Lerner Rowe and FML

6.19

Today was a BIG day for me; a lawyer's office was going to call me and help me re-apply for SSDI or SSI. AGAIN. This office was different. It was motivated to really help me! Unfortunately about thirty minutes ago they called, and about fifteen minutes ago I ended the call intears, because it was completely pointless.

A friend asked me what the name 'Neptune Fallen' was from, or if it meant something, once. It is not from anything in particular, but it does mean something to me. Neptune is also known as Pluto, and was seen as the god of the underworld, or even heaven in ancient times. Also sometimes Neptune was viewed as the god of the waters, seas, and rivers. Neptune fallen is literally a depiction of a fallen god, of the heavens and or the seas. Especially today.

-Cops arrive and interrupt me writing.-

Then forty five minutes after they called the cops leave... Lovely. Where was I? Um, yes, the person at the lawyer's office who is helping me is a fucking idiot... I was beginning to feel better, but now I want to throw something hard against concrete and watch it break...

"Your claim is still active, he wants you to know that," the cop told me. No, not the claim from before, but the claim that I haven't even begun... The claim that is upsetting me. The claim that I haven't even gotten a chance to explain in my blog why it is upsetting me, because cops literally burst into my home and interrupted me! Ugh! I suppose he is a kind guy, and means very well, but his intelligence is something that is really lacking from the little I've dealt with him. Reminding me of the woman from Fry's and the cop Jams dealt with.

So I hear a firm knock at the door, and I assume that it is probably someone of the family I rent from, asking something from me, or notifying me of something... and I open the door to, a buncha cops. The cherry on top is that Maria Sr. the crazy Spanish speaking-only grandma is here, along with the army uncle who is nearly stalkerish in how much he follows people online, including me. Hope he likes this post, he isn't bad looking tbh, and is actually pretty cool and fun to hang out with.

I nearly run outside to the front yard, out of earshot of everyone inside, so we can talk there. Even if I had a giant room that could fit dozens inside, with how thin our walls are, I would choose the same spot. Immediately, but delicately, I am asked how am I doing, and I totally bomb it.

"I'm not doing too well," I blurted out, sitting on the grass, picking at some shoots. "I uh, well my back is hurting, I tweaked it trying to rush out here... But I am feeling better emotionally than I was. I had called a crisis line."

"Alright," the cop replied, I assume happy I admitted that I'd called a suicide help line. I wasn't going to try to pretend that I was totally happy for the last few hours. "Did you tell anyone in the last few hours that you would hurt yourself?"

"Uhhh... yeah on the crisis line, I had pills in my hand, and I was wanting to take them," I answered frankly, glancing nervously up a couple times. "After several minutes I was feeling better and didn't feel like that anymore."

The cop looked almost as if a fish had crawled out of a fish bowl and run away or something. I guess he wasn't used to people just admitting things so plainly. So he asked me more questions like about me hurting myself in the past.

"I used to, a long time ago. You can see scars on my arms, but it's been well over a year since I've actually done it. I might have urges, but I've not actually hurt myself in a long time." I explained.

"Yeah... I can see some of the scars," he glanced at my arms and gestured with a finger at the pale slices intermixed with the slightly darker skin. "When was the last time you did that?"

I scoffed slightly nearly a laugh, "Pff.... I don't even remember it's been so long," I shook my head. "Before I moved here, and I've been here a year."

"Okay," he nodded. I'd been very frank, he seemed to believe me so far, or at least seem to think I was being mostly truthful. My scars obviously are not from days ago, but do look like they could be weeks old I will admit. "Have you ever been to a mental health facility?"

"Like a clinic... or?"

"Like admitted. Have you been to Hillmont?" he asks this. I shudder and the cops notice my reaction. I laugh loudly.

"Yeah, I've been to Hillmont," I answer with a grin, "One of the last times I was there I needed to get my gallbladder out, they were giving me liquid antacid, as soon as I was released I had to rush to Santa Paula for emergency surgery. Hellmont just let it fester inside me. No offense to them, but that wasn't the first time they've injured my physical health. They make me worse than I feel, hehehe." I chuckle and shake my head.

"What about ....?" They mention a place I'd never been.

"Nope, I've never been there... and I was feeling depressed earlier, and I have been feeling down off and on recently. My psychiatrist lowered my dose of one of my meds, I wouldn't be against being admitted to a facility if it weren't Hillmont." I replied.

Again the cops stared at me as if I'd grown a third eyeball or something. I was just being so mellow.

"Heh I bet I could also get a shower, too!" I added with a grin.

"You can't get one here?" the younger male who's been silent asks.

"Uh.... nope," I answer, my voice still friendly, with a smile.

"Why not?" the main officer asks me, his eyes wide.

"I waste water apparently. I'm not supposed to take showers, cause I fall, and I can't take baths cause of our drains, and then I also waste water, but everyone else can bathe...." I explain with a sardonic smile. The officer finally is beginning to get a read on me, that perhaps though I seem mellow that there is more behind it.

"You need to find another place to live." he tells me. "But before that, can I see your cell phone?"

"Sure, no problem... and I've been looking for one."

I go and get my cell phone, while one of the cops watch me, and they are shocked by my messy room. The biggest contention of me living where I do. Before the cops left one of them jokingly laughed to me, "Yeah, and you should probably clean your room," with a kind smile. My landlords claim fire department people and police will fine or issue other things if they see it, but so far cops, paramedics, police chiefs, and more have seen my room in worse states than it currently is messy and are totally chill with it and only have parentaly suggested I should clean it up, with a smile and often a chuckle.

Anyways

The main cop has my cell phone and asks me, "Did you tell anyone that you might kill yourself today?"

"When I was online with the crisis hotline, yeah, I was talking about it. I did send a text insinuating it to my best friend, but other than that no..." I answered and then kind of fell onto my side.

The young man cop immediately reached his hands out towards me in worry, "Are you okay? Do you need a chair?"

"Oh no, I'm fine, well not fine... I hurt, but lying on my left side like this is best. Thank you, though." I reply with a smile. The main cop is looking through my phone and the other cops who are closer to my age are looking at me weird, as if how could I just hand my phone over to a cop? I didn't fight, try to erase things, try to explain things?! Nope, just gave him my phone. He can lol over funny texts between me and Jams.

Finally he asks me, "What did you say to... the crisis team... and to Dustin from the lawyer's?" I realize that he's gone through my texts and call history, and likely might have checked my skype and facebook and internet, too, in just that three minutes. I don't use them much.

"Dustin I admitted that the SSI application was pointless, everything in my life was pointless, I wanted to just give it up, terminate anything that had begun, there was no reason to keep it going. If I begin to receive assistance I will receive a gross amount less for rent and food than I currently get... and I began to cry uncontrollably and I was trying to get off the phone and just end the process of applying again... with the Crisis, I admitted I had a buncha pills I wanted to take, and got talked out of it, by realizing there are programs to help people who have nothing...." Finally the cop said he was going to make a few calls on it, and he walks away.

The younger girl cop asks me something I could tell she was dying to ask, "Do you always dye your hair like that?"

I chuckle, "Um, kind of... It was purple since October, but then I was trying to dye the purple out, and I got this pink." We all laugh at this explanation and then the younger man mentions the bright pink is reminiscent of the 80's, and I recall that I like it a lot because it is similar to Cadance from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

"Can I ask how you hurt your back?" the girl cop asks, her voice polite, but nervous.

"Yeah," I reply. "Back in December 2010 I was in a car accident and got 3 herniations, but then in 2012, this doctor Ashokan herniated on disc from 5mm to a centimeter. That made it so I couldn't walk at all for a long time."

"Oh wow..." she said, her eyes sympathetic.

"Yeah, I deal," I tried to smile encouragingly. This is my life, I can't live for myself. I have to pretend to be okay for other people. Finally the cop with my phone returns with my phone and tells me...

"Yeah Dustin from the lawyer's office wants you to know that your claim is far from being denied, it's still waiting to be approved even," at first my heart jumped before I realized.

"Wait.. you mean the claim, from today?" I ask, confirming the idiocy of trying to comfort me with the cold hard fact that pushed me into the warm comforting arms of the idea of unlife.

"Yes, the one from today," the cop replied. "It might not be a lot of money, but you should look at it like a happy accident."

I have to facepalm, but I don't. "The thing that upset me was that as soon as I get SSI, I won't get food stamps, because it is a California law... and the person helping me with rent will stop that aid, so together my total amount for food and rent will be a fraction of what it is now.... But I have program info to help now so I'll be okay somehow." I lie through my teeth at the end... yet the cold realization dawns on the cop. The person at that office duped him. The girl in the grass who is afraid of her landlords, SSI is going to possibly make it so she can't get food to eat, it might mean death from another mean that isn't suicide, which is why suicide is so tantalizing.

"Well, you seem to be pretty stable. Um, if we took you anywhere it'd be Hillmont, but..." the cop trailed off.

"That'd be worse, thanks for understanding," I finish for him.

"So you won't hurt yourself?" he clarifies.

"No, not on purpose." I answer, "I do hurt my back all the time just trying to walk around though, but it's all accidentally." to which I get the sad smile I was trying to get, while I chuckle, adjusting my pose to ease my back pain.

"Well if you need anything call us."

"Will do, thank you~!" and with that the cops leave.

--
6.20

Oh before they left, they did ask me what I was doing when they arrived, and I explained that I was literally in the middle of blogging, and they asked what about, and what I generally blog about. I told them that I blog about being disabled, and I was writing out my feelings about the idiot at the office I had dealt with.

What I failed to get into real details thus far was what Dustin from the office said to me that crawled under my skin.

The whole reason I had agreed to make a phone appointment with this office to discuss SSI or SSDI again, was because, it was mentioned that I might actually be able to get an amount that would be survivable on. When Dustin spoke with me, though, this became very apparent, not to be so. Dustin was very spoken that I was too old to have any sort of disability insurance.

“You are too old to have any disability insurance,” Dustin told me, as if I was some sort of idiot. His tone of voice was annoyed, like everyone should already know the information he divulged. “You never worked long enough to pay into it. You chose to stop working too early.”

“I’m sorry, I chose?” I repeated to him, a bit stunned. Was he referring the date of the last day of work?! The day that my best friend had to help carry me out of the store because I couldn’t walk unaided?!!

“You also didn’t choose to work full time.” He continued. “Because of your age, you have to have worked full time for five years… and you chose not to.” Dustin said this like a basic statement of facts. Twisting my horrible accident and torturous turn of my life and suffering into some sort of sweet fun flirtatious early life experimentation! Every time I heard him say “choose” or “chose” I felt like a knife was digging deeper into that injury already in the base of my spine.

“I never chose to not work full time,” I corrected him, my tone as polite as I could manage. “I had to work part time due to my physical limitations, as noted by doctors.” I explained clearly.

“Well, because you chose not to work for so long, and not to pay,” he continued to repeat as if he hadn’t heard me, nor read my case file that I have 5 herniated discs!! My spine doesn’t work!!!! What the fuck is wrong with this man?! “You’ll only be qualified for like SSI.”

Which would mean, basically no money, and under 300 a month. Food stamps would be cut off. The person aiding my rent would stop, also. And I would lose my housing, and my food in one swift active swing. I declared I wanted nothing of it, I wanted to give it all up, and he began to call me greedy that of course I was not entitled to a lot of money like ads on tv suggested… and that was never what I wanted. I want money to survive by. Pay rent, purchase food, medication.

This asshole is telling me that I have chosen to voluntarily, able-bodily-not-worked for most of my adult life, decided all of a sudden I am now disabled and want a lot of money and am now complaining that I can’t get a lot, and supposedly I guess all those injuries and issues pre 2014 do not exist, but he can begin to get me 200 dollars a month starting 2015, and that WILL be enough to live by, even in southern California. BECAUSE DUSTIN says so… Even if there are no places that cheap, nor places where I can find enough food for free even if I can find safe housing.

Thank you Dustin, even if I go to the social security office myself, you’ve made me look like an idiot.

We Know You Are...

So a while ago I made friends with an awesome girl, and we've clicked very well. She has been gracious enough and even happy to help me out, by driving me to the pharmacy, to medical appointments and other things. The time spent we may be trying to figure out how to get there and laughing our asses off in the car as we talk about things, but still, I greatly appreciate it. One thing that we see a lot of though, are homeless, or supposedly homeless people, with signs asking for money, help, or literally "anything" that would help them.

For those not privy to some of the issues facing homelessness in the county of Ventura, just north of Los Angeles county, there are many more people spread out across the county instead of concentrated in places such as the famous Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. Some of the people are actually not even homeless, many have homes, even own properties, and come and beg for money as a profession in affluent areas of the county. The reason why people are spread across the county and when you hand money to someone you have no idea if it is a con person, someone who needs food, or will buy liquor or drugs is because Ventura has barely any programs in place to aid homeless people, unlike Los Angeles county.

One thing that many might not know about me, is that I was legally homeless for a period, about a year ago. I was going to be on the streets. I didn't live in L.A. county, I lived 10min away from it. The thing separating me from being able to get a bed? The season that I became homeless and the fact that I was mostly wheelchair bound instead of able-bodied. If I had been in L.A. county, I would have been able to have found help. If I wouldn't have been physically limited, the reason I am out of work, I would have found help. If it had been colder outside, I might have found help.

When I explained to my friend my experiences in detail, about how I was set to sleep in a park for the first time. My preparedness with a knife in hand, and how much gratitude I feel, and just how much I truly owe to the family who is currently helping me out right now, she was very taken aback. I was nearly crying myself. If I didn't have Gigi helping me out of altruistic feelings, I might have died on the streets from exposure, sickness, or infection from a wound or other complication from my condition. When you cannot feel your legs well, you don't always notice injuries.

Once again I am dealing with a lawyer about SSI, or hopefully SSDI, but this time it is more from their office feeling sorry for my situation than they see me as a hopeful source of money, so I hope that I can perhaps begin to stand better on my own, so to speak... But, my friend even she needs help, still, because the cost of living here is too much to handle on her own at the moment.

I don't really have family as which to speak of. They are all dead, or act as if they are to me. So sometimes I admit I do feel jealousy towards my friends who have family, even the families who don't offer much aid, but still offer love.

But, on the streets when you drive by a person begging for money, I often feel a kinship because I've known often not having enough to eat. Not knowing if I would have a place to sleep. Being scared of my safety. I don't really have money to offer, though, so if I can I will offer food... And it is amusing and alarming just how high a percentage are offended by this. About half.

Now if you are unbathed, or appear to be, have a sign asking for money, or actually anything, and someone offers to buy you food, after saying, "I can't give you money, but I can give you food. Would you like something to eat?" Why would you be offended? Maybe about one fourth of the time they politely decline, but then that last quarter, I see the shine of hope in their eyes and they will gratefully usually take whatever food I have to offer. I have food stamps, or sometimes I may have left overs. Or before when I have had money on a debit card, I have willingly purchased food with it for these people, and then returned. I am not one to normally carry cash... But it makes me sad that they'd be so happy at the idea of food.

Yet I know so well, and understand, because I've been there. I have gone days without eating before. It is not the most fun thing to do in the world, when it isn't a willing act. I've done it out of crazy desperation to control weight, sure, but when my thyroid was in control, I never had to worry about eating too much, especially because for part of that time I was in a situation that food was very scarce. I might have a food portion appropriate for a small child, and then go the weekend without, having to wait until Monday for more, at school.

Why reminisce on such things? Well, homelessness is something I fear I may be facing again. I found out this morning, quite rudely I might add, that the $25,000 in plumbing work that was done, was pretty much done for no reason. At least that was what was told to me in other words. Part of my lease was that I needed to take baths... and baths are no longer allowed. Which leaves me unable to safely bathe.

I've done sponge bathing before, and it's no picnic, but it is safer than me taking a shower and falling, again.

The mother I live with, when I asked her if I could bathe again, not only said in a rude way, "Well... you can try... but I don't know..." As if everyone else in the house, it is okay if they bathe, but not me, she went on to say, "Baths are also a huge waste of water, too, so you shouldn't take them."

1. Electricity has been shut off at least 7 times since I moved in. That is a BASIC UTILITY!

2. I purposely don't go and take showers because I need LONG baths, because it takes me a while due to my injuries... Baths actually save me water.

3. I'd be willing to skip days to take a bath every few days, than a shower every day... 

4. Also there was no mention of need to save water especially with how the lawn is watered all the time. If seems as if I'm the only one who cares about the environment, but I get chastised about water?!

5. Again baths were stipulated as a needed thing before I moved in. I unfortunately realize these people want me out... shit.

They want me to not bathe, they want me to be in pain, they don't want me sitting on the furniture as if I were some animal who might tear it up if I smell another creature, and they don't want me to prepare my food, nor eat my food anywhere but the kitchen any longer, despite the severe pain it might cause me.... which has lead me to unwillingly begin to fast.

I finally began to calm down about my dieting, because I noticed in the mirror that my stomach was smaller, and my collar bones were more prominent. Now I realize it might have to do with the fact that not only do I face the same difficulties with pain preparing food, I have extra pain with trying to consume the food in a chair. Wooden dining chairs force a posture that puts the most strain and stress on the lower back than standing or walking would cause. I will choose hunger more than that.

I've been accused of causing roaches to infest the kitchen, which I find disgusting, but I know why it's been caused. Something has begun that I didn't used to see, but I've seen at another place I lived. More and more, and for longer periods of time, food is being left out on the stove for days at a time. It is sickening enough, but then it is also reheated and consumed. Then I am blamed. As if my bookshelf against the wall of the kitchen, piled boxes, and bags and blankets would more entice roaches to come inside, ignore my room, and run into the kitchen. I still have yet to see more than an occasional spider in my bedroom.

Spiders are not cool..... ugh... yeah I am sorry I got bit by one once, got a terrible abscess, and so now unless it is something I know to be non-poisonous I will kill indiscriminately all spiders.

Sometimes I wonder if these people have somehow spoken to my father.

Biting My Tongue

Words have been bursting from me, but I have been trying to keep them all inside, desperately hoping that no one I know will judge me further than they have. I already have a low enough opinion of myself that having others just convince me that I am worth even less is driving me to a brink that is very hard for me to turn from.

I've been struggling with food, first of all. Part of it stems all the way back to when I lived with my father and step-mother and I was constantly berated for being lazy and eating too much. Is it an eating disorder if it is "technically" starvation because the amount of calories is so low, but the person is still overweight?

Probably 95% of people who read the above question will think, "Oh that's bullshit! That's impossible!" But, actually it is... if you have hypothyroidism... an underactive thyroid gland. Which was what was wrong with me when I was a pre-teen. I was under eating, and exercising for hours a day, but I couldn't lose weight, I only seemed to gain more. It was only at a doctor's visit that my father was commenting about how I was so fat and if there was advice for better exercises or diets that my step mother, yes the one who hated me most, actually interrupted him and pointed out I was very active and didn't eat much.

A blood test later and I was put on a very high dose of levothyroxine, the synthetic supplement for what your thyroid is supposed to secrete. I began to lose weight, I suddenly resumed growing in height, and I wasn't so depressed and tired and cold all the time, either. It was like a miracle had come to me. But unfortunately due to lazy medical care when I was 18 I put on 60 lbs in a year because I was taken off the medication though I still needed it, about the same dose I am currently on actually... and I have yet to lose the weight. I only recently got back onto the medication.

Now if anyone thinks it is like a placebo affect, you can talk to envious friends that I've been losing weight by not changing my diet what so ever. (Really, I am totally serious, I lost about 30 lbs without doing anything, and I was kind of like, "Haha, you lost weight from eating less, I lost it from just getting my hormones fixed!") Also you can't fake blood tests. 

But, even with that, I'm still fat. Because I'm not like a model, like the one I live with who is my age. I never see her eat a normal adult sized meal, ever. That is if I actually even see her eat. Her father blatantly pointed out that it is my own fault that I am fat because I don't exercise enough, or didn't before my accident, and I could do more, now, too. Hormone problems are BS... even though he is very obese, has type 2 diabetes, and sleep apnea. 

Still, it got to me. I've been counting calories to the point that now I am eating under 1000 a day. Averaging between 500-800 a day. When I started I was eating under 500. Maybe 150-400 at most. But I came to some sense. I am still extremely frustrated because nothing is happening. 1000 is below that starvation threshold! Why is nothing happening? I am exercising, too. 1200 is the least recommended. I mean, no one really cares enough to say anything to stop me, so it doesn't matter at all. If anything I could probably find ProAna's who might encourage me to dip back to below 500.

There was a guy I met, too. Someone I had known for years, who had seen pictures of me, and I had lost 30 lbs, and he thought I was too fat. It's really pushed me to try to lose weight. But because of my thyroid is it near impossible to do so, at least it has been ever since I was taken off my medicine when I turned 18. I am back on it, but the dose is so low I barely register the affects, other doctors who are not my primaries suggest a higher dose. I still suffer most of the classic symptoms associated with low thyroid hormone. I mean I am not gaining weight, but I feel tired and cold all the time, and that is super frustrating to deal with.

So where I live, I suppose it sounds weird when I say I live with a model and her dad. I live with a family. I rent a room. And when I first moved in things were nice, but everything has really gone to hell. The father lost his job, and got a new one, but it pays less, and today I heard that it is temporary. The mother lost her job, too. Over the weekend there was a $2500 plumbing bill that was wracked up, but the real problem was the main line draining out and it would be $25,000 to fix... But what was done should help for a month or two. But today everything went to hell.

It is kind of the family's own fault I have to say. We're supposed to be conserving water, we're in a severe drought, and this family just wastes water as if it means nothing. Karma's a bitch. The father usually water's the lawn every day. It doesn't even need watering every day, any idiot should know that, but yet he does it, despite the crisis we face, too! So, he used to throw an orange down the garbage disposal in the kitchen every month or so, and the main drain pipe got clogged. But this family does like tiny loads of laundry, tiny loads of dishes, super super super long showers, excessive watering, and the things that they have asked me NOT to do, I can only assume that they have at one time once done and it astounds me.

I've been being treated in a very unkind and different manner for a while now... very similarly to how I was treated by my father after he married my step-mother. It is mostly the mother, but the father has done it, too. Like the comment about my weight being too high, despite his own being out of control, I mean my BMI is overweight, his is obese, there are way more than just one example.

They claim that they are saying it to "all the girls", meaning myself and the other two daughters living here in their twenties, too. But, I sometimes doubt they've been told some of the things I have been told. About the plumbing I was told not to flush sanitary napkins or wipes of any kind, even if they said that they were flush-able, or large wads of tissue, and I immediately replied, "Of course, I generally try to treat private home toilets as if they could have a septic tank, just in case, you never know." But the father continued on, as if I had probably flushed several pads, tampons, and god-knows-what-else down the toilet before.

The mother also approached me about the new armchair in the living room that it was for the father only, like his personal chair, and for him to sit in, like only him. I was cool with that. I'm not cool that I have seen at some point every other person in the house and at least three other people who don't live here sit in the chair at some point with the mother or father present while they were in the chair and it was okay. So apparently it was meant, I cannot sit in the chair. That is totally fine, too, but I wish she hadn't been an evasive bitch about it. If they want to treat me like a dog that they want to stay off the furniture they should just say so.

At least my step mother had the balls to tell me that I was worth less than the dirt the graced the bottom of her shoes. The older daughter, whether or not she has an eating disorder, I truly don't know, she might eat while she's out, she actually doesn't seem to be home a lot, so I can't speculate what her secret is... but it really is just that, a secret. Yet the younger daughter is a conceited lying skank. 

Even though according to her step father I am very fat, therefor you know, unattractive, the younger daughter is super jealous of me. It has something to do with when she invites people over she often makes them wait hours while she gets ready to leave. I am also not exaggerating, she makes them wait from 2-3 hours sometimes. I have had my best friend complain when I made him wait 3 minutes. This is another thing that I have incurred the wrath of the mother from, that I am kind to the younger daughter's guests. We really need to get a peep hole so I know who not to answer the door to.

I'm pretty sure that the rent I am paying might be somewhat vital to the family at this juncture, but at the way I am being treated less and less like a person and more like some sort of beast or animal, I am desiring to just leave. I would feel terrible if it had negative consequences for them, but wouldn't it perhaps be just because they brought it upon themselves?

I am biting my tongue so hard at this point that I am choking on my blood. At some point I might drown on my own blood or bleed to death...