Dark Side (II)

Look, I know this is being cheeky but before I embark upon the following rage I’m going to assume that you read Tuesday’s post about my depression. If you didn’t you can see it here. If you did, steady yourself because while I was low enough to contemplate the point of seeing through 2013 the Tories came along and kicked me in the bollocks.

See, when I spent Monday battling with my depression again one of the feelings that overwhelmed me the most was that of worthlessness. Worthlessness at not being able to work as I once did, for not being able to beat the depression, for not being strong enough to live the full life that I once had. I felt like a fading shadow as I sat alone in my house and you know what hit me like a punch in the face? That, as the Tories keep telling us, I am a scrounger, a good for nothing layabout without the gumption or initiative to get off my arse to work or to contribute. And it made me cry.

Now that I am stronger and rebooted by sleep I can see that I was wrong to think that the Tories were right. Then, my mind had been weakened by illness. Now, I despise the Tories more than ever, for wheedling their filthy message of hate into my mind. While I was at my lowest, unable to function properly for genuine and serious medical reasons, the Tory message made me doubt myself. They made me doubt that I am genuinely unable to work, they made me doubt that I had suffered a major breakdown, they made me doubt that I had a right to seek support, they made me doubt that I was a worthy of humanity, empathy or compassion even from myself.

I received Employment Support Allowance after my breakdown, when I had to close my business because I was no longer well enough to work. It meant attending ATOS interviews where an unsmiling nurse of some description would grill me on my ability to lead a normal life. During the first interview I didn’t answer any questions because I couldn’t stop crying enough to speak. During the second interview Conjugal Kraken came with me to make clear to the unsmiling nurse that I was incapable of taking a phone call or making a cup of tea. Yet I felt brave by the time I had a third interview and insisted that I go alone. The unsmiling nurse asked me questions, I answered them. It was only afterwards that I realised that many of my answers had been inaccurate thanks to my depression-damaged memory so I told her that I had driven to the interview when really Conjugal Kraken had driven me, that I could answer the phone when really I couldn’t. My ESA was stopped. I was trapped. I felt too ill to appeal it, too convinced that I had become a scrounger to fight for myself.

And it is all of this that rages around my head when I am depressed again, that while my broken mind and my doctors prove that I’m not fit enough to work the Government tells me that I am. That while I am crippled by the panic, fear and anxiety of my mental illness if I can lift a phone receiver I should get down the Job Centre. That there are no longer people who are genuinely ill, there are only people who are genuine scroungers and because I have been, and still am, ill, then I must be one of them.

If the Tory message of hate against the sick and the disabled has me even turning against myself, on the days when I am too weak to build a defence, then what must it be doing to us as a society. How do the well view the ill, how do the able-bodied perceive the disabled and how do the mentally robust feel about those of us with a mental illness?

If the Tories have their way, all we will feel is hate. And believe me, my depression makes me hate myself enough as it is. I really don’t need the Tories to make me hate myself any more.

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6 Responses to Dark Side (II)

  1. elaine4queen says:

    Aaaargh!!!!

    Internalized hatred is the worst. Well, one of the worsts. As I await my ESA tribunal with trepidation I am desperately trying to wriggle out of claiming… which is, of course, what they want you to do. Even if you do fall flat on your face, which is what happened to me last time I tried to *do* something. (Actually a massive set back, not *just* a flare up).

    A few weeks in to reporting to the private company staffed by untrained salesmen that the govt has commissioned I was offered a session with their psychologist – I knew this could go well or badly for me, but in fact she was very helpful and is now no longer available. She did do one thing that really pissed me off though. She asked me how long I had been “out of work”. I do not consider myself “out of work” – I never ran out of work to do and were I still in the game I would certainly be “in” work.

    Recently I went to an advice session about self employment. I felt rather panicky and I had to wear sunglasses because of the migraine/striplight equation, but I coped with staying for the first session then went home. I noticed a whiteboard with the phrase “HOT JOBS” as a title. All of the jobs were for cleaners, drivers or in catering. Theses are indeed ‘jobs’ but I’d hardly describe them as ‘hot’ – though maybe you’d get a little sweaty in catering…

    • The Kraken says:

      It’s staggering isn’t it? At every turn you are made to jump through hoops. The problem is that if you are too ill to work then you are sure as shit too ill to go through all of this too. I recall having to phone the Job Centre, which insisted on me attending an interview there even though I was incapable of working, and they were mortifyingly rude and really, really suspicious of why I couldn’t attend. I cried so much when I came off the phone (bearing in mind that I was mid-breakdown) that my mother called back to holler at them. It really is like a form of internalised hate.

  2. Rootietoot says:

    “But you don’t LOOK sick.”
    Bah.

  3. Kim says:

    So sorry you’ve had to go through this. It’s horrible, horrible, horrible. I have a friend who works for a charity advising people who are very vulnerable, often through physical and mental illness as well as poverty. They have to go through these Atos assessments when they’re already at their lowest ebb just so they can be kicked in the teeth at the end. And most of them don’t have the energy or mental resources to appeal – that’s the killer.

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