On ESA and PIP forms

This will be a short post but I think a surprisingly necessary one.

I have a piece of advice for everyone filling in PIP and ESA forms:

If you have access to a computer YOU CAN TYPE ALL YOUR ANSWERS OUT, SAVE IT AND PRINT. The form makes it look like you have to handwrite your answers onto the space provided – which is not only difficult and painful for many of us, it also makes it difficult to retain records of what your answers were.

If at all possible, type (or have another person type) out your answers to the questions.
Put your name and National Insurance number on the top of each page.
Type “Question 1” next to the answer to question 1 and so on. Use subheadings, underlining and/or ALL CAPS to mark particularly important bits (I usually put “All references to pain are to pain levels experienced when I take all of my medications, not pain experienced if I do not take them” in all caps).
Number the pages.
Save the document and back it up (to a USB, email it to yourself, add it to a cloud backup service) then print a couple of copies when you finish it.

On the form itself, answer the tick box questions and write “See attached notes” in every write-in box.
Put the form, any photocopied evidence you are sending and the printed out answers into the envelope provided (or send it recorded delivery in the envelope of your choice). Once, I couldn’t get everything to fit in the provided envelope so I put everything in a larger envelope and taped the freepost envelope to the front of it. This worked.

Next time they send you the same form, save another copy of your answers (use “save as”and change the name to something like “ESA answers 2” or copy and paste the whole document to a new document and name it something different from the first). Look over your previous answers, add any new stuff that’s come up, take out or change anything that’s no longer relevant. Once you’re happy that it’s fully accurate and up to date, print out two copies, save a back up copy, write “see attached notes” on all of the form… You get the idea.

If you had to get another person to do any of these things for you: ADD THAT AT THE END OF YOUR ANSWERS. If you can’t write / write much / write legibly ADD THAT. Otherwise they’ll assume you can write hundreds of words and have only chosen not to.

It’s YOUR form. You don’t have to force yourself to handwrite it just because it’s a paper form. You don’t have to write inside the boxes or shorten or lengthen your answers to fit into them. You need to give the DWP assessor enough information to assess you properly and you need to do it in a way that causes minimum harm to you in the process.

I hope this helps.

Where’ve I been? Getting ATOS-ed, that’s where

I realise I’ve not written here in about a month, quite possibly the longest pause in my blogging since YetAnotherLefty came into being a little over two years ago. I (perhaps vainly) imagine that my readers have been asking themselves where I am and when I’m going to get round to writing something again and while I don’t really owe you guys anything, I feel an explanation is due.

Quite entirely simply, the explanation is “I got Atos-ed”. Again. And it was humiliating and triggering and awful and it harmed my mental and physical health. Again.

I want to try to go into that and expose what it’s like to claim PIP and/or ESA (the two kinds of social security / benefits payments offered to disabled people in the UK). Every person I’ve described the process to in real life has been horrified. Sometimes I wonder if people just don’t know or just don’t WANT to know how their friends, family, neighbours who are disabled are being treated. I know people don’t want to think that it could happen to them – when the various changes to disability benefits in the UK started, I was CONVINCED that they were not relevant to me or to anyone I knew. I was very, very wrong. The illnesses that cause me constant pain and fatigue had already begun. The disabilities I’d lived with from infancy should have got me DLA/PIP if anyone had thought to apply.

For both PIP (a benefit that most disabled people qualify for and that is for people who can work as well as people who can’t) and ESA (basically a replacement income for those too ill or disabled to *seek employment*) you first have to obtain and fill in a paper form. On that form, you will be presented with lists of tasks and the option to tick that you either can or cannot do those tasks. And then you’re expected to write in minute detail exactly WHY you can’t do the things you can’t do and how much help you need and why you need that help and exactly which symptoms of exactly which condition(s) prevent you from doing the thing. For EVERY. SINGLE. THING that you can’t do. There’s about thirty pages to the form, and four or more tasks on each page, many of which have subheadings.
It’s a lot of writing, especially if this is your first such form. Oh, and the space to write in is tiny and they don’t actually tell you that you need to detail the whys and hows of every last thing you can’t do without help.

And then they make you back everything up with letters from doctors and carers and social workers and anyone with a title regardless of whether or not they’ve ever seen you at home.

And then they usually still insist on a face to face assessment. Which amounts to meeting a stranger who’s been given a Cliff Notes (think literal bullet points) version of what you wrote on the form in the first place and then questions you in detail about all your conditions and all the things you can’t do and precisely WHY you can’t do them, give examples of times you couldn’t do this, what would happen if you didn’t have the help you have, but WHY does X condition mean you can’t do Y task? how come you can do P but not Q?… the form all over again but with another person asking the questions and not especially caring about being sensitive or kind (in my last PIP assessment, I think we spent a whole ten minutes talking about my bowel and bladder problems and at least 20 on “But WHHHY does severe anxiety prevent you from mixing with people and going to new places on your own?”).
And then based on a report about the face-to-face (including, no joke, comments on whether or not you “looked anxious” in the waiting room) your medical evidence and the damn form, a complete stranger who you have never met, who has never observed you in person, decides whether or not you’re disabled/ill enough to be given a small but often life changing sum of money.

And I think readers of this blog are probably vaguely familiar with all of the above. I needed to spell out the background because what upsets me most about this whole charade, what explains why I become hazy and distant and slightly more mentally ill immediately before and a short while after a face-to-face assessment or a frantic couple of weeks writing the damn forms (every three to six months I have to do one or the other as I get both PIP and ESA)… is the effect this has on my (and likely others’) sense of self, my identity.
The forms and the system reduce me to a list of “I can’t x without y help because of p,q,r symptoms of z condition”. I experience my life – and my self – as a series of events caused or explained by my inability to do things. My brain processes experiences as potential examples for the damn forms and assessments. I feel like a fraud if I decide to take the pain and the consequences of doing something I really really ought not to do. I feel guilty about spending money because at any moment a brown envelope and a few strangers could take all my money away. I worry about that one picture of me on Instagram where I appear to be standing unaided with a baby in each arm – I know the reality is that I’m seated on a stool and there are two people just out of shot ready and waiting to take one or both babies from me as soon as the photo is done – I still worry about what it looks like.
The logic of the form – that one should be able to work and if you aren’t you better have a detailed explanation of precisely why – permeates my brain. I over-explain why I can’t or won’t do things to friends and strangers who would happily have accepted “I can’t” as its own reason. My depression latches onto things that I can’t do that someone my age “should” be able to do. I feel ashamed and scared to admit that I am “on benefits” and likely will be for the rest of my life.
On my “good days”, my depression and anxiety still interject to make me question if I even “deserve” to get paid to not-work (because anything even remotely like full time work would seriously harm me) and if my more expensive or frivolous purchases are justified given I don’t “earn” my money. On my bad days, lying in bed, my brain idly writes new paragraphs for the damn forms.
The system for getting these payments leaves me constantly thinking about what I CAN’T do and why. That can’t be good for me but I can’t stop it. A few more years of this and I imagine it will become a permanent subroutine in my brain, figuring out what I can’t do, what help I need, why I need help, how seriously I’d be harmed without help.. a huge portion of my brain forever ruminating on something that doesn’t help *me* at all. When I could be thinking about my writing or learning or having fun or…

So that’s where I’ve been and where I’m at. The DWP are basically inside my head and critiquing my every action. And it hurts.

And yet… until the system is fixed, I still advise disabled friends to consider putting themselves through it. Because the money maybe a modest sum but it’s LIFE-CHANGING. It means I don’t have to worry about affording a meal in a cafe or a takeaway when I can’t figure out all the steps to making my own lunch. It means I can get a taxi if I need to. It means I can pay bus fare for a friend to accompany me to a scary new place. It means I can afford food that isn’t beans. It helps but making it happen hurts. Possibly permanently. It’s a bind and I respect the choices people make about whether or not applying for PIP, ESA or both will be “worth it” for them.

Benefits Update

A full 16 months after I applied for ESA, I’ve finally got an answer. I’ve been put in the Support Group which basically means that I don’t have to work or seek work because I am too ill and disabled to be reasonably expected to try to find work that I can feasibly do and employers willing to make the many, many adjustments that would be required to make that work accessible to me. After literal years* of financial insecurity due to disability and ill health (including times when I had no money of my own) I finally have something resembling security – money to replace the employment I cannot be reasonably expected to seek or find until and unless I get much less ill (unlikely to happen as my physical illness is chronic and incurable and my mental illnesses are chronic and not responding all that well to treatment) or society gets MUCH, MUCH less disablist and much, much more inclusive and accessible (more likely to happen but still years away). I view it as somewhat akin to compensation – money to live off in recognition that between my body and the society I live in paid job opportunities for me will be close to non-existent but I still deserve to live a good life.

So, what now?
I’ve bought quite a few things lately that I’ve not been able to afford for a very long time – a mobile phone that actually works, a winter coat, new shoes, a Blue Badge and a Disabled Person’s Railcard. It feels odd both to have these things and to know that I can buy such things without worrying about whether I can also afford to pay my rent. This security is unfamiliar to me, I find myself still acutely aware of when each payment is due to come in and when my rent and direct debits are due to go out.

As I don’t need to look for or get a job, I’ll have a lot of free time. I’ll definitely be blogging and I’ve got some great ideas for posts lined up. I’m trying to get back into reading regularly and I want to write more fiction. In fact, I have the slightly ambitious aim of writing the first draft of a novel this year (I’ve written novels before but not since my teens). I’m also looking for very, very part-time volunteer activities in Manchester feel free to contact me if you’ve got an opening you think I could fill 🙂

In the medium term, I’m on a few NHS waiting lists to hopefully get some treatment for my my mental illnesses. I don’t expect to be “cured” but there’s a lot of scope for improvements in managing my illnesses and maybe even reducing my symptoms. A man can hope, right? Learning how to make a phone call without breaking from fear and panic, for example, would greatly improve my life and it’s a goal that is ambitious but (I hope) achievable.

Even longer term, I want to be a parent. I’m hoping to be on the adoption register as a potential adopter before I’m thirty. In order to get there, I’m going to need a few things I don’t have yet: a permanent home with at least one spare bedroom, more local friends than I have now, possibly a wheelchair and/or a service dog. I’m not hugely sure how to go about getting these things sorted but not having to worry too much about continuing to afford to eat and pay rent frees up a lot of time and energy for planning the little steps to the bigger goals. And I know what my big goal is: to be a good parent to at least one someone who didn’t get a great start in life.

So, that’s where I am. Right now I’m still pretty poor compared to most people but I don’t have to worry too much about it any more cos (for now at least) I know that I will have a regular income and that my rent will be paid. This means I can concentrate on other things. Which is something I’ve not been able to do for a long, long while.

*I’ve been trying to apply for DLA / PIP and ESA since 2011, the present year is 2015.

Social Care Update!

In my last really personal post, I talked about how reablement services can be (are) really abusive and gaslight-y and how I was told that my care needs had been found to be “moderate” rather than “substantial” or “critical” so I was to be left with no care and no support to find any… Well, I was very brave and I complained to the council. I was prepared to fight, to take it right to the top and get the press or my MP or the Care Quality Commission involved if need be. The council saw that my complaint was very serious. They reinstated my reablement care and appointed me a different and more senior assessor who listened to me and took my (quite severe) mental health problems into account.

Quite a lot more was written onto my new assessment form. A support worker came to my assessment to help me talk about the very difficult and distressing details of what care I need and why. My new assessment, full of details about my mental and physical ill health, was taken back to the council and I was (finally) awarded long term care.

From the beginning of next week, I will have people making sure I eat and wash and look after myself. I’ll even have someone to come round and help me keep my bedroom tidy. With the assurance that I will be prevented from neglecting myself with regard to these basic needs, I feel like I have a foundation upon which to base myself as I try to build a life in my new city. Knowing each day that I definitely will eat an evening meal and when that will be, keeping myself and my surroundings reasonably clean, with these things taken care of I can do anything – write a novel, get a voluntary job, survive the therapy waiting list, go to social events… maybe even get on a bus to somewhere I’ve never been. Without support, those basic needs quickly stop getting met and I have no foundation on which to build a life of new experiences, of practising and learning old and new skills, a life in which happiness is not a fleeting dream but a real possibility.

Less than a hour’s support a day makes that much of a difference to me. Without it, just surviving is incredibly difficult; with it, a life full of wonders becomes possible.

When your council next cuts support for adult social care, as councils regularly do, think about me. Less than £10 a day of council money is for me and many others like me, literally a world of difference.

I write best when I’m hurting…

TW: this post discusses social care, “reablement” services, mental illness including self-harm and suicidal ideation and institutional neglect and abuse of disabled people, particularly of me. Stay safe and don’t force yourself to read it if it could harm you.

I sometimes feel I write best when I’m writing about what hurts me. This blog is full of post about my experiences of living with chronic disabling illness and of living in a world that reminds me over and over again that people like me – whether that’s disabled people, trans people, Jews, LGB people or unemployed people – are not wanted or welcome. I write about what hurts me.

I’m hurting right now and haven’t posted in almost a month. What’s happened?

I am being harmed. I am being abused. I am being… “re-abled” by social services. And they’ve decided i don’t qualify for on-going care. That means my care hours, as of tonight, will be cut to ZERO and any care I need I will have to organize and pay for myself – if I survive long enough to sort something out. (My friends and partners are not going to let me die so don’t worry too hard but I basically cannot be safely left alone for more than three DAYS without completely giving up on caring for and feeding myself. An otherwise identical person with no local friends would be dead or hospitalised within a month with malnutrition. I really wish I were exaggerating here).

For the majority of people who’ve never heard of it or had to go through it, “reablement” is an up-to-six-week long assessment period in which care is provided to a person and (in theory) they are given the equipment and support they need to look after themself. On paper, it looks like sort-of a good idea BUT in reality, huge funding cuts mean people aren’t being given as much equipment as they need, are fighting hard and waiting weeks to see that equipment and are being assessed as needing (as I do) about 5 to 6 hours of care a week THAT THE COUNCIL THEN REFUSES TO PROVIDE OR PAY FOR. And even if all the equipment I could benefit from were provided to me, even if I were given my five hours a week ongoing care to keep me alive… the process of reablement is still neglectful and abusive BY DESIGN.

The people sent to support me were deliberately and secretly instructed NOT to help me and to push me to do things by myself. My every morning wash and evening meal was secretly turned into a battle of wills between me, an exhausted mentally ill person in a lot of pain and a carer / support worker who was often meeting me for the first or second time. They pushed me further than I should safely be pushed and they pushed me every day. And I capitulated and forced my pain-filled exhausted limbs past my limits daily *because when I am scared or upset, my PTSD makes me extremely compliant*. I repeatedly tried to explain to both carers and my assessor that I am exhausted and in pain and vulnerable and that whilst I often physically *can* make myself a meal, I usually really, really *ought not to do*. I tried. My concerns were frequently ignored and now I have no care, not all of the equipment I was promised and a fight on my hands to stay in an abusive system in the hopes of getting less than a MP’s meal allowance a day spent on keeping me alive and healthy enough to do anything at all beyond surviving.

My depression and PTSD have been getting very bad lately and is it any wonder? I’ve been seen by carers and by my assessor in tears and self-harming. I’ve had to get friends to help me in the last few weeks because several times a day I think in all seriousness “I want to die just so all this stress and abuse will end”. Things are literally that bad but for the sake of a few quid the council would apparently prefer to let me try to look after myself alone.

And it all links back to the questions on the PIP and ESA forms that apeear in my letter box at irregular intervals and the number of different GPs who’ve happily signed my sick notes yet the DWP still want to get Atos or Capita to assess me in case all 6 GPs were wrong and the comments of the likes of Lord Freud who thinks people like me shouldn’t be paid minimum wage but also shouldn’t be able to live off benefits… it all comes down to having to fight and plead and abase myself daily to show that I deserve to live. It all comes down to narrating over and over and over again how my illnesses and disabilities affect me and how many doctors I’ve seen and getting professionals to write down exactly what I just said on pieces of paper that other professionals may or may not take into account… Will I be deemed worthy, fit for life, this time? And if so, for how long?

Ten things they don’t tell you about life with chronic physical and mental illnesses

I live with physical illnesses that cause chronic (ie long term) pain and fatigue. I also have several mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. For all of my adult life, I’ve been regularly seeing doctors and counsellors and therapists and physios and nurses and social workers… all of them somewhat aware of my long lists of diagnoses and treatments. Here’s the important stuff that none of thought to tell me:

1. Becoming physically ill from a mental illness or mentally ill from a physical illness is really, really common.

PTSD can cause chronic pain. Chronic pain can cause or further exacerbate depression. Depression usually comes with anxiety. Chronic fatigue and pain are common symptoms of depression… Basically, human brains and bodies are complex systems and disruption in the functioning of one part will often have repercussions elsewhere. I am not, as I’d feared, somehow especially weak and unable to cope with one illness without developing more – I’m experiencing something fairly typical for people who live through certain kinds of trauma.

2. The brain is a part of the body and mental illness can be whole body illnesses. Likewise, whole body chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia and ME can and do affect the brain and so the mind

While medical professionals talk of me having several different illnesses (with overlapping symptoms) it often makes more sense to think of my mind and body as experiencing one great big illness that sometimes needs tackling at the level of its component parts and sometimes needs to be treated as a whole. Sometimes fatigue and pain and despair need to be tackled as just that, without worrying too much which part of my illness is causing them right now.

3. Being chronically ill, mentally or physically or both, makes it really, really difficult to tell when you’re acutely ill and need to see a doctor
When you wake up feeling like you have the flu every day it gets kinda hard to tell when you actually have got the flu. When nausea, weight gain and a tremor are all symptoms of your illnesses and possible side effects of your medication, it’s easy to ignore them when you should maybe get them checked out (I eventually did, got more pills for the nausea, some disapproving looks about the weight gain and a diagnosis of “benign essential tremor” for the shaking).

4. There is no surefire way to determine whether you’re actually really tired from fatigue or demotivated from depression

The only way to find out is to try to do something, if it hurts and you get post-exertion malaise, it was probably fatigue

5. Depression and anxiety can physically hurt; fibromyalgia and ME can make you cry with fear, pain, despair or anger

6. You cannot deal with only one illness at once, even if that’s how doctors, the dwp, your family and, well, everyone else, seems to think you should deal with it

PTSD flashbacks can steal lots of energy. So can strong emotions from depression and anxiety. Panic attacks can hurt and make your fibromyalgia flare up unexpectedly. Depression will use your new slower, sleepier pace of life against you to call you lazy or insist that other people are talking about it behind your back. Self-harm becomes easier than ever when your body feels pain at every touch and missing a dose of painkillers can guarantee agony. My body and mind are experiencing massive malfunction and problems in one area cause problems elsewhere. Most of my treatments are just fire-fighting as problems spring up everywhere.

7. People will try to tell you you’re just mentally ill or that you’re not mentally ill
Both assertions are unhelpful and reductive. You are ill, both your body and your mind are affected. It’s not your fault but you can’t treat just the body or just the mind and expect the problems to all go away.
8. The illness(es) you’re experiencing is not your fault
No one has ever said this to me and I’ve often wished they would. I didn’t do anything to deserve this – and if you’re ill too, you didn’t either.

9. “Incurable” doesn’t mean “It will always be exactly as bad as it is right now”

I really, really wish someone had explained this to me and I hope you remember it. There’s a huge, huge space between “how bad it is right now” and “how well people generally feel”. Incurable just means you will never get (back) to “well”. You can and will live in the space in-between. You can feel better, you’ll just never be well. I know that still sounds really difficult and scary but it’s more survivable than “I will feel this awful forever”. Mental illnesses like to extrapolate futures full of acute awfulness and I am telling you that’s not quite how it is.

10. A surprisingly large amount of pain and suffering is survivable and can become a “new normal”

I know this doesn’t sound like much of a positive but bear with me. As well as medicating my symptoms, which lessens my pain / fatigue / anxiety / panic / despair / involuntary thoughts but never stops them entirely, i have found that as the years go by, previously unendurable symptoms start to seem like normality: like how music and chatter in a shop can fade to background noise. With no real choice but to get used to pain, fatigue and involuntary thoughts, I have settled into accepting levels of all three that would previously have brought be to tears.

 

And one extra:

11. It IS really and truly possible to be happy *and* ill.

I am happy. I love myself, I love my friends and family and, yes, I love my life. I can’t always keep ahold of the knowledge that there is more to my life than pain and fear and fatigue and despair, but I often can and then I am happy. It is possible. I wish someone had told me that. It’s possible to be okay- and more – whilst living with multiple illness, physical and mental.

Questions Strangers Ask Me – Part 1, Religion

This post is intended to be revised, updated and added to as and when new questions are asked of me by strangers. UPDATE: I’ve decided to split this into parts. This post contains Part One. (Links to subsequent posts will be added here)

Intro

Lately, I’ve been roped into unsolicited conversations with strangers pretty much every time I leave the house. Everywhere I go, I am treated like public property, like something that *owes* strangers answers to questions that are none of their business, answerable by a quick look in a dictionary, library or search engine or frequently both. My time and energy and whatever I am trying to do are all treated as less important than some stranger’s question and yet I answer them politely and calmly.
I am afraid of Causing A Scene or Making A Fuss. I am afraid of being labelled Uppity, Selfish, Ungrateful… and of those labels being attached to whichever minority group my assailant has noticed that I am. The questions are usually about that – an acknowledgement that I have been seen to be Jewish / Disabled / LGBT / Neuro-atypical and therefore for the sake of “awareness” and “acceptance” and “understanding”, I am supposedly obliged to answer any and all questions put to me.

Due to the combined effects of my complex PTSD and the toxic influence of years of my life spent raised as though I were a girl living under patriarchy, I am not currently even *able* to refrain from answering all but the most personal of questions. My PTSD searches for the quickest escape route from strangers and often concludes within a couple of seconds that the safest, fastest way to get rid of them is to do whatever they want. I’m trying to reprogramme myself to respond “I do not answer questions about my religion / disability / financial circumstances / past / sexuality / etc” but right now I can’t really do that. I’ve also unfortunately discovered that saying “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers, please go away” repeatedly whilst backing away / closing the door *does not actually work at ending the conversation*. Yes, people will literally stand on the doorstep arguing with me about whether or not I’m allowed to talk to them.

So: that was an unexpectedly long intro leading up to the questions themselves. These are all things I’ve been asked by complete or near strangers on numerous occasions. Often they aren’t even precluded by a “Hello” and the conversation usually ends as soon as I’ve answered.

PART ONE: When people notice I am a Jew

“How do you keep that hat on your head?”
I get asked this a lot and I sort of understand it because my combination of several inches of wavy spikes of hair, buzzcut sides and a hat that maintains an improbable fixed position on the back of my head seems to defy explanation. The answer’s actually fairly simple. My yarmulke is clipped to my hair with hairclips. One on each side, one pointing forwards and the other pointing backwards can effectively keep my yarmulke firmly on my head even in strong winds.

“Do you wear that for fashion or for, er, religious reasons?”
I’m Jewish and Jewish men keep our heads covered when we pray. They easiest way to do this is to wear a hat all the time in case I’ll need to recite a blessing for seeing a rainbow, eating a sandwich or unexpectedly meeting an old friend. A yarmulke or kippah is a traditionally Jewish hat for this purpose but any hat (or hood or scarf or any other head covering) will do just as well. Sometimes round the house or even as far as the corner shop I’ll just put up the hood of my hoody. So why wear a yarmulke when I could just wear any hat or my hoody all the time? That *is* a choice – the choice to be publically visible as a Jew despite the harassment and anti-semitic abuse this gets me. Because being Jewish is, in a not-small part, about refusing to assimilate. I could blend in and pass for a white gentile probable-Christian… and I refuse to. I am a Jew and I am proud of who I am.

“What part of Israel / Germany / Poland / Russia are you from?” / “When did you / your parents move to the UK?” / “Where are you from? … No, where are you REALLY from?”
I am from the UK. So are my parents. And their parents. And their parents’ parents and so on for as long as anyone has bothered to check. I am not an immigrant and my race on the census is recorded as “White British”. Until fairly recently, no one ever questioned the assumption that I was white, British and born here, nor did anyone suggest my parents must be immigrants. But now I wear a kippah and sometimes speak in Hebrew and don’t celebrate Christmas or Easter – so my race, my nationality and my right to live here are called into doubt in the minds of strangers.

“Are you, y’know.. circumcised?”
In the politest possible terms: FUCK OFF. Whether or not I’m circumcised is between me, G-d, my Rabbi and my partners. If you’re not G-d, my Rabbi or dating me, you do not need to know. If you want to date me, asking me personal questions about my genitals is NOT how to flirt with me. This applies to other Jews who know I’m a convert too – you don’t need to know.

“Why do Jews do X?”
MyJewishLearning.com is your friend and I am not a walking, talking Encyclopaedia Judaica. Whilst I often do answer these questions if I know the answers, waiting to encounter a stranger who is Jewish and ask them all your questions is just laziness and entitlement in a world with internet and libraries.

“You should join our (evangelical Christian) Bible Studies group! We could learn so much from your Jewish perspective!”
Yes, this has been said to me several times by different people, none of whom were able to explain to me what I was supposed to gain from teaching Christians my “Jewish Perspective” on ancient Jewish texts that Christians also include in their canon of holy books. Again, I am not an Encyclopaedia Judaica nor am I a Rabbi – I am not in any way obliged to offer my time and knowledge for free in order to provide people with perspectives they could gain as I did by reading books written by Jewish scholars and/or they could actually contact a Rabbi and ask them to come and give a talk at their Bible Studies group instead as it would at least fall under the Rabbi’s job description.

“People can convert to Judaism! How / why?”
Yes they can and yes I am doing. The how mainly involves study, self-reflection, synagogue attendance and (this may surprise people) writing essays for Rabbis to read over. Then there’s answering questions for a panel of Rabbis and a ceremony involving prayers and a big pool of water and once you’re out of the pool you’re just as much of a Jew as any other Jew. Why? Because I feel this is the right choice for me and the kind of life I want to lead.

“You’re Jewish AND transgender?! How does that work?” / “You’re Jewish AND bisexual?! How does that work?”
Very well, thank you very much.  A lot of Jews are LGBTQA. A lot of synagogues (including some Orthodox ones) are very explicitly LGBTQA friendly. There are LGBTQA Rabbis, there are trans-friendly blessings and rituals, there are midrash about trans characters from the Tanakh. There are current and also historical trans Jews to serve as possibility models. Basically, this religion has been around and figuring out how to interpret our holy book for a few thousand years and very experienced in applying Torah to whatever new situations we may find ourselves in – trans people and LGBQA people? Really not a huge problem.

“Racist comment about Palestinians, Muslims or Arabs”
You are completely wrong, being racist and you should feel bad, learn about Palestine / Islam / Arabic culture and also fuck the fuck off.
Racists have an awful tendency to assume I’ll agree with anything bad they have to say about Muslims because I’m a Jew. Well, sorry not sorry, this Jew feels a deep love and kinship with Muslims everywhere and will stand up to racism and Islamophobia wherever he sees it.

“I pray for Israel and your people!”
Erm, okay? Do that if you must but: I’m not Israeli (see above) I’m Jewish. I pray for peace.

“Anti-Semitism isn’t really a problem any more, right?”
Well, actually…
“I mean it’s not as bad as it was. It’s basically over now. Right?”
I can describe several anti-semitic hate crimes that have happened to me in the last year…
“Like, no one’s really anti-semitic any more. Right? In Britain at least, yeah? I’m right, aren’t I right?”
And so on. I’ve had several versions of the this conversation where it becomes startlingly clear that the only answer they’re going to accept is “Anti-Semitism is not really a thing any more” and they’re likely prepared to go all the way back to the 1930’s or even earlier to find a time when anti-semitism was *definitely* a real problem by their standards in order to try to get me to say that, of course, compared to that time, anti-semitism is basically nonexistent now.
Here is my answer:
1. Anti-semitism NEVER stopped. If anything, it’s on the rise again.
2. Stop moving the fucking goalposts. Any anti-semitism at all is too much anti-semitism happening.
3. Anti-semitic hate crimes and microaggressions are part of every day life for me.
4. Fuck the fuck off, I’m not here to make you feel better about yourself because you personally haven’t said or done anything to me that you think counts as anti-semitic. Several times now, someone has had this conversation after saying something blatantly anti-semitic to me.

More “Look at me cos I have noticed that you are a Jew” questions I’ve got recently:
“Are you a Professor?” No “So, you’re training to be a Professor?” No. “Ah, so you’re an ACTOR?” Still no. “But you’re Jewish!” Yes, yes I am. Being Jewish doesn’t mean I am automatically intelligent, studious or successful.
“You must be very wealthy!” Erm, no. Again, Judaism doesn’t come with wealth, business, the ability to run businesses or even the ability to get and keep a job attached as part of the package. And before you ask, no my parents aren’t wealthy either and that has nothing at all to do with them not being Jewish.

And no, I can’t play a musical instrument. My talents are writing, public speaking, teaching and magic tricks – none of those are because I’m Jewish, they’re because I’m ME.
Even these “positive” stereotypes people assume about me are anti-semitic microagressions because they involve presuming to know lots of unrelated things about me just because of my religion and treat me as your own idea of “the Jew” rather than as an individual person.

No, I don’t know this other person you think might be Jewish. No, my penchant for finding the best food in the clearance sales has nothing to do with me being Jewish. No, I don’t know whether or not that guy who over-charged you that one time is Jewish and it says absolutely nothing about Jews as a whole if he is.

“What do think of Jesus?”
I am a stranger you just met on the street, why are you asking my opinion of a Jewish guy who may (or may not) have lived thousands of years ago and many miles away?

Part 2 will be about questions people ask me because they notice I’m disabled and/or neurodiverse. Part 3 will combine questions about gender and sexuality.

The Obligatory Year-In-Review Post

TW: mental illness, disability benefits

It would be far, far too easy for me to claim that “nothing happened” this last year. My ill health forced me to take time out of my degree and to spend pretty much the entire year chasing up disability related benefits. It’s been a hard year.

I think, though, it has taught me a lot about myself. Mainly that I’m not as helpless as I often feel. I mean, who found me a new house to move into? Who got Adult Social Care to assess me? Who sorted out my claims for Personal Independence Payments, Employment Support Allowance *and* Housing Benefit? I did.
Who decided it was necessary to take even more time out my degree and organised for that to happen? I did.
Who is living in a house which contains no other members of his family for the first time in years *and* actually making that work? I am.

And whilst I’ve been doing all that, I’ve managed to maintain a social life, two romantic relationships and to keep politically active.
That’s not nothing.

With no partner living in the same city as me, I’ve discovered to my surprise that people like me in my own right, not just as one of a pair. I’ve also discovered that I can hold my own in activist circles when I thought I needed someone to back me up. I’m glad I’ve learned (finally) that I usually do know what I’m talking about and people want to listen to what I think.

I started this blog in 2013. It’s the first blog I’ve had under my own name – which is oddly freeing as I’m not trying to hide from my stalkers any more. I don’t worry about them reading this because I refuse to be ashamed of anything I write here. Yes, I am trans and bisexual and disabled. I claim benefits and I may not ever be well enough for full time work. I refuse to be ashamed of that.
I have things to say and I’m going to say them.

My new year was Rosh Hashanah and I thought up hopes and wishes for the next year then. Right now, I don’t know what 2014 will hold for me. I’m hoping to finish my degree, have a break from running around after benefits, spend more time with my two wonderful partners and to, well, stay alive as best I can.

When I was younger, I didn’t expect to live to be 25. I couldn’t see a future for myself that lasted that long without me taking my own life. This year I want to make it to and past my 25th birthday. This year I want to prove my younger self wrong and show him that even mentally ill disabled queer trans people like me get to have lives full of love and happiness that he couldn’t have even imagined.
It’s not much of an ambition but it is mine.

2013 (and 2012 before it too) was not an easy year for me. There’s been tears and mental health crises. But there’s also been joy and triumph and solidarity. There’s been love and hope. Things have changed massively from how I thought my life would be but I know I am making the most I possibly can with what I have.
2014 will bring it’s own challenges and difficulties, no doubt. But I’ve learned this year both that I can take on challenges myself successfully and that I don’t have to.

Happy New Year. Especially to the woman who’s loved me and wanted me throughout all the hard stuff and to the man who made the leap from being my friend to being my partner: I love you both and I look forward to continuing to do so for as long as I possibly can ❤

How I’ve Been – What Applying For Benefits Is Like

TW: Frank discussion of worsening mental illness, ATOS

Hello readers,

It’s been a little quiet around here for a while and if you follow me on twitter (I’m @autistliam) you might have an idea why. I’ve spent the last few months trying to find out what is happening with a claim for disability benefits I made over 6 months ago, whilst at the same time trying to fill in the forms and provide evidence for two more benefits I’m eligible for *and* manage my social care *and* get to all the doctor and hospital appointments I have to go to *and*… well, and have a life. I have friends and family and lovers to spend time with, books to read, films to see…

And because of the horrific bureaucracy I’ve found myself having to grapple with, I’ve had to do all that whilst living on less than £25 a week, perpetually wondering whether this is the week I’ll hear good news or whether I’ll have to ask my Uni for yet another crisis loan just to keep myself fed. It turned out that this week was finally the week that I have been awarded PIP – Enhanced Rate Care, back dated to cover most of the time I’ve spent living on as little as possible. It’s a relief to finally have it (even though I need to appeal the decision NOT to award me any Mobility payments) but it doesn’t really make up for what I’ve been put through.

It’s been a whole year since I started filling out a DLA form that took me five months to complete, working around my postgraduate degree and around treatment for my yet-to-be-diagnosed chronic illness. I sent that form just ahead of the deadline for the PIP change over but the DWP decided that I would be assessed for PIP anyway – for their convenience, not mine. They sent me a new form and just four weeks to fill it in. Overtaken by stress and despair, I considered killing myself and started self-harming after not doing so for months, saw my GP and was put onto antidepressants and considered quitting my degree but thankfully opted instead to take a year out. That was in May, I’ve been signed off as too ill to work since then but as I never had a job in the first place my sicknotes don’t get me any money. I managed, somehow, to fill in and return the PIP form – complete with over 12000 words of additional information and several sheets of evidence, within the four weeks they asked for. They never acknowledged receiving the form. I next heard something in July, when I was asked to attend an assessment with ATOS on the fifth of August. I arranged for my partner to be available to take me to the assessment and stay with me. I survived the misleading questions and attempts to catch me out in an over two hour long assessment – during which I had a small meltdown, was asked simple arithmetic questions, had my sight in both eyes tested after explaining that I can only use one at once and was asked to explain what triggers my PTSD and why and how often I harm myself and how often I consider killing myself.
After that, I heard nothing for a month. I had no money coming in and had to ask my Uni to loan me a month’s rent in order to have anywhere to live. My advisor phoned the DWP. ATOS had not sent them a report about my assessment yet. Try again next week.
That was early September. Since then, I’ve been trying again next week *every week*. The Uni has given me two more loans to keep me housed and fed. ATOS took seven weeks to get my assessment report to the DWP. They didn’t tell me they’d received it. It took almost another month before they looked at it and made a decision. They didn’t tell me about that either. I found out today by having my advisor phone them to ask them whether the £1600 that had appeared in my account was actually for me. Apparently it is.

The last year hasn’t quite been Hell (I’ve seen Hell and it’s much worse) but the precarity of always being told that things will be okay soon with no clear idea of when “soon” will be is certainly torture. My mental health has been affected and I have needed to start antidepressants, needed to ask friends to help keep me alive by making sure I eat or by sitting with me when I’m struggling to keep myself safe. I suddenly have some money and an income and can afford to eat better and to buy things but so long on less than £25 a week has made me forget what I even wanted.
I suspect it was to replace the clothes that I have worn through. Perhaps it was to eat in my campus bar every now and then or maybe to buy more than one drink at the pub. I need to replace my passport and haven’t been able to afford to.

Before all this, I was doing an MA and considering volunteering or part time work. Right now, I am doing neither as all my energy goes towards trying to sort out my benefits, social care and health. Being too ill to work is a full time job in itself.

This ordeal has changed me. It’s not been as hard as it would have been if I were not a student, I’m very grateful for help received from University Welfare Services, friends and partners and hundreds of supportive people on twitter. I hope to get my life back on track soon, I’m going back to Uni properly in May and I hope to have my PIP, ESA and Housing Benefit sorted by then. If things are sorted soon, I’ll look into volunteering.

In the meantime, I’ll try to write. I have been so scared to write this, so worried that somehow it would affect the result if I wrote this blog post before getting my first payment.

EDITED TO ADD:
As this blog post is going much further than I ever expected it to, I’d like to clarify some things that I didn’t make wholly clear.
Firstly, PIP is a benefit you can get whether you work or not. The out-of-work benefit for UK disabled people is ESA and I’m currently filling in the form for that and will have to have *another* ATOS assessment in the next three months for that.
Secondly, the people who told us repeatedly to “try again next week” were *DWP and ATOS staff*. They told my advisor every week that I’d get a decision the next week – for over two months.
Thirdly, without my advisor at the Uni phoning them for me I would *never have heard anything* from the DWP between August and now. And I would have no money to afford to phone or write to them either.
Finally, I just want to repeat that I have had fantastic support from my Uni, my friends, my partners and my doctors. Other people *will* be facing this alone and we need to find ways to find them and help them.

My Normality – Life with Chronic Illness

The thing that continues to amaze me about chronic illness is the ability to get used to it. Seriously. I, and others like me, live day in day out with pain and illness and suffering that other people experience only for short periods of time, if at all. And yet, we manage and we often do much more than just manage.

And I want to try to write something about that. If only to remind myself of the strange fact that what has become my “normal” is not “normal” for most people at all and if I think I achieve very little compared to others, perhaps that says less about my abilities and more about the fact that there’s a whole bunch of stuff I have to deal with that other people rarely experience.

So, what does my “normal” feel like?
The short answer is: persistent pain and exhaustion, punctuated with sensory overload, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, sheer terror, confusion and, of course, every now and then becoming temporarily completely blind for no discernable reason. That’s my normal. It’s been normal for long enough that I sometimes forget that it ever wasn’t. It’s only actually been this way for a couple of years.

The longer answer:
Imagine being ill enough to take a day off school or work. Muscles aching, hot and cold, deeply tired and not really able to concentrate. Nauseous. Full of pain and tired and not much else. Imagine trying to “sleep it off”. Only it’s still there the next day. And the next. And the next. And… forever. Or imagine that tiredness and aching you get after doing a lot of exercise, the kind that lasts a day or two. Imagine feeling like that from walking down the street to the post box. Imagine feeling like that whether you try to exercise as much as ever or do less. Even if you barely do anything at all. Put those two together, imagine the feeling you might get if you were really quite ill but insisted on exercising a lot anyway and then that pain and tiredness never ever leaving and you might have an idea of what fibromyalgia feels like. And to me, that’s normal. Oh – and also, I feel pain whenever anything touches me – pain from resting my arm on the desk, pain when my partner hugs me, pain when my mum’s dog brushes past my leg, pain from creases in my clothes or my sheets, pain when someone taps me lightly on the shoulder. Even pain as my fingertips hit the keys of the keyboard. This is normal, this is my everyday baseline for pain – everything hurts

My autism has always made my senses hyper-sensitive – I see light brighter, hear sounds louder, smell and taste stronger than most people. So what is tolerable or even pleasant for most people can be overwhelming for me. Supermarkets and crowds upset me. My brain receives more light and sounds and smells than it knows what to do with and sometimes it just gives up all together and all I can think of is getting out – or all I can do is stand there, unable even to work out how to leave. I have my workarounds and coping methods but the basic fact of the assault on my senses and the overwhelmed feelings I get when my brain cannot take in any more sensory information is always there and always will be. My brain is set up that way.

The illness that I have that I never believed would become my “new normal” is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But it has. My sleep is disrupted by terrible nightmares of things that happened a long time ago and things that didn’t happen but might have done if things had been different. I have terribly vivid visions of awful things happening to me and the people I love. Dreams built out of memories, fears and secrets direct from my own subconscious. For a while this was happening only once or twice a month, since moving house it’s been every single night. And every night I wake up from some awful dream that I still can’t tell for sure whether or not it is real and happening now… and I find my comfort objects, breath deeply and remind myself of my name and age and what year it is, where I live and the fact that the people who hurt me are far away, the things that happened are in the past and I am safe. Then I go back to sleep until I wake up again and do it all again. I get flashbacks during the day from time to time. If I can, as soon as I realise that I’m reacting to something that isn’t presently happening, I take myself somewhere safe and explain to myself what’s going on. I can sometimes do this without crying and without anyone noticing. because it’s normal for me. It is normal for me to feel as though my life is danger, to remind myself to take a second look and decide whether or not the danger is real and to find something to ground me and/or somewhere to go to cry  and to calm down by reminding myself who and where I am. My brain is, I know, set up like an over-sensitive car alarm – it goes off at the merest hint of danger. And like that over-zealous car alarm, it’s usually wrong and that’s often apparent at the second look.

I’ve already written about my depression and that too has become “normal”. Walking with a stick has become “normal” – to the extent that I occasionally think other people are strange because they don’t have one.

I’m not sure how to end this because I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m not even complaining. Just… this is what life is like for me and I’m okay with that. And if I maybe can’t do as much as other people, this should go some way to towards explaining why. How much can most people achieve when they’ve got the flu? When they’re in fear for their lives? That is my normal and I do what I do on top of living with that. So I reckon if I achieve more than just surviving, I’ll have achieved quite a lot in life.

NOTE: I am receiving appropriate medical treatment for all of the above. This is not a description of my life before treatment or what my life would be like without treatment – this is my life as i live it taking eight different medicines and counting.