Monday, July 2, 2018

The Cheese Grates It: Poverty Kills


Believe it or not, people with psychiatric dysfunctions get angry and frustrated about situational stuff too. There is an actual person here behind the broken brain. I'm not just symptoms of my synapses. I may not be a genius, but I know when shit ain't right, and it hasn't been right for a long time.
People love to tell folks "Just" do this or "just" do that, and then it's on to blame the victim if the person can't "just" do what they suggested.
I've had bipolar disorder since I hit puberty, which was when I was nine years old. I can remember my feelings becoming really intense. I thought it happened to everybody. I remember hating what my body was becoming because unlike everyone said, I wasn't stupid. I knew the way guys were going to treat me just because I had visible breasts now, and I hated it so much.
I get angry with having to take medicine all the time, and I don't even have to take that much on the scale of things, but I have so much shit wrong with me. Most of it is chronic shit. Diabetes is serious, but mine is well-controlled. My family has cardiovascular problems out the wazoo. If I have a major stroke, I hope it kills me outright. I don't want to live for years with declining physical health and decreasing cognition the way my father did.
I feel like I'm being punished for my health problems, and it makes me furious. Nobody should be forced to live in poverty because they've lost their strength. I used to be very strong physically. I didn't know just how strong I was. I could carry cases of beer up three flights of stairs and only be minorly winded, rest for a moment, and go back for more. I was a beast!
I could work 16 hours caring for immobile and combative patients. 
Now I become fatigued and sometimes confused with minimal exertion.
It frustrates and upsets me greatly.
I was never able to work day jobs because of my screwed-up brain. I don't sleep well at night. I actually do like my delivery driver job well enough, but it isn't a stable income. Some nights its busy, other nights I'm making five bucks an hour. 
If it weren't for my son, I would quit taking all my medications including my insulin and be dead in a month. I'm not saying this to be extreme or to look for attention. I'm simply past the point where I can convince myself that "there's a better tomorrow around the corner." I don't think there is for me. I pretty much think the rest of my life is going to be more of the same. I'd like to enjoy life, but it's way too stressful. Some of us are not the "favorite children." I'm physically unattractive and not particularly charismatic. Nobody's going to come to my rescue.
I don't want people adulating me or fawning over me. Most of the time I kind of want to be left alone. I want to be treated with basic respect. I want a modest, comfortable place to live. I want to know I have enough food available. I want to be able to have a little enjoyment. I just want a chance.
Mental illness killed off a lot of my chances when I was younger. But it isn't mental illness that makes me consider suicide these days. It's circumstances. And if anyone thinks its okay for people to be wondering where their next meal is coming from or if they'll have a place to live or thinks that people who can no longer physically work hard jobs with long hours deserve to live in poverty, you need to check your shit.
I'm not an atheist. I believe there is a higher power. However, I'm a deist rather than a theist. I believe that higher power is a creator energy. I don't believe it (or they) are involved in the lives of us lowly hairless apes. We're kind of on our own. So, telling me to "trust in god" doesn't work. I tried that, and I was treated like crap by his followers because I had some questions and some ideas, and I liked hard rock and metal. Kind of put me off the whole "trust in god" bit when people were spreading rumors that I was a "devil worshiper", oddly enough.
If there is a deity who monitors our behavior, I believe I will be judged on my actions. I try to treat others with basic consideration. I'd like to do more, but right now there's nothing I really can do.
I don't believe that suicide is "a sin" and I wouldn't want anything to do with a deity who was so cruel that they condemned someone hurting enough to commit suicide to eternal torture. I don't think that suicide is "selfish" or "weak" or "cowardly." Suicide happens when a person is at the end of their rope and has no hope. Perhaps if people extended compassion instead of derision to their fellow human, including those fellow humans who aren't pretty or popular, some lives might be saved along the way.
That's my rant for today. I have a grain of salt for you to take it with.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~




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