EVERYTHING SUCKS; a brief synopsis

Hey folks! It’s angry rant time!  Let me crack some jokes about how EVERYTHING SUCKS.

Ever feel like you’ve fallen through the cracks?  Like institutions are calling you a liar though you are telling the god’s honest truth? Does that feel good? NO? WELCOME TO ‘MERICA.

As I have stated, I am currently back in college for computer sciences.  This is not my passion.  This is not something I want to do.  This is not something that brings me joy.  I’m not going because I want to, I am going because I’m told that I am perfectly capable of doing so in order to work a job I am physically capable of doing, otherwise I am a lazy, leaching piece of shit that doesn’t even deserve a roof over my head or food on my table.

Let’s get this straight: I don’t want free shit.  I don’t want handouts.  I would love more than anything to be able to “earn” the things I want and need in my life. I JUST WANT TO SURVIVE.  Which is a pretty shitty goal to have in life, if all you want to do is get by day-to-day with shelter, food and water.

Here’s a catch 22.  I am mentally crippled by a number of documentable mental illnesses.  I have two slipped discs, sciatica and a bum knee as a result.  The things I am “qualified” to do (such as entry-level retail, food service, factory work/manual labor and … well that’s it without a degree) I AM UTTERLY INCAPABLE OF DOING.  Not “don’t want to.”  Not “too lazy.”  INCAPABLE.

I was denied not once, but FIVE TIMES disability, because as evidence mounted, 90% of it was not accounted for, for “bureaucratic” reasons.  “You know what you CAN do?” they said.  “You can get the training you need for a job you ARE capable of.” Therefore, denied.  Utterly and completely.

Okay.  Fair enough, I said.  I go back to college.  And now I’m being PENALIZED for it, because I’m not “seeking a job” “willfully” and “without good cause.”  DSS will not pay for rent or food, even though grants do not count against allowable income for public assistance programs. Didn’t you WANT me to go get a job?  You expect me to do so homeless and starving? Of every cent of the grants I’ve received, I’m getting a mere fraction (approximately 7.06%) of that money to actually live off of in my pocket.  Without public assistance, this must pay for rent, food and transportation.  (For the record, PA only pays for a barely livable, if that, situation as it is)

Let’s keep this in perspective.  With a trifle $880 (projected! not actual!) leftover from tuition and books (including the $2,500 discount from being a resident of the college’s county), I am expected to have that cover four month’s rent, all of my food, my bus pass, toiletries, internet, utilities, laundry and prescription medications.  Please note that NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE LUXURIES.  All calculations accounted for, I am about $11,680 in the hole.  And that’s assuming I can spend on margin (which i cannot, which therefore means, I GO WITHOUT).

Oh? A student loan you say?  Sure.  Let me bet on the fact that I have less than a 1% chance of ACTUALLY FINDING A JOB IN THE CITY I LIVE IN (that I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT LEAVE until my child graduates) to pay that off at a devastatingly insane interest rate that  I will be crushed under for the rest of my life.

Get a car? With what credit?  I can’t even get my license back without $5,000 down due to fees alone.

Let’s throw my glaring handicaps in the mix, including a full mental breakdown three weeks in and plummeting grades as a result.  With all the help the college offers for students “with disabilities,” I AM STILL UTTERLY FAILING.

“We can’t  give you disability because you might recover someday.” Does the fact that I have made leaps and bounds of progress and I am STILL UNDER THE BAR BY A DRAMATIC MARGIN mean anything to you?

Let’s talk pain.  I had a substance abuse history at one point in my life.  I have been clean for four years (off of opiates, booze, DXM and anything that might throw my life into disarray.  I’m no saint when it comes to weed, but what choice do I have?  More on that in a minute).  Bless my Higher Power.  When I cracked my L2 (read it: a piece of my spine), I was on opiates for four months last year to handle that pain, and did not abuse the prescription once. NOT ONCE.  Recently, because my pain was still off the charts, an MRI revealed not one, but TWO slipped discs.  These DOCUMENTABLE problems in my spine that are excruciating beyond measure mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  I am an addict, therefore I am deliberately trolling for narcotics and DESERVE to be in agonizing pain.  Probably for the rest of my life.  Despite the fact that a low dose narcotic (not even Vicodin 5mg … codeine 4s would work fine.  I don’t not want to feel the pain, I just want to be able to function with it!) would EASILY make me capable of working a job that DOESN’T require thousands of dollars worth of grants, I’m a terrible, manipulative and scumbag drug monger for even asking.

But syn!  You smoke weed!

What fucking choice do I have?!  I’m an addict!  Screw your paralyzing anxiety AND your agony!  No benzos or narcotics for you!  SHAME ON YOU FOR EVEN THINKING THAT WOULD HELP!  I guess marijuana is better for you than those god-awful chemicals, but not nearly as effective (unless I want to be a useless lump that is).  Normal people get to drink their problems away on the weekends.  What do I get?  Hours, even DAYS of lying in bed, too scared to check the mail and in too much pain to even do laundry.  So fucking sorry if I need a chemical to make me functional, LIKE ALMOST EVERY OTHER DYSFUNCTIONAL HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET.

There is NOTHING more aggravating on this earth than the ILLUSION of choice.  You know, when you “have a choice” (technically you ALWAYS do) but the ends of any choice you make is garbage, pure garbage.  Sure I could apply for disability again … if I want to be homeless for the year it takes to go through (and what are the chances of that actually happening this time?!)!  Sure I could quit school … if I want to be cut off from all aid because I’m “not pursuing vocational programs.”  Sure I could go to a different doctor… if I hadn’t been blacklisted for even ASKING for something for pain after a trip in rehab over two years ago!  Sure I could check back into the psych ward … if I wanted to flunk out of school and have my parental rights attacked again!

So you see, it’s bullshit all around, and nothing says POWERLESS like being called a liar when you are not,  being told you CAN do something when you cannot (and then  being accused of being a lazy welfare queen when you literally can’t) and getting reamed in the ass by the splintered bat called “bureaucracy.”  Systemic anal may do it for some folks, but I like my quality of life in the “survival” zone.

Is that so much to ask?

/drops mic

/syn out

featured image by Sa-tou on Deviantart

The Best of a Shitty World

Man, I was not expecting to get the blog going with a current event like Orlando hanging over everyone’s head.  It always breaks my heart to hear about tragedies like this, and then having the media twist it around to a political problem.  In a way, it is, but there seem to be a lot of reports being used to advance an agenda, and that is just sick.

It’s times like these that makes me wonder what I can do personally to help make the world a better place.  As a writer, making a statement veiled in my work (Orwell is one of my favorite authors that achieved this) is what makes a tale timeless.  And sometimes it’s like a secret code, encrypted with character and plot.  The ones I want to hear me will see, the ones who resonate the strongest with the message will know.  I’m not good at marching in protests, nor am I good at convincing politicians to fix a broken system.  But I am good at writing, and what I can do is convey a message that I hope inspires people.  What I really want someone to do after reading something of mine is to introspect.  That was a complicated choice that character made, you think.  Would I have done the same in his situation?

What guides our morals as humans is how we interact with each other.  For better or worse, our interactions have consequences, and those consequences are either deemed good or bad by others, depending on how much of the situation they know.  As more variables are presented, morality becomes grayer and grayer.  Until at some point down the line, the action is justified by someone.  My job as a writer is to weave a character’s personality so tight that I would know what any of them would do in any given situation, and when that gray area justifies something.  Characters should never be purely black and white, just like people aren’t.  Some people are sick, and the justification for something heinous comes early.  Some people are greedy, which also brings the threshold forward.  Any number of moral or immoral traits move that line around in the fog of justification.

The governments in almost all of my fantasy work are often corrupt on some level.  The system works, but it is deeply flawed in some way.  Writers often write what they know best, and this is what I have come to know about the Powers That Be in my country.  I am more and more ashamed to be an American and becoming ashamed of being a human being lately.  If an alien landed right in front of me and asked me to take him to my leader, the first words out of my mouth would be, “Oh, uh… I’m not with them.”

I love figuring people out.  It makes creating tangible characters fun.  When I see tragedies on the news like this, my first thought is, “What brought them to the point where they thought what they were doing was right?” When I ask those kind of questions about people, my characters become richer as a result.  So though there is no doubt in my mind that the events over this weekend were wrong, terrible and a disgrace to my race and country, I can take away a sense of what true villainry is.

Maybe I could pass on a more positive way of dealing with that kind of villain.

featured art by amanda1442069 on Deviantart