No Hope For Me
In a pathetic last-ditch effort to try and find some help for myself, maybe an advocate who will fucking ADVOCATE for me? I wrote this letter in a fit of anxiety to my former boss.
January 03, 2019
[Mr. Former Employer Xxxxxxx]
124 Any Street
Swampscott, MA 01907
Governor Charles Baker
123 Fancy Address
Swampscott, MA 01904
Dear Former Employer:
This is one of the hardest letters I’ve probably ever written in my entire life but I feel as if I have no other avenues to explore or anywhere else to turn to try and find some help. I’m literally at a complete loss.
I have spoken to you since I was laid off from your employment in November of 2015 and I have explained the difficulties I am having since losing my position of nearly 16-years with you. I’ve pounded the pavement, I’ve had first and second interviews within the district courts and have lost each job to someone younger or someone who is connected to someone who is already an employee within the system. I exhausted unemployment benefits long ago and as time marched on without me working, my mental and physical health deteriorated even more. You might remember I struggled mightily with my health concerns working for you and that is no secret. I went without any type of health insurance throughout my entire life. Only obtaining health insurance through you when Rob came to work in the office and I negotiated health insurance as a pay raise for also working for him. Yes, I am partly responsible for my own deteriorating health, but not having health insurance throughout my life due to not being able to afford coverage and keep a roof over my head, one had to give and my health was what gave.
Randy, I have been working my entire life; since the age of 11-years-old. I was working, officially at the age of 13-years-old during summers through the CETA program in Lynn. As you may also remember, I have literally been supporting myself and living on my own since the age of 15-years-old. On the streets of Lynn at the age of 15-years-old, I had grown tired of suffering the physical, mental and emotional abuse of my parents and I fought back! I was tossed out on my ass and scared to death to contact anyone within the court system because of who my parents were and also fearful that I’d enter foster care and be abused even more. I chose at that age to become self-sufficient. I worked in the middle of downtown Lynn at the then Hess Gas Station. My home was a crappy room on Washington Street in a rooming house which is now where the Lynn Police Department is located. I cannot tell you how terrifying it was being a young girl working the 11 pm – 7 am shift in the middle of downtown Lynn. I’ve seen things that no one should see happen, I’ve had things done to me that no child should ever have to suffer. But? I did. I never once asked for any type of assistance nor help. I did all I could to keep that room as a safe place to rest at night. I worked and worked and worked and I supported myself and I never succumbed to my background or the criminal activities of both of my parents and really, most of my family. I never asked for anything nor did I ever take anything that I didn’t work for. PTSD wasn’t something well known, trauma after trauma after trauma throughout my entire life has left me a prisoner now of my own uncontrolled emotions. Some of this you began to see the last couple of years of my employment with you. Of all the trauma I’ve gone through in my life (rape at age 5; constant physical abuse and emotional abuse from the day I was born until I fought back at 15 and was then thrown out to fend for myself; raped again at 13-years-old; witnessing a boy I went to school with jump from the Hotel Osmond as I worked; watching another man get his throat slit in front of the gas station one early morning I was working; going through Hurricane Andrew in Country Walk, Florida when the home we were in literally blew apart around us; seeing that horrific motor vehicle accident unfold in front of me and Brian on that Virginia highway coming home from Thanksgiving – trying so hard to save that man from his vehicle before it caught fire and finding him dead; being outside the office that morning when the patient of Dr. Goffstein blew his head off inside of his car parked right there.) Yet, I somehow managed to keep myself together enough to keep a roof over my head. Then the emotional abuse that was heaped upon me throughout my relationship with Chris. Still? None of that has affected me quite the way losing my job and not being able to find gainful employment really became the literal straw that broke this camel’s back. I had never NOT worked and here I was without a job after finally realizing my lifelong dream of buying my own home. At the same time I had lost my job with you, you may well remember I was going through a lot with my health on top of all this. Now? I am unable to work and I continue to battle SSDI after contributing to this same system since the age of 12-years-old! I was denied SSDI at the judge’s hearing and I was denied largely in part because I have never once accepted nor taken pain medications. I have suffered from fibromyalgia since the age of 20-years-old, it’s a condition, I’ve learned, that seems to go hand-in-hand with my fertility issue: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. My question to Judge Sean Teehan then and now is and remains:
1. How am I to take pain medications that affect your brain and thinking and work full time in a position that requires a clear brain while under the influence of powerful narcotics? And
2. Both of my parents and everyone in my immediate families on both sides did drugs and drank excessively from the time I can remember having conscious thought. I was scared to death my entire life that if I ever touched any type of drugs or even drank too much alcohol that I’d become an addict just like they all were. I was NOT going to allow myself that chance so I spent my entire life not doing either. I learned to live with the constant pain and I took so much over-the-counter pain relief medications I am now suffering the effects of that: stage four kidney failure.
I would think with the opioid crisis as it is that my refusal to ever touch them would have been something smart – evidently, my refusal said to Judge Teehan that I wasn’t in pain. Now, not only am I suffering from all of those issues, but we have finally figured out where my autoimmune deficiency comes from. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, which is also noted on the enclosed.
I have had to exhaust every portion of my savings, my entire ‘retirement funds’ and I was forced to sell my home after suffering a heart attack in December of 2017. I didn’t make a lot of money from the sale of my home and I had incurred thousands of dollars in credit card debt trying to survive as I battle the Social Security Administration. I took your advice and I did obtain an attorney for my appeal. I appeared before At the time I was recovering from my heart attack I was also informed I am in Stage Four Kidney Failure. I am enclosing a copy of one of my patient summaries and you can verify this yourself so there is no mistaking that I am not telling the truth.
My attorney didn’t file my appeal to the judge’s decision until late this year, I believe it was October. Nearly a year after my hearing before Judge Teehan. It is to be noted that the doctors that SSDI had me see disabled me; my own doctor completed the disability forms and indicated I am disabled due to my myriad of physical and mental issues. I watched a young man receive benefits the same day I was denied. His benefits were granted as he claimed PTSD from being incarcerated!!!! I’ve walked the line, supported myself, overcome my shitty beginnings and never asked for a dime or any assistance and worked for decades placing into a system that I had hoped I would never have to use. But here I am. I have $2,000 left in the bank and after that? I am HOMELESS.
I am asking, no, begging you to please do one thing for me. Please look in your heart and remember the woman who worked nearly 16-years with you/for you, the same woman who also babysat your children in the past. I am asking that you please call or send a letter to Judge Teehan (I know you know him and I know he knows you as he said exactly that at my hearing and asked how you were doing). Please, Randy, I don’t know what else I can do. WHO IS GOING TO HIRE ME WITH MY MEDICAL CONDITIONS?? WHO IS GOING TO HIRE A SOON-TO-BE 51-year-old woman with as many health issues as I have?! No one … not one person because I’ve been trying in spite of my doctor’s warnings to find someone to do so. I even tried to get a job at Cumberland Farms, Home Depot & Walmart and they won’t hire me!
I’m lost and scared and I don’t want to be homeless at my age in my health. PLEASE just write a letter or make a call on my behalf to him and tell him I am not some scammer … that I really WISH I could work. These past few years have been absolutely hellish and I’ve lost everything I worked my entire life to get already. Do I have to become homeless too?
I am begging you. I don’t know if it will help, but it’s something, right? I have nowhere else to go. You also know my “family” is … yeah … I am literally alone in this world.
Thank you for your time, I appreciate you reading this and I sincerely hope that your world and everyone in it is well and happy.
Best,
[My Real Name Here]
He laughed. The only thing he said he would do? Talk to my existing attorney. Yup, that’s it. My existing attorney refuses to talk to him. So that was a big, fat, humiliating waste of time.
Kill me now, PLEASE? I’ve really had enough of this life.