The Post I Actually Came Here To Make
Following November's medical, the DWP have taken me off the "Work-Related Activity" Group (where they are hoping to be able to get you back to work at some point). Unlike the last medical, where they didn't give me enough points to be on benefits at all and I had to go to appeal, this time they've put me in the "Support" GroupWhen I first signed up
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The whole point of my despair is, no, I cannot even work from home.
If I could, I would be.
Any employment, even self-employment, requires the ability to say you will do something and then DO IT.
Leaving aside my mental illness (GAD and clinical Major Depressive Illness) my physical disabiliy means I cannot sit at the computer either every day, or on any schedule that *I* get to choose. I can go months at a time when I can't sit at the desk (and my doctors say that using a laptop from a prone/semi-prone position in bed is even less healthy for my spinal damage).
That is what really depresses me and makes me feel my life is not worth living.
It's not about being house bound (though, yes, not getting to visit friends or attend church or a choir or any other group I'd like to join makes me lonely and depressed) - I have signed up for online courses and then had a flare up that means I can't sit at the computer and do the exercises or check in.
I tried writing - and even in a notebook with a pen, my ealth means I cannot do it to any schedule other than that decided by my disability and my menal illness. I have days - WEEKS even - when I cannot manage to prepare a meal or have a shower. On average I wash my hair, with the physical effort of either standing or bending over a sink, once every ten days.
I have weeks at a time when having cooked, I don't have the spoons/energy to EAT.
I live alone with a visiting (family) carer because when I did move back in with my parents, (a) I could not leave the house without one of them accompanying me because of where they lived and (b) I found my dad deciding what I got to watch on TV, when I got to go online and when I went to bed etc unendurable. (I'm 37, not 17. And it was bad enough at 17.)
My GP wants me to have state carers getting me up and putting me to bed - which I'm resisting, because in the experience of people I know, you get put to bed and got up when it's convenient for them (with several people to care for at each end of the day) rather than when *you* want to go to bed or get up.
Since you don't know me - or my situation - I find you telling me what I *can* still do, both unwanted and inappropriate.
I *did* try working from home - my problem, then and now is *reliability* because I cannot tell when I go to bed at night whether I will be able to get up and function in the morning - and that is without flare ups and serious episodes of Depression which can last months.
If I *could* do anything to get myself out of this situation, I WOULD. I'd rather be dead than in my situation and the only thing stopping me from killing myself is what that would do to my 80-year-old father.
The ONLY thng I cared about for the first five years of being disabled was staying in work any way I could. When I lost my job because I am unemployable I DID attempt suicide and was Sectioned under the Mental Health Act. I regret more than anything that I failed in that.
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I really appreciate you sharing so much of yourself. There's an in-built instinct within me that wants to try and help you, but i know that ultimately i will probably do more harm than good in doing so. I'm not even sure whether i should go any further with my thoughts on what you have told me, that's me worrying about how this has already affected you.
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