Tags
benefits, breaking down, budget, emotions, family, government, red tape
I’m normally the kind of person that ‘gets on with things’, each challenge is taken and the best is made with what I’ve got.
My family look to the positive, what we CAN do and rejoice in it.
But I have just spent a very long day in officialdom, instead of knitting or crafting or making or growing! Tied in the language that is “Government speak” writing and re-writing till my eyes hurt.
Now while I know that these things are inevitable, something that must be done (like tax returns) it has brought the whole house down.
Spending a day focused on what Mr Issie can not do is depressing for him. Once a vibrant and very athletic kind of guy, the mix of what life can chuck at you has reduced him mentally, the meds increased him physically and it reduced him mentally. A spiral that has taken years to break and a new set of parameters gotten used to, is flying tattered in the wind like those prayer flags in Tibet
Such is life filling in a DLA form!
He and I don’t want to think on how long it takes to put a shoe on or the difficulties in more personal and very private ablution that is endured.
How long does it take to wash your hair? or open a can of beans? When do you feel pain walking out of the house. All completely relevant questions in the scheme of things. All totally necessary to get the care package he deserves and needs, for a lifetime of working and a set of illnesses he never asked for or planned.
Tomorrow will be worse, form sent off, we will be left in limbo till the New Year for all we know. While some unknown administrator makes a decision, giving us (or maybe not) a small recompense allocated in ‘Austere’ budgeting.
It won’t replace the games of football no longer played, the parts of daily live no longer holding dignity, the frustration of all the can’ts and unable’s.
Time will be spent, tomorrow, making our focus positive, the support he gives so I can knit, craft make and grow, the love and little silly things he leaves in the kids lunch boxes. Sometimes I wish that the unseen government workers that devise the forms could spend a week in our shoes. Watch the effort that goes into getting through a day or earning enough to survive, not go hungry or cold.
But like that’s gonna happen!
is-was cottage 
Sending my thoughts and sympathies your way. I have personal experience of the inhumanity that is the DLA system and it nearly brought me to my knees. Hang in there, xx
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Thank you for you thoughts. Last time we told the that things had got worse, they decided that we didn’t need it at all. So we took them to a tribunal and won! took 7 months with no money any no car, 7 miles from a supermarket.
So getting a review form 4 months early is nothing in comparisson
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