If you’re on benefits, don’t get a job.

I cannot believe I am actually saying that but I am tired.  I am tired of having to negotiate my way through the mire that is our benefits system whilst trying to get a little bit of paid work whilst applying relentlessly for a full time job.

I’ve had my Housing Benefit reduced from £180 to £55 a fortnight because apparently they’ve overpaid me and they’re reclaiming it back from my current and future payments.    This is because I did 5 days work in April and May netting me £621 after deductions and because of this they have calculated I have been overpaid in every payment from April to June.   So that’s 12 weeks of overpayment because of 5 days work. 

I’ve already written about how these 5 days of paid work affected my Job Seeker’s Allowance so I can only conclude that I shouldn’t have bothered working, trying to pay my way, trying to get back into work because the benefits system makes it impossibly complicated and financially penalises you for the effort.  I can understand entirely how you can end up as a long term unemployed statistic and find yourself subject to all the vitriol that label engenders – the system is gamed against you getting any kind of work that doesn’t enable you to kiss goodbye to being a benefit claimant entirely.  They cut your benefits if you work part time or occasionally whilst trying to get that elusive full time job and anyway your Job Seeker’s Allowance is taxed as income and included by the Housing Benefit bods as earnings, so it is included in their calculations of any overpayments. 

The game is rigged and the house always wins. 

I spy...a Friday night in.

Once upon a time Friday nights were the highlight of the week.  A time to play, a time to laugh, a time to flirt, a time to get off one’s nut on drink, drugs  or just the heady mix of youth and expendable income.

Ah me, would that such days did last.  They don’t.  Which is I why I find myself sat in bed, a bowl of Bombay mix by my side, bugger all on the tellybox, with a bunch of equally lost souls cool people on Twitter for company at 8.30 this evening.  University Challenge isn’t even on to break up the monotony.  Sad times, my friends, sad times.

But wait!  I have a marvellous idea.  I can harness all of this middle aged, middle-England, middle to low income ennui, by the simple expedient of the classic children’s game I Spy!  But with a twist…wait for it…you’ll never guess (you might)…it will be called Fri Spy and it will be played on Twitter.

The rules of Fri Spy are simple.

1. The game will take place on Friday evenings. (Don’t pretend you won’t be in.  You will.  Or even if you’re not, you know your night will be punctuated by slightly paranoid checking of Twitter to see if you have any mentions.  Don’t deny it, it is a truth)
2. The Fri-Master (me) will tweet “Fri spy with my little eye something beginning with <insert appropriate letter>” and you have to guess whatever it is I am spying with my little eye.
3. I will give you clues (up to a maximum of three) throughout your frenetic guessing and if no one gets it right I WIN.  AND GET TO PLAY AGAIN.
4. If someone guesses correctly it will be their turn to be The Fri-Master.
5. We start again.
6. &c
7. &c
8. &c
9. As per long car journeys, Fri Spy will end when we get bored, start kicking the back of the seat in front and gurning at other passengers,
10. The evening flies by in a rush of guessing and punning and double entendres so much so that we laugh, I say LAUGH, at those silly sausages going out boozing and drugging and good timing.  The fools. 

We Friday-Night-Staying-Inners are many; indeed one could even say legion. 

We are Fri-Spyers.

Let the games commence!

(On Friday 29^th June.  I’m going to bed in a minute).

To my mum

My mum died five years ago today.  I've written her this letter. 

So much has happened since you crept gracefully out of life.   I know you’ll be ecstatic that I finally mustered up the courage to walk away from that relationship that was so damaging to me, that you knew has become a mirror image of your marriage.  After you died I tried many things to fix it but in the end I knew that to stay with him would be like a betrayal of you.  So I left and it was the best decision of my life.  You’ll be proud of me, I think, for doing the thing you were never quite able to do.

I’ve started singing.  I know!  I wish you’d lived long enough, and been well enough, to come and see my choir.  It’s been a lifeline for me and I now understand how singing was such an emotional outlet for you, a release of all the feelings you took care to hide from everyone.  When illness took away your singing voice I saw how painful it was for you; now I understand something of how soul-destroying that must have been.   I would love, so much, to be able to sing with you.   Oh, that we could have the chance to do it. 

I cook like you.  Throw it all in, one pot dinners.  My spaghetti bolognese and moussaka taste like yours but I’ve never managed to match your roast potatoes – although let’s be honest, no one could ever match your roast potatoes.   I can never eat cheese on toast (with seasoning salt, of course) without thinking about you, with a smile.  The same goes for chicken noodle soup, our comfort illness food.

I’ve had a horrible year, mum.  I’ve wanted more than anything to curl up on your lap at your end of the sofa and have you make it all better; there were times when I thought about coming to find you in the sweet hereafter or wherever you may be.   I know you’ll understand that, I think you felt that way more often than you ever said. You knew there was a dark shade to me and without you to talk to about it I’ve felt lost.  I’m coming through the other side of it now. Being a strong woman is as much my strength and yet my weakness as it was for you and I’m learning when to ask for help, and accept it.  I’ve learnt so much from what you did and couldn’t do. 

I wish you could have known B.  You’d like him ever such a lot.  He’s even got me interested in gardening, so maybe I have got your green fingers after all.  He makes up silly songs and I can just picture the two of you together in your garden, pottering about among the hardy perennials swapping ever-more ludicrous rhymes!  Yesterday he said “even if you don’t believe in god, you can still believe in magic.”  I think you’d love that as much as I do. 

When you died I was terrified I’d never be able to remember you as you were before illness, but I do, and I feel happy at these memories more than I feel sad.  I have this picture up in my bedroom, you and your funny, shy little shadow.  We had such good times you and I. 

Debt is depressing.

Being poor sucks. Really sucks.  And I don’t mean poor as in you can’t afford to go out as often as you’d like, you’re not having a holiday this year, you’re not earning enough to justify a haircut.  I mean poor as in you’re getting red letters from all your creditors, you weigh up every bus fare against buying bread and milk, you really don’t know how you’re going to pay your household bill this month, next month, every month. And knowing that part of the reason you’re so poor is because you have an illness that takes away your ability to manage any kind of personal care or circumstances really sticks the knife in.

Like work and depression, alcohol and depression, relationships and depression, finance and depression can feel like a chicken and egg never-ending circle.  Did I get in debt because I am depressed or is my depression causing me to get further into debt as I don’t have the emotional strength to get a handle on it?

I’ve never been that good with money (Savings? Huh?)  but I’ve always managed to keep on top of any debt I had until now.   I’m unemployed after being forced in December to resign from my job due to an investigation into claims I was faking depression. It’s a long, sorry tale which I’ve blogged about before so I won’t go into the detail here. Suffices to say, I’m out of work and no one seems in any way keen to interview me.

I’ve just had my Job Seekers Allowance cut because I missed an appointment.  I missed an appointment because I got four days’ work for which I will get paid about £600 at some point in the future. I did try and inform the Jobcentre by email of the circumstances (I couldn’t phone as it was a Bank Holiday weekend and I was working 15 hour days) but nevertheless my allowance has been taken away.  This means that my monthly income is £320 Housing Benefit which is for my rent (it obviously doesn’t cover it) and £8.71 per week Council Tax Benefit.  I’m not going to disclose how much I owe to the red letter senders – frankly it’s none of your business! – But clearly, they ain’t getting paid any time soon.

Because I’ve been so ill with depression, my natural tendency to keep a grip - albeit a tenuous one - on my finances has gone to pot.  It’s not been so much burying my head in the sand as being so out of focus with things that they have just not even registered. My memory is terribly affected by depression. I just don’t remember to do stuff.   And now I’m surrounded by letters and getting the dreaded 0845 phone calls and I don’t quite know where to start.  Having my JSA cut has knocked me right back; I’ll be honest, I could have sorted it out a couple of weeks ago but I was already slipping, I’m having more and more frequent depressive symptoms.  I am terrified of going back to where I was at the end of last year but the curse of depression is that I just don’t feel able to do anything about it. And so we’re back to the chicken and egg.

I can imagine that to some people this just reads like a list of excuses for being crap with money; it’s really not. Depression plays Russian roulette with your mind. It takes a wrecking ball to your sense of priority and gives your memory a right old kicking.  When leaving your room to go to the toilet is Mount Everest, than having to interact with people you feel over-burdened with guilt about owing money to becomes an impossible mountain to scale.

This morning I have been looking on the website www.nationaldebtline.co.uk and I think it might just be the thing that will help me get a handle on things, so that is a step in the right direction.  I am going to look into getting an advocate to help me contact the companies I owe money to.  I can’t do this alone. And for once I am going to ask for help, which as any depressive knows, is often the hardest thing of all. 

My friend

My friend is moving to Australia.  You know Australia?  On the other side of the world?  

My friend gets me.  We’ve known each other less than a year and yet I feel like we get each other on an emotional level; we click.  I can tell her things I’d hesitate to tell other people, even friends of much longer standing because I know she won’t judge. 

 My friend is hilarious.  She has a properly infectious giggle and just a glance will set me off.  She is as inappropriate and bawdy as I am which I admit is probably quite annoying for other people (especially in the midst of a choir rehearsal when we’re stifling our cackles).

My friend is very loyal.  She is the sort of person other people open up to and she takes on the burden of being secret keeper. 

My friend has great kids.  I’ve never enjoyed the company of children more, they truly are a credit to her and I am going to miss them more than I can say.

My friend has been more of a support to me over the last eight months than she knows.  When we met I was approaching my lowest ebb, she helped to pick me up. 

I set up Skype last night so I can (time difference allowing) talk to her often and we have Twitter as well.  I am going to miss the real her though.  I am going to miss my friend. 

Being Happy

Today is a good day.  I’ve had a fair number of good days recently, but this morning I woke up knowing that I am getting better. I’ve been scared of getting better in case I relapse into another severe depression, one that I don’t know I’ll have the strength to recover from.  I am still a bit scared about this, but I am pretty certain that the three months of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), the right medication, and some truly positive influences in my life have given me the tools to manage any relapses.

Depression is a part of me, it’s not ever going to not be there so I am learning to embrace it, and see that it can be channelled positively.  If I wasn’t depressed, I’d never have started this blog - imagine how much the poorer your lives would be without it, eh?! I think depression makes me funny. I can take the mickey and get away with it because I’m a depressive.  It gives me an edge.  Depression can give you insights into your own self, not always accurate and quite often self-loathing, but when you can step away from it a bit, you do learn a lot about how and why you think the way you do – after all, all those hours spent away with the fairies inside your own head have to be good for something, right?

I’ve started noticing beauty again.  A hydrangea in bloom, my boyfriend’s sleeping face, a giggling child, the smell of oranges.  It’s like the world is in technicolour; sights, sounds and smells are in focus.  And get this, I don’t hate myself. I think I’m alright, really. It’s been so long since I’ve thought that, and I feel giddy.

I was so proud of myself, walking home from my penultimate therapy session this afternoon.  I could have skipped but that would look somewhat out of place on Tottenham High Road, so I contented myself with smiling; beaming actually.

Being happy is hard work sometimes, but it’s worth the effort. Although, what the hell I'm going to blog about now, I have no bloody idea. 

An open letter to The Person

Hi!

How are you? 

Congratulations. You told me once that if I ever betrayed you, you would destroy me.  To be honest, I thought it was one of your many bombastic, melodramatic statements that could be taken with a healthy pinch of salt. Turns out I was wrong, you actually meant it. Of course, we differ quite substantially on what constitutes ‘betrayal’;  for me, I followed my principles and along with others took a course of action that was right, necessary and long overdue, for you I failed to be the lapdog you had assumed I’d be.

No doubt you wholeheartedly believe that attempting to ruin my health and career was entirely justified and needless to say I completely disagree. Your actions over the past year made me severely depressed and suicidal and forced me to leave a job I’d been successful at for nearly a decade, so well done, you almost did succeed in destroying me.   I say almost because I am still here, a bit battered and bruised – I am happy to admit you have done a spectacularly good job of trying to ruin me – but here nonetheless. 

I’d like to thank you actually. Without the events of the last year, I would probably never have sought the psychological help I have needed for many years (I’m not particularly grateful for the suicidal thoughts but hey, you have to take the rough with the smooth), I wouldn’t have discovered that I have talents and passions I can build a career from and I definitely wouldn’t have made so many friends, willing to fight my corner.

I’d like to think, for both our sakes, that your - can I call it an obsession? Yes why not – obsession will have abated by now. But just in case you’re still monitoring my online output, I’m letting you know  I’ve unlocked my Twitter account, so please feel free to peruse to your heart’s content. 

Regards,

Bear_Faced_Lady