I guess this is just a rant because I don’t have a single friend or anyone to talk to in real life. I thought once I won my benefit appeal I’d be OK but I still haven’t received my backpay and when I inquired they said first someone from the DWP actually has to start the process of initiating the backpay and then it can take up to another 6 weeks to receive it. There’s no sign it has even been initiated yet.
On top of this I’ve just been screamed at by my landlady and I find it so hard to deal with confrontation and people being horrible to me, I really feel like just bursting into tears right now. Basically she’s been letting me live here without paying rent all this time on the understanding I’d pay her back when I got my backpay, plus interest. The interest is because she’s had to put many expenses on her credit card because she hasn’t had my rent coming in. She needs a lodger to help pay the bills, so without her lodger, me, paying rent, she simply couldn’t afford the bills and they’ve been going on a credit card.
The credit card racks up interest and it’s my fault because I haven’t been paying rent so of course I need to pay off the interest too, which I agree to. On top of this my own overdraft has been maxxed out beyond it’s limit (so into an unarranged overdraft) for a long time, racking up interest charges too. This means my backpay, whenever it arrives, won’t be enough to pay off all my debt because I have all these interest charges too, and it’s a lot. Even after using all my backpay on debt I’ll still be thousands of pounds in debt.
Well I had thought I’d pay off my overdraft but when I mentioned all this to my landlady today she became furious and said I have to pay her first before paying my own overdraft. I realise she’s right but she was so awful about it, she unleashed all of her pent up frustration and anger about this ongoing situation on me by screaming in my face for like 20 minutes and not letting me a get a word in edgeways.
So my financial situation is still impossible, and this month I simply haven’t got enough donations of food vouchers to see me through. On top of this my landlady’s daughter has just had a major operation and is meant to be coming out of hospital very soon, maybe tomorrow, and my landlady is going to stay with her, maybe for weeks, to care for her and her kids. I’ll be home alone with no-one to help me. Because of my disabilities I can’t walk very far, the nearest bus stop is nearly a mile away, and I have many upcoming medical appointments. I don’t qualify for the St John ambulance transport (you have to be either bedridden or on oxygen to qualify) and you have to pay for hospital transport. The only way to get to these appointments would be by taxi, or cancel the appointments. On top of all this with no-one to drive me I will have to order groceries delivered which is even more expensive. I just don’t know how to manage, it’s always too much to cope with and nothing ever gets better. I am really feeling again like $u1c1d£ is the best option.
I understand you’re mainly getting all of this off your chest but I keep thinking about your transport needs.
Is there some way we can help with that? Specifically do you know of anonymous ways to get you funds that have more flexibility and can be used for taxis or ride share or whatever solution might work?
(perhaps there’s some feasible way to use a taxi or ride share to go far enough to not be taking the piss, but also gets you to public transport that could work for the rest of your journey? sorry I hope I’m not being out of pocket asking about this.)
I usually try to avoid paypal (due to not wanting to explain incoming funds to the dwp) but I’m at the stage where it’s getting to be a necessity for transport so i did make a mutual aid post today where I’ve said that if anyone can contribute via paypal they could PM me for details.
I am so sorry. I was so excited when you won your appeal. But hearing that you’re now on the hook for more than you’ll receive is heartbreaking. I don’t comment or engage much but I’ve been keeping abreast of things as I see you post. I really hope things can improve for you. Life is hard enough without the extra challenges you face.
Thank you. Unfortunately the DWP just get away with stretching people’s claims and appeals out for months or years, leaving them with no money during that time so they end up in debt to survive and then not paying interest on their backpay, so they just get into a cycle of debt that’s hard to get out of. especially with granting awards for short periods of time so it keeps happening over and over again. Really, I think it’s by design. They want to put people off claiming and drive others to suicide.
im so sorry ur going through this. Life really feels like a curse sometimes.
Thank you. Sometimes I wonder if I did something bad in a past life, or this is actually hell.
I feel that being born human is hell. You live a lot longer than most animals, you’re aware of your own mortality, you have to deal with employment and/or uncaring bureaucracy. Systems of oppression if you’re minoritized. Idk its like damn wish I was an amoeba or something.
I think being human would be better if we still lived a wild life. There’s an Australian film called Walkabout, about two schoolchildren in the 1970s who get lost in the outback and found by an aborigine, and he takes care of them and they all end up living a wild natural life together for a while, and it looked so lovely. If we just lived in tribes, searched for food and slept it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s all the bureaucracy and the alarm clocks waking you up at the crack of dawn and the stress of working some unnatural job for minimum wage in an expensive society, and severely sick people being pressured into artificially extending their lifespan with meds with horrible side effects so their suffering lasts longer than it would naturally, and the pollution and noise and the endless bombardment of bad news like wars, and disabled people threatened with destitution for being unable to work, and adults at work and children at school all day long so families only see each other briefly each day and constant rising prices for everything, that make life so unbearable.
