How full is that glass?

(2 other new entries that way<<<)

Half-empty or half-full?

I put off opening that letter – avoiding disappointment, but I finally did knife it open.

"That" letter is from the state Disability Determination Services. I have received one at least three times now. This one, like the others, says that Social Security has forwarded my application for Disability and they will look at it and "determine" whether I am indeed disabled.

I AM disabled, because of a car crash in 1998. In addition to breaking ribs, collapsing lungs and other internal damage and breaking my left leg, I hit my head so hard (Traumatic Brain Injury. TBI} that I was in a coma for ten days and kept comatose for over a month. I was in three hospitals for 59 days and stayed in an Adult Foster Care Home for another nine months. The insurance ran out six months after I crashed the car and there has been no on-going brain injury treatment.

That wreck cost me everything and left me in debt (which mostly got cancelled because I had NOTHING and was lucky to be alive) and I have never recovered, in 15 years, financially. For about half those fifteen years, I couldn’t work, and I have been fired or let go from 5 jobs in that time.  Every job I’ve had, in other words.

I fully expect Disability Determination to say Fuck You again. My name is on some list somewhere that says "Fuck over NWC as often as you can".

DDS wrote that they’ll consider it and get back to me, so it isn’t a flat out "no", yet. This is the third time I have applied. The first time, I got a year’s worth of disability, less than $6,000, with no on-going payments, after being denied over and over and finally getting a hearing. The second time went all the way to the Appeals Court, where it was shot down out of hand. That took two or three years. Social Security’s objective is to make you give up or die waiting.  I’m not dead, but I gave up in 06 or 07 and said nasty stuff about all concerned, and…gave up.

After losing three jobs to the TBI effects (I won’t go into them here, but I’m not all that stable and can be violent) I reapplied last summer. OF COURSE it got shot down, and I applied for "reconsideration" in January.

I already live in "the poor house" – Public Housing, and don’t have very far at all to go to be homeless. The Unemployment from the last job I had was paying 250 a week, until last April, when it got cut to 89 dollars a week. I have been struggling since then (and was before too, but I kept my head above water). My former wife has been sending me money from Japan – she is Japanese – but I hate being a leech and have been struggling mentally. I finally got some mental health help and am on anti-depressants and other meds to "sharpen" me up, and they help to keep me from jumping off my 8th floor balcony, but that depression is just waiting to pounce on me again and drag me down into the dark.

So, how full is that glass today? Half-empty or half-full?

*****