Well, I\’m back from Florida, wishing in some ways that I hadn\’t left. Damn, it\’s cold up here in the mid-Atlantic region, and the 80s on the water at Palm Beach was like heaven. Got to see the mini-sprog and finally meet her biological mom, who commented that the kid and I look like sisters (enter the \’awww\’ factor here). Hung out far too much on my uncle\’s boat, got windburned, hit the beach a bit, relaxed, ate way too much fresh fruit, and just generally had a wonderful time. If I didn\’t know how much I hate Florida in the non-winter seasons, I would have stayed.
Now I\’m back here in the cold, wrapped up like a brown rabbit with my Doctor Who scarf as an accent. So much for bare feet and running around in nothing but my swimming suit. Nope, no more playtime — gotta get back to work. I did manage to get ahold of some Effexor. Turns out both my GP/PCP and my psychiatrist are on vacation, so I managed to get the receptionist at my PCP\’s office to fax an authorization in lieu of the doctor. I\’m amazed it worked, as the PCP wasn\’t the original prescribing doctor, but fortunately it did because I was reaching the point of shaking in my boots and wanting to stab myself with kitchenware to give the stress an exit wound.
But there\’s good news, truly, buried somewhere under all the hiding and hibernating I have been doing. I met with the Housing Opportunities Commission today and now have my very own housing voucher. Yes, I am now officially a recipient of Section 8 welfare. Holy hell. Now I just have to find a place to use it.
Technically, I can take my voucher and \’port\’ it to anywhere in the United States that I want, as long as that place has a housing voucher program. But with that in mind, I also have to be able to have health care wherever I go, and that one is a bit of a problem. Not to mention that the SSI program is by state and not federal, even though it\’s a federal Social Security program, which makes no fucking sense.
I\’m getting real fed up. I feel like a prisoner of poverty, of disability, and of trying to play by the administration\’s rules; despite the insistence of analysts that it is only a myth that once on welfare it is more of a burden to come off than to stay on, I can\’t say that I have found that to be the case at all. As soon as I make a little headway toward independence, I\’d be penalized by the system. Should I manage to stand on my own two feet for once, all my benefits would then be ripped out from under me — including the healthcare which provides my prescription coverage, which would be what would be helping me to work. So by losing that (and I don\’t have the skills or education or stamina to work a job that would pay me the $60,000+ per year to cover my medical bills), I lose my ability to work…but then find that I no longer have my benefits to fall back on. Why try, if only to find a dirty, gritty boot up my ass when I fall back down?
But I\’m a glutton for punishment, I suppose. I don\’t like living hand to mouth, relying on the state, not having a reason to get up in the morning, not having much of a purpose at all, feeling like I\’m just rotting away… I worked up the courage to send my résumé off for a job for the first time in four years. Got turned down the next day, saying PRWatch had already chosen their final candidates. Gah. It was $40,000 to run a wiki about Congressional respresentatives — I could have done that. Where else can I find a job that pays moderately well to run a wiki? Sure, realistically the job required to be on-call seven days a week, including during vacation, and to always have internet access. It also demanded interacting with the press and a whole bunch of other high stress things that I probably couldn\’t have handled. But goddamn it. I\’m not dumb. My body may be a wreck my central nervous system shot to hell, and my emotional stability not reliable when my body starts feeling the pressures of life, but I am smart as a whip. THAT I know. So there\’s got to be something out there that I can do. Fer chrissakes. I\’m indignant at being indigent, but I\’m not ignorant; I just need a way out.
Ahem. Minus the anger, bitterness, and fear, I am still focusing on getting out of here. I\’m planning on meeting with a counselor at the HOC in Maryland next week to see what he (yes, the counselor is a he) suggests about my no rental history-, no work income-, claimed bankruptcy three years ago-past, and how that\’s going to effect my odds at getting an apartment. Then I\’m planning on meeting with a social worker at Bread for the City in DC to see what they recommend about getting out of the prison of the Maryland welfare system. Maryland seems content to just let stay on their dole and rot that way, not helping me with the rehabilitation, education, training or job skills that they had tempted me with when I first signed my independence over to them. I get the feeling that because DC is so poor, that their social services would be different — they\’d be eager to get me off them instead of milking the system. Get. Me. Off.
I\’ve been hitting the books hard, too. I\’m in my third week on this semester at school and doing well so far in the ever-boring and slightly-demeaning \’Technical Writing\’ course. My Pell grant pulled through and covered all but $80 in tuition and the $100 for the (used) text books. Still have a 3.0 GPA, pulling an A in the class currently so might be able to up that. Which is good, because I\’m studying for the SATs at the moment. I feel like a tool: I\’m 24 and am going to be sitting for a test with a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds. Competing with kids for college — and I never wanted to go to college. I can\’t say that I want to go to college anymore now than I did before, but now I want to get there and stay there. People ask me what I plan on studying and then what I plan on doing with that education, and my answer is to study any number of interdisciplanary studies and then stay in academia. Undergrad, masters, Phd, post doc… and there I\’m content to rot unless someone wants to make me a professor emeritus, as I have no desire to teach. But research in the academe is the only profession I can think of that will actually accomodate my gimptitude. Plus, I\’d actually get to do what I love: wank over obscure intelligentsia, lose myself in the books, and ignore the outside world.
I\’m at my grandfather\’s right now, with the Travel Channel on in the background. There\’s a piece on about Edinburgh Castle. I miss Jam. I miss poking around Edinburgh. Mini-sprog is due to go to Australia to visit her dad in \”late summer\” (mid-July, I think), which means I\’ll be flying her over there, hanging out for a month, then flying her home. Before that, though, that leaves half a summer free. If I start saving my pennies now, I might be able to come see you by then, Jam. Did you figure out where and when your holiday is going to be, yet?
