Sometimes I wonder.
I don't know if I have always tried my *best* but I know I have tried very hard.
I find myself at 58 with no gainful employment....hurtling towards retirement age but with no feelings of actual "retirement" as I haven't worked full time since 1973.
My adult life has been filled with looking after others and/or having others look after me.
As I child, I didn't have particularly good health, had a diet of anti-biotics as a teenager and generally always felt as if I could do with a lie-down. I was probably depressed from an early age too. My father was a stoical character who at age 21 on being told he would never walk again, did so, just to show he wouldn't be told what he could and couldn't do! I thought all dads were unable to kneel down and didn't find out that he had overlapping bones on his knee, until I was an adult. He'd been in traction for 9 months but they couldn't stretch them far enough to let his knee cap "pop out" and function normally. This was all the result of a motor bike accident in the days before traffic lights! His message to me was always that I wasn't trying hard enough and so I always have that at the back of my mind!!!
Even though I have been diagnosed with certain conditions and qualify for incapacity benefit [which I can't get because I haven't got enough contributions] I still find myself thinking that if I put my mind to it I could do more! A few years ago when I was feeling my best for years, I went to the jobcentre and with the help of an agency who help disabled people back into work {I'm allowed to do up to 16 hours without them stopping paying my contribution credits] I found myself a job [they didn't find me one but I felt empowered!!]. I lasted 4 months and then gave up and went into a physical and mental decline. Well tbh the decline began whilst I was still working and I became increasingly ill but put it to the back of my mind until I realised I was just being silly, trying to do it! I had worn myself out and was in what I like to refer to as "burn out". In the years in between I became so ill that I was in a wheelchair for a while and I claimed DLA but was turned down, took it to tribunal and lost. The clerk at the tribunal was very sympathetic and annoyed...saying that people walk in with no signs of illness but a relevant piece of paper and get the award....I had no such piece of paper nor any knowledge of it, no representation and so, no chance :((( The tribunal committee looked at me condiscendingly and unsympathetically and I broke down and cried. The clerk told me to write and ask for an explanation....the letter I received said they "preferred" the evidence of the visiting doctor to my version and said my GP's letter was immaterial :((( I asked the CAB for help and they said I stood no chance and wouldn't even make an appointment to see me. So I gave up. Even though I am still not well, I know that if I tell the absolute truth, I will not get DLA.....if I were to get the "right" help to fill in the form I would probably get it...........moral dilemma!!
I don't want to claim any benefits, I want to be a "worthwhile member of society" but I don't really know what that is and I don't know if I can be! Would anyone employ someone like me, who can be "OK" in the morning and comatose in the afternoon.....able to walk into town one day and unable to stand and make a sandwich the next.......able to sit and type a blog like this but unable to read more than a short paragraph at a time......?????
Today, I feel absolutely terrible but better than yesterday afternoon when I had to give up and lie down and then by tea-time, go to bed. I am sooooooooooooooooooo frustrated!!!
Time for a cuppa.........although the kettle is feeling very heavy today :((((
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