Wednesday, 16 March 2016

The aftermath of PIP

Dear ATOS,
I'm angry, and I'm angry at you. For the Last five years or so I have been working damn hard to improve my life.
I met someone, who went from friend to fiancé to husband to daddy in the space of 2 years. I owe a whole lot to him, he showed me that I could rather than I can't, he showed me that life was possible.
Then there's my therapist too. He's just been there all the way through supporting and encouraging. After my diagnosis and being shown that's what I needed to improve that's what I found, long term psychotherapy. I can't get that on the nhs, so I pay for it myself, with my DLA.
I pay for a lot of stuff with my DLA. The tiny things like more clothes than we need so we don't have to wash so often, the food we have in that I can cook if I happen to need to that night (ready meals, tins easy stuff). Then there's the bigger stuff, like my therapy, or the extra freezer for the ready meals or the decent sofa bed for downstairs when I can't get upstairs safely and nursery and childcare to help us survive. Or there's the day to day stuff like the coffee shops we go to so he gets a break from cooking at lunch or the more expensive pre cut apples so I can give our daughter a decent diet.
Being disabled is expensive, even more so a disabled parent. But I have worked hard, I have improved a lot, but there's two important things with that. Number one, my improvements come with a cost, the workarounds and stuff we do to make life manageable costs, and number two, I walk a thin line. If I have a bad day (in terms of my own spectrum my good days would seem bad to you probably) I can fall off the recovery track pretty quickly, thankfully though I have support in place to yank me back pretty quickly.
So let me come back to my anger, now I have set the scene. Back in September I was "invited" to claim P.I.P, the replacement for my D.L.A. I got my forms in with evidence and waited.
Two weeks ago I received a letter to go to a "medical". There is nothing that can be determined from a medical of this fashion for mental health problems aside from if you have a breakdown in the middle of the assessment you have proven you are indeed entitled to benefit. Its pretty cruel and inhumane to be honest. To intentionally put someone through something that you hope will be traumatic enough for them to display external symptoms to you that you can then input onto the computer.
Unfortunately for me I succumbed. About five minutes in to be exact. There was noise coming from the next room and when I asked if we could move and she said no I broke down. I was forced to continue with the interview, that or return at another date, with no guarantee of a different room and the prospect of another week from hell waiting for the new appointment I had to keep going. I had music which I treated as white noise to keep going.
And this is why I am angry. In the space of that one hour they put me back five years of recovery. It wasn't just having to focus on all the things I can't do, rather than celebrate that I can still do them, might take me a while or I might need some help etc. The biggest thing has been the way my confidence has not only been ruined it feels like it has been torn apart, stamped on and damaged beyond repair.
My confidence, in myself and my abilities was the one thing I could rely on. Being able to pretend I could do it or be "normal" to outsiders was half the battle. It took me five years to build that up for it to be gone in an hour.
I second guess myself now, i'm not even trying to be positive. I'm not even trying, what's the point when i'm so useless I can't do it the same as anyone else? It took me five years to learn to forget everyone else and to learn that it's only my standards that matter.

I feel used, objectified and useless. I just hope I can get my benefit so I can spend the next five years building myself back up again.

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