or was it the coldest winter ever? I mean it was both really dark and really cold so I guess it doesn’t matter.
For brevity let’s say the kickoff of this wonderful occasion and near reenactment is the result of a life of living with unknown, untreated, misdiagnosed disabilities. I’ve been without accommodations and didn’t know I needed them. Much like a physical injury that isn’t properly addressed, I’ve probably caused some greater, permanent harm.
It’s July 2023. I have a new job in a new field but similar/adjacent skillset. I was really excited to get. It restored my hope for myself and my future. Now that I have income and insurance, it’s time to properly deal with and grieve the loss of a career field (project, community, work, future) that I loved and didn’t want to leave but couldn’t afford to stay. But I’m fucking up at this new job. I’m overclocking my ability to camouflage, compensate, and mask my differences and struggles. Some of the habits and behaviors just aren’t working anymore. At the time I don’t know wtf is going on but I’m determined to push through it. Still, my anxiety is spiking like crazy and I’m getting migraines every week. Because I’m severely underperforming at work and can’t understand why, in therapy the immediate issues take precedent over the grieving I needed help with. Doesn’t help that my supervisors approach and style was indifferent if not antagonistic to my mental health and jeopardized my ability to problem solve.
It’s now October and I’m getting let go/demoted. Temporary, part time contract gig to maybe skill up back to full time. I’m uncertain if this is real or if they’re just saying that for unknown HR reasons, following some legally advised personal improvement plan. I’m not in the position to leverage anything or pivot to something better. I’m still in a transitional state and needing to rebuild/replan my whole life. I had just been able to get out of crisis mode financially and I had to take what I could get. Because it had been mentioned several times by my therapist, at the last minute I go ahead and submit a short term disability claim for the heck of it. Not sure it’ll even go through since I’m going to lose benefits but what the heck. The policy says it covers loss of income due to disability. In the mean time, I’m starting the part time work.
Once the claims process get underway, (two weeks later) I have to stop working until the appropriate paperwork goes through the insurance company. It’s far too frustrating to go into the details of authorizations, documents, waiting, records request, etc. By the time the insurance company gets the info they need and processes everything, I’ve already been released from the part time contract (that’s about to end anyways) and so lost the opportunity to even get the full time job back. All the while, the waiting and anxiety and previously unprocessed grief is mounting.
It’s November and after waiting 2.5 months to be seen, I’m being formally assessed and diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. It’s too late to be useful for the job though.
It’s December. My mental health is tanking. Clinicians are now asking for or requiring even more frequent meetings to check on my wellness. There seems to be zero regard for the fact that I lost my job, lost my insurance, and would have to pay full out of pocket prices. Disability claims require a history of and maintaining care with clinicians. Psych office is just throwing a higher dose of ssri at me and draining my bank account. The offices aren’t being as responsive or helpful as I needed them to be. When expressing concerns about low funds and requesting less frequent meetings, I was told I could check out the county’s public health provider. I think to myself, “Well shit, this all seems evil. Was this obvious the whole time? Am I the fool How did I come to think these service providers cared about my well being independent of me paying for it? Did I basically just fall in love with a stripper?” At least they finally approved all the short term disability, though there’s only 3 weeks of it left now.
It’s March 2024 and after 3 months of more nonsense with records requests, interviews, documents, authorizations, and agonizing waiting I’m denied long term disability. For reasons that can only be described as the collaborative work of an asinine, corrupt, and ignorant healthcare system I have been financially depleted and left hanging off a cliff.
I have no job or career. I have no money. I hardly have a network or community. My will to live each day is weak. I can barely muster up the energy to seek and apply for jobs that I think I can acquire and maintain. I don’t enjoy being here. It’s exhausting, expensive, and unfulfilling and I’ve been trying to make it not that way for so long. For me, it doesn’t make sense to spend a third of my day doing soul draining work just so that I can barely afford the ability to spend the other ⅔ merely recovering from/coping with a shit life and sleeping. I dabbled in that before, 10 years ago actually, and it did not go well. It is illogical and a non-option for me.
I think this might be the bad place.