This isn’t really what I’d call a happy posting. If you don’t want to get sprayed with bucketsful of angst go somewhere else. It’s not a bitch posting, either though. What I’m announcing is really a good thing for me. But it’s far from being an unmixed blessing.
To offer some background for people who may not know much of the history I’ve put up on the Dope about myself, I am a chronic depression sufferer. I’ve had two major meltdowns (No one was endangered, just couldn’t work anymore, barely fed myself, didn’t shower - classic depressive fugue symptoms.) and have been unemployed for several years, now. I’ve been unable to find work since then, to the extent of I don’t even get call back from McDonald’s.
(I suspect that the reason for that is the hiatus in my employment history, and the fact that the reason for leaving the jobs I list as simply, “medical.” I also suspect I have a strong case for an ADA suit, but I can’t bring myself to pursue one, because at the end of the day, while I think I’d win such a suit, I’d get two thirds of a moderate settlement, and be given a McJob. Somehow that doesn’t seem an attractive recompense for the humiliation and hassle of a lawsuit.)
For the past several years I’ve been getting my medical treatment through the VA, because of my status as an honorably discharged veteran. I really can’t say enough good about my local VA. The doctors, and admin that I’ve dealt with have all been supportive, and very humane. I know of the stories we’ve been seeing for returning vets from the Iraq mess, and am very sorry that my experience isn’t what they’ve been seeing.
This past winter it was suggested to me that the VA offers a pension for vets who have become medically disabled, even if they’re not suffering from a service-related condition. After some hassles I got an application in for this, and have been waiting to hear back from the VA ever since.
To add to the irony, and angst, the final psych evaluation was done on my birthday this year. It’s hard to feel good about turning another year older when you’re telling a complete stranger that you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to get another job. It’s nothing that I haven’t thought, or said, before, but somehow the timing was particularly poignant. It’s been a major reason that I’ve been feeling more down than usual these past several months, I think.
The reason I’m posting, now, is that, well, I’ve heard back. I’ve been approved for the VA’s non-service disability pension, and will be getting enough money from the VA each month for me to meet my modest needs. It’s not enough to get me above the poverty line, of course, but I didn’t expect more. And it will prove to be a huge boon to me and my family, who’ve been helping me out as they could.
But it’s still a blow to have a board of strangers tell me that, yeah, it is hopeless. (Well, not hopeless, but “completely and permanently disabled.”) I’m glad and grateful for the pension and the money.
But I’m also feeling a lot of blah now, too.
While I was growing up my father had what is now considered the first collection of New Yorker cartoons. I recall seeing one in that book that feels particularly apropos today. It was a play in three or four panels. The first panel had an older couple walking out to their mailbox, both looking healthy and happy to be alive. The man had a cane, but was twirling it like a swagger stick, and the woman was walking around inspecting the plants along the path. The second panel showed them getting their mail. The third panel had the husband announcing: “Look! Our first Social Security payment!” Then in the fourth panel the reaction hits, and he’s now using the cane to help support the weight of the world, and she’s leaning on him almost as heavily.
sigh
Like I said, mundane, pointless, and lots of angst. I just had to share somewhere.
