Too Much January 17, 2013

I’m completely overwhelmed with life right now.

We still haven’t heard from Sheppard Pratt about whether they’ll accept me. Hopefully by the end of the week…but maybe not. I don’t know why, but I’m terrified they won’t take me, that I’m either too sick or not sick enough.

And then there’s Social Security and Medicare that I’m trying to deal with. I have been so out of it I didn’t notice I’ve only been getting 1/4 of the Social Security money I’m supposed to for the last several months, which is why my money situation has been so fucked. They also screwed with my Part D Medicare plan (prescription drug coverage) without telling me, so I have to get them to fix that too.

The woman was so rude on the phone yesterday that I started sobbing–I never do that. She just kept bullying me about why I didn’t fix the problem earlier and how could I not have noticed I wasn’t getting the right amount for 5 months and so forth. HELLO I HAVE A PSYCHIATRIC DISABILITY I CAN’T DEAL WITH SHIT ASSHOLE.

So I apparently have to go to their office–45 minutes away, on a different bus system that doesn’t intersect with mine, and the office is only open part-time–with my lease and utility bills, which they’ve never asked for before. Now in paranoid that they’re going to say I have income I don’t actually have and therefore I’m not eligible for Social Security. Then I’d lose all my insurance too. I know I’m probably catastrophizing, but I can’t help it. When I applied for food stamps, they accused me of fraud because my income was less than my rent, even though I told them my family pays my rent but not food costs.

On top of all of that, I’m having the kind of nightmares that make me want to rip my brain out through my nose. Hospital nightmares. The latest was one where I was completely naked, alone in the room with a male staff person–a doctor, I think. He told me very matter-of-factly how he was going to stick needles in my body and under my fingernails and rape me repeatedly. I managed to get past him and out of the room, running naked down the hallway, but I was locked in because it was a hospital. I told a nurse what he said, and she decided I was psychotic and forced antipsychotics down my throat.

And I’m coping with all this via my eating disorder. I’m eating enough in front of people in my team that they don’t realize this is an ED relapse. They think I’m just depressed and have no appetite. I’m at a “normal” weight, after all, though it’s dropping slowly but steadily. I’m abusing laxatives pretty seriously. I’ll leave the details to your imagination, but it ain’t pretty. I’ve been purging occasionally, but not regularly and not coupled with binges. It’s surprising to me–even in my other restrictive relapses, I’ve had an insatiable urge to binge, but now I have very little desire to. I always thought of myself as bulimic, not anorexic, even when I met the diagnostic criteria for AN.

Right now, I feel like my ED is the only thing giving me stability, and I don’t want anyone to take it away from me. At the same time, though, I want somebody to notice and be concerned. I don’t think my Windhorse team has much experience with EDs–people who do would see a 30 lb weight loss, even if it only puts me in the normal BMI range, as a red flag given my ED history. I guess I want validation that I’m sick even though I’m at a “normal” weight. I wish that didn’t matter to me.

I just can’t take much more. People were not engineered to live under this much stress all the time. I’m coming apart–trying desperately to hold on, but my strength is giving out.

I’m the 47% September 19, 2012

Hey, Mittens: I’m part of your 47% of Americans who don’t pay income tax. (We’ll ignore, for the moment, that it’s actually 46.4%, and only 18.1% paid neither income nor payroll tax.)

I pay no income tax because I am disabled and have a very low income: $473.70 per month from SSI/SSDI. Where I live, I couldn’t rent a closet, let alone buy food and clothes and bus passes. Nor could I pay for the medical treatment I need to manage my disability.

Yes, I am one of those people “who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.” Hell yes, I believe everyone is entitled to those things! Tell me, Mr. Romney, do you believe that because I’m poor, I should’ve been denied life saving brain surgery? Because I’m poor, should I have to live in my car and eat out of dumpsters? I’ve done that, but I’d be willing to bet the little money I have that you haven’t lived that.

I wonder, Mittens, when the last time you read our Constitution was. I recall this bit where it says our government was established “to promote the general welfare.” Generalmeans everyone, Mittens, not just the rich elite. If you’re instituting policies that would deprive people of basic needs, you’re not promoting the general welfare.

You talk a lot on the campaign trail about morals, and to me it sounds like nails screeching across a chalkboard. I can think of no better way to judge a person’s morals than by how he treats the most marginalized and vulnerable people. On that scale, Mr. Romney, you are failing. You and your vice presidential candidate like to talk about how you care about the plight of the poor, but when you think the mikes are off, we meet your true self.

You, Mr. Romney, are morally and governmentally reprehensible.