In the first half of this year I was redoubling my efforts to get on disability. I wanted more records, more concrete proof, and read some advice for people with more visible conditions and mistakenly took it to heart: get a functional capacity test. they measured how much i could move around and handle weight and repetitive tasks, though really none of what they measured ever took it to the level a job actually would... but either way, most everything was marked down normal. I can stand, I can walk around, I can carry 10 lbs for a minute. The only thing that stood out was a lack of endurance. They referred me to physical therapy for that - the whole One Month my insurance would allow - and it was a good experience, but it just kind of felt like I was trying to drain the ocean with a bucket, and the only changes that happened was that I was getting better at the futile attempt.
but anyways. I was then alerted that I needed to renew my food stamps. they'd recently changed it so you had to get a doctor to sign off on work exemption every year. i sent the form to my doctor, she took her sweet goddamn time, eventually brought it out to me at a general physical appointment i had months later. it had the functional capacity test's results stapled to the back. "can work with restrictions" was marked. under "designate restrictions", she just wrote "refer to attachment". the attachment that said I had no physical restrictions. She said something about how she "wants to be honest" and "won't lie" and gave me the form. I sent it in because I needed food. They send me to work.
It was two days a week, four hour shifts. They always had more workers than they needed so there was a lot of downtime. It was doable and everyone there said I was a really good worker. it only "paid" $80/month for transportation (and bussing did take a third of that), but otherwise it was fine. but I barely remember any of it. It's four months of nothing. At work I was shutting everything off and the rest of the time I was living it all instead of recovering. I thought it would get easier. Everyone's always telling me I'd be fine if I just tried, so I tried. i tried really hard and it just got me to the point where i wasn't aware of the days, i missed all my medical appointments, i was smoking weed every other day just for the pain, and i kept waking up in a state of stress and rushing to get ready to get to an appointment only to realize I didn't have anything within weeks. I couldn't relax, I couldn't think, I was constantly afraid and trying to ignore everything because if I let it in it would be too much.
I was also working with a state-sponsored job agent (I'm apparently only disabled enough for Job Help, not food stamps or disability) and lined up a really promising job at a local zoo. They had 4 hour shifts available, so I thought it wouldn't be much worse than what I was already doing, and it would actually be paying me. In my last week before starting the job at the zoo, they put out the first schedule I was on, and they had me scheduled for 8 hours, 3 days in a row. and at this point I was like "..... I guess I can try it anyway..." and my job agent told me "...you know that'll be too much for you. disclose your disability and ask for reasonable accommodation in the form of fewer hours". so i did, i messaged the scheduler essentially that. On my last day at the food-stamps-assigned-job I'm getting ready to head in and I get a call from the zoo's HR department saying "open availability was a requirement of the job" and telling me I'm fired. I was planning on taking a break from working if the zoo job didn't work out anyway (but I expected that to be... a little later...) so I let my last day still be my last day. but i was trying not to cry all through it.
(my roommates work extra during the holidays, and were fine with covering me through a month or so of no stamps. I'm very lucky for that. I wouldn't be able to take a break at all otherwise.)
I vented about the whole zoo thing to some friends and they said that's probably a violation of the equal employment opportunity laws and I should send a report or something. i think oh, yeah! there are protections against just getting fired for asking for reasonable accommodation! and I'm going to send a report. The report is not finalized and doesn't do anything until you have a scheduled phone interview. There are no open available dates for a scheduled phone interview, all the way out to six months from now. The time limit for submitting a report is six months. .... and that's it. there's not actually protections against getting fired for asking for reasonable accommodation.
It really feels like I'm just at the whim of whoever has a little more power than me. America acts like it has avenues for care and justice but they've all been brick walls. At least when I went back to my doctor after months of working, obviously doing terribly, she rethought her decision and might be reinstating my work exemption... maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe... but good god, the amount of times medical professionals have been like "well I volunteer with the ACTUALLY DISABLED ((the FREAKS without LIMBS)), and i see YOU so YOUNG AND HEALTHY i just don't want you NOT WORKING!" and i just have to nod and smile because what am I to them, I'm just some idiot who doesn't want to work, i just have to take whatever punches they throw at me and apologize for existing and claiming to be in pain. i just have to keep hoping the universe will stop telling me NO and i'll maybe, eventually, hopefully, maybe maybe maybe maybe, be able to eke out a meager and pathetic existence WITHOUT grinding my body into dust and an early grave, by the grace of the gods - the gods being literally anyone with a degree.
I keep looking into disability and healthcare policies in other countries. and then I look at immigration policies and see they won't let you in unless you work. because even the best countries only really care about their own people. I was born somewhere cruel, so I belong to it. like rebranded, larger scale feudalism. I'm stuck in this place where everyone thinks all I want to do is sit around with my thumb up my ass and throw me into the meat grinder because they ~Believe in Me~ and equate participation in capitalism with moral rightness. I want to slam my head against a brick wall. I want to spin a cocoon and liquefy into something different. I want to crawl into a hole and never come out. I have literally no power over anything, and having hope in any system or my ability to uphold it has only pushed me into enough suffering to burn months of memory.
I'm an artist... I make digital art, I crochet, knit, paint, draw, write, build, create... When I have at least some control over my own time, routine, and pain management, I'm almost always doing something... but it's not for money, so it's not good enough. it's not warped into the niche of Commercial Revenue, so it doesn't count. (and isn't it widely known enough to be a JOKE, how hard it is to make a living off art?...) God forbid art be for its own sake. God forbid anyone my age with no missing limbs not be flipping burgers instead.
Even if I didn't do anything, even if I just wanted to sit around all day with my thumb in my ass, I still deserve to eat, don't i? people shouldn't be measured by their Production ... The Point of a Society, of a Government, should be to allow people to just Exist, even if they can't or don't do anything else. but that's such a Wild and Crazy belief! because it doesn't make money.
I don't have a conclusion to this. Thanks if you read it all. I'm really tired.
but anyways. I was then alerted that I needed to renew my food stamps. they'd recently changed it so you had to get a doctor to sign off on work exemption every year. i sent the form to my doctor, she took her sweet goddamn time, eventually brought it out to me at a general physical appointment i had months later. it had the functional capacity test's results stapled to the back. "can work with restrictions" was marked. under "designate restrictions", she just wrote "refer to attachment". the attachment that said I had no physical restrictions. She said something about how she "wants to be honest" and "won't lie" and gave me the form. I sent it in because I needed food. They send me to work.
It was two days a week, four hour shifts. They always had more workers than they needed so there was a lot of downtime. It was doable and everyone there said I was a really good worker. it only "paid" $80/month for transportation (and bussing did take a third of that), but otherwise it was fine. but I barely remember any of it. It's four months of nothing. At work I was shutting everything off and the rest of the time I was living it all instead of recovering. I thought it would get easier. Everyone's always telling me I'd be fine if I just tried, so I tried. i tried really hard and it just got me to the point where i wasn't aware of the days, i missed all my medical appointments, i was smoking weed every other day just for the pain, and i kept waking up in a state of stress and rushing to get ready to get to an appointment only to realize I didn't have anything within weeks. I couldn't relax, I couldn't think, I was constantly afraid and trying to ignore everything because if I let it in it would be too much.
I was also working with a state-sponsored job agent (I'm apparently only disabled enough for Job Help, not food stamps or disability) and lined up a really promising job at a local zoo. They had 4 hour shifts available, so I thought it wouldn't be much worse than what I was already doing, and it would actually be paying me. In my last week before starting the job at the zoo, they put out the first schedule I was on, and they had me scheduled for 8 hours, 3 days in a row. and at this point I was like "..... I guess I can try it anyway..." and my job agent told me "...you know that'll be too much for you. disclose your disability and ask for reasonable accommodation in the form of fewer hours". so i did, i messaged the scheduler essentially that. On my last day at the food-stamps-assigned-job I'm getting ready to head in and I get a call from the zoo's HR department saying "open availability was a requirement of the job" and telling me I'm fired. I was planning on taking a break from working if the zoo job didn't work out anyway (but I expected that to be... a little later...) so I let my last day still be my last day. but i was trying not to cry all through it.
(my roommates work extra during the holidays, and were fine with covering me through a month or so of no stamps. I'm very lucky for that. I wouldn't be able to take a break at all otherwise.)
I vented about the whole zoo thing to some friends and they said that's probably a violation of the equal employment opportunity laws and I should send a report or something. i think oh, yeah! there are protections against just getting fired for asking for reasonable accommodation! and I'm going to send a report. The report is not finalized and doesn't do anything until you have a scheduled phone interview. There are no open available dates for a scheduled phone interview, all the way out to six months from now. The time limit for submitting a report is six months. .... and that's it. there's not actually protections against getting fired for asking for reasonable accommodation.
It really feels like I'm just at the whim of whoever has a little more power than me. America acts like it has avenues for care and justice but they've all been brick walls. At least when I went back to my doctor after months of working, obviously doing terribly, she rethought her decision and might be reinstating my work exemption... maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe... but good god, the amount of times medical professionals have been like "well I volunteer with the ACTUALLY DISABLED ((the FREAKS without LIMBS)), and i see YOU so YOUNG AND HEALTHY i just don't want you NOT WORKING!" and i just have to nod and smile because what am I to them, I'm just some idiot who doesn't want to work, i just have to take whatever punches they throw at me and apologize for existing and claiming to be in pain. i just have to keep hoping the universe will stop telling me NO and i'll maybe, eventually, hopefully, maybe maybe maybe maybe, be able to eke out a meager and pathetic existence WITHOUT grinding my body into dust and an early grave, by the grace of the gods - the gods being literally anyone with a degree.
I keep looking into disability and healthcare policies in other countries. and then I look at immigration policies and see they won't let you in unless you work. because even the best countries only really care about their own people. I was born somewhere cruel, so I belong to it. like rebranded, larger scale feudalism. I'm stuck in this place where everyone thinks all I want to do is sit around with my thumb up my ass and throw me into the meat grinder because they ~Believe in Me~ and equate participation in capitalism with moral rightness. I want to slam my head against a brick wall. I want to spin a cocoon and liquefy into something different. I want to crawl into a hole and never come out. I have literally no power over anything, and having hope in any system or my ability to uphold it has only pushed me into enough suffering to burn months of memory.
I'm an artist... I make digital art, I crochet, knit, paint, draw, write, build, create... When I have at least some control over my own time, routine, and pain management, I'm almost always doing something... but it's not for money, so it's not good enough. it's not warped into the niche of Commercial Revenue, so it doesn't count. (and isn't it widely known enough to be a JOKE, how hard it is to make a living off art?...) God forbid art be for its own sake. God forbid anyone my age with no missing limbs not be flipping burgers instead.
Even if I didn't do anything, even if I just wanted to sit around all day with my thumb in my ass, I still deserve to eat, don't i? people shouldn't be measured by their Production ... The Point of a Society, of a Government, should be to allow people to just Exist, even if they can't or don't do anything else. but that's such a Wild and Crazy belief! because it doesn't make money.
I don't have a conclusion to this. Thanks if you read it all. I'm really tired.
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