnose me because they didn’t want to spend money doing any tests. The only reason I got diagnosed in the end is because my employer at the time decided to give the employees a private healthcare package as a perk, so i was able to go to a private hospital who actually did some tests. Everything is always money-based. Without that I probably wouldn’t have gotten diagnosed and would eventually have died and I’d be better off that way.
And on top of this I have all my usual problems to deal with - the mobility issues on my left side (caused by my stroke) are flaring up again, my achilles tendon is so inflamed I’m having trouble walking again and my whole left side is painful and debilitated. The pharmacy/GPs have messed up my prescriptions again, people look at me like I’m worthless trash whenever I go anywhere because my clothes are tatty, my hair is falling out, I have edema and skin infections and can’t walk properly. Even though my income is much lower than an average person’s I have more expenses due to being disabled, even the fact I need so much laundry disinfectant and can’t use normal detergent is a massive constant expense. I stupidly thought once I won my benefit appeal I could do things like paying for extra physiotherapy since the NHS is so shit I don’t get anywhere near enough appointments but that is not going to be possible.
Society wishes people like me would just go away but they won’t legalise assisted suicide. What is the point of this life? I try to find meaning by telling myself maybe I chose this life to learn some lesson, but I know that’s just cope.
I can’t even have the simple pleasure of meeting with friends. Everyone gradually drifted away and abandoned me when I got sick. I even spoke on here about how I recently reached out to an old friend and was rebuffed. After two messages he couldn’t even be bothered to respond any more. I left a greeting on another old friend’s facebook page and he didn’t even bother answering even though he’s very active on his page and has almost certainly seen my message. I haven’t met up with friends or had any kind of social life since 2010. Since then the only people I’ve spoken to are my landlady, hospital and shop staff and people online.
And while most people on hexbear/lemmy have been kind, even on here some people have been mean or used me for their own fun. This month alone I’ve had two people on lemmy repeatedly tease me with offers of mutual aid and never come through. I had one person a while ago tell my my problems don’t matter, it doesn’t even matter if I become homeless and give me suggestions on suicide methods.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I just don’t have the energy to write out any more now. But I have no-one else to talk to and everything is just too much. I’m even constantly eaten up with anxiety that there might be an afterlife, and maybe I’ll be punished in it, this terror, pain and misery might never end.
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I am so disgusted with how people have treated you. It’s fucked up and you don’t deserve it and you’re a completely 100% valuable human being despite what the current ridiculous greed driven society and its sadistic bullies think about the matter.
All of this horrible shit that happened to you didn’t happen because you’re a bad person. We’re all being robbed blind and mindfucked for our trouble. And as you basically illustrated the shit cascades once you drop into poverty and run into inevitable trouble-that-costs-money.
What’s really insidious is that it can happen to any of us. Disability knocking us out of work. Doesn’t take long to burn through everything you have just trying to find a new stable way to survive and without a social safety net any one of us is ultimately fucked just off a bad roll of the proverbial dice.
I know you know all of this I just don’t really know what else to say.
Than you. Yes, it’s crazy to me that people don’t realise that disability is the only marginalised group that anyone can become a part of at any time. I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about this and I’ve come to the conclusion that people must convince themselves that this could never happen to them- they work hard, they save money, they eat right to take care of their health, etc. So if you become poor through disability, you must have done something to cause it. You didn’t take care of your health which is how you became disabled, and prior to that you either didn’t work or didn’t save/invest wisely so that’s why you’re poor. They simply can’t admit that anyone can become disabled at any time through no fault of their own because it’s scary to them, and they can’t admit that you can run through all your savings quickly when times are hard, or you can lose your investments or whatever through no fault of your own. They’d also have to admit that much of their success is due to circumstances they had nothing to do with - being born into a middle class family in a wealthy country, being blessed with good health and an able body so they can work, etc. People don’t want to admit their circumstances were given to them and they can lose it all at any moment. So they have to blame the poor and disabled and make our circumstances into a character fault, then they can also say we don’t deserve government support or any other help.
Right! I deleted a paragraph from my earlier post about how I feel like people must have to maintain a state of delusion to support living in this system. I think about how like, it’s more or less fine to take your life into your own hands and go on cavalier adventures, but basically choosing to live in this competitive environment full of predators and raise a family? What?! Madness!
Same mentality of “Why did you have kids if you can’t afford them,” when average people just want a family of their own, like it’s unreasonable and a family should be a privilege only afforded to the wealthy.
