The Real Folk Blues

Title is from a song used in the anime "Cowboy Bebop" just because I don't really know what to title this.  I don't even know if I should be posting this here as it might drive away my fiction readers and potentials... but, argh... I need to rant somewhere or I'm going to explode. 

In late March, I won my case for Disability coverage.  This is due to the shameful condition that I have - bipolar disorder with a high propensity toward anxiety.  I do actually work, but I cannot maintain more than a very low-stress (and unusual) part-time job that gives me little contact with people.  Give me a list of things to do, things to clean up, leave me alone to do it and I do it, that's really all I can handle.  The normal "boss tells you what to do and supervises you doing it" is too anxiety-riddled and occasionally anger-confrontation triggering with me.   You can say that this is why if I ever got a "real career" (outside of cleaning a horse stable for minimum wage), writing would be perfect for me.  I write, I send... I'm actually very good with taking constructive criticism in written form, it's just flesh/face-to-face stuff that causes problems.  Artists can be neurotic as all get-out and still produce good things, right? 

I was told that it takes usually a month to start seeing Disability checks and/or your back-award (I have a substantial one coming, covering years.  I am hoping to invest it in something I've never had before: a savings account of some sort so that maybe, just maybe, when I'm sixty-years old I don't have to eat dog food to survive).  I've heard it could take longer, but most people get it within a month or two...

It's been two months, and aside from a letter stating that I did, indeed, receive judgement of award, I've not seen or heard hide nor hair of it.  At a meeting with my social-caseworker, we called the local office and, I kid you not, got a response of "Good luck." from the person on the other end.  (A wish for good luck, not sarcasm, but it shows that whomever is on the other line probably gets a tragic number of these kind of calls).   On the literature I received, it said that some cases take up to five months.  I hope it's not that long. I mean... I'm already having fantasies about finding my way down to the local offices with a wheelbarrow full of manure and just throwing it at people.  

I did mention that I'm crazy, right? 

And right now... is not good.  Due to some unexpected expenses that just blindsided us out of nowhere, my guy and I are having trouble paying our basic bills.  Since I got paid my (minimum wage!) check tonight, he was able to buy for us some bread, eggs and milk, which we have been lacking over the last week.  Seriously, bread, eggs and milk are luxuries right now.  Also, if I disappear from online for a while, it's because that bill is due. 

I mean, if I don't even get my full back-award right away and just start getting the monthly, it's going to help us out a lot, but you see, life likes to play a game called "Yank Shadsie's chain."  At this point, since the news from the local offices is "It's supposed to take sixty days, you should be seeing it oh about this week" and not seeing anything actually show up, I'm wondering if something got mixed up in the files and they're sending my money to the wrong person, or if I didn't *really* get awarded squat and the letter of award was a lie, or the lawyer on my case is being douchey about things somehow... (haven't heard from him lately, either).  This is just me being paranoid, I guess.... another part of my condition. 

I just want to scream WHERE'S MY FUGGIN' MONEY?!!!!

I'm sick of living on a knife's edge.  My guy and I have done it a lot... that's what being working poor IS.  You have things alright for a while, just enough to get you calm, then - WHAM! Some stupid bill or situation or asshole comes out of nowhere and you teeter, wonder if you're going to be able to afford to drive, or to pay your rent, or to eat, or having to trade off one for the other, and it takes a LONG time to recover to that place of quiet calm (which, by the way, is a "calm" that still has bill collectors from past knife-edges and/or student loans or that hospital-bill from a work accident that your boss was supposed to have paid two years ago coming up on you). 

I'm just... sad... and pissed off.... really pissed off right now.  It's one thing to just be poor, but to actually expect someone out there to HELP you, who said they were going to do it, only to YANK your damn chain until you feel like hanging yourself is just...

I don't know if "life is suffering," but it certainly is AGGRAVATING.