Ungilded

It is difficult for me to express in words the depths of the depression I am feeling. For as hard as things are for me now, the truth is they have been hard for a long, long time. Not weeks, not months, but years. And this difficulty compounds across the many spheres of life. It creates other barriers, erodes other joys. How many family celebrations have I missed? How many opportunities to see the people I love have passed, while I am unable to step beyond the tawdry limitations of my strangled budget? Tonight, I was unable to attend a dinner, which should have been a pleasant social respite, because I didn't have the wherewithal to pay for a cheap meal. That might have been acceptable twenty or thirty years ago, when I was first making my way in the world, but I have worked too hard and given too much for this to be acceptable, even for one more day. It has gone on for too long. 

But there's a deeper level to my despair, and it's this. For every apparent loss, there has been a wound. And the wound comes from my awareness of the shared knowledgeable sentience of my plight. There is an entire community out there who has seen me struggling under the onslaught of multiple challenges and who have, invariably, turned away. Not just persons, but whole groups of people, many of whom have witnessed small affronts committed upon me but who know so much more about the more insidious actions that have been manifested against me. And some of those are people who told me they would have my back. Who said they asked much of me because they would give their own measure of service and sacrifice, and because their own efforts would ensure, if not my gain, then not my loss. 

But loss is my constant companion. I wake up every day and before I am even out of bed I am confronted by the vast hole of everything that I was told, reassured, promised, even guaranteed, would be there for me. Not just a job but an income. Not just a house but a home. Not just a move but travel, to see my people and to holiday to all those places I've wanted to go but never ever been able to. Not promises, but people who care enough to turn up for me. Even the most basic amenity of healthcare, dental care, clothing, footwear, physical fitness, social interactions, are all utterly out of reach without the support that I should rightfully expect, and was promised. And this endangers my wellbeing, and therefore my safety. 

But the deeper harm is the social harm. The constant absence of care from those who are well placed to give it but who do not, repeatedly. My life has become devoid of even the smallest acts of generosity or consideration, and replaced with a poorly mechanised series of transactional failures against me. I am exploited, daily, in every imaginable kind of interaction, and nothing has been given in return. Nothing. 

Nothing is worth this kind of sustained deprivation. No cause is great enough or important enough to warrant this sustained assault on my basic material sustenance and wellbeing. Even this blog, this most private part of my existence is, like all other aspects of my existence, scrutinised for evidence of unturned screws that can still be set to squeezing even more from me, repaying my generosity with injury and insult in the manner calculated to cause me the greatest pain. No doubt, the tone of persecutory paranoia macerating my writing will be particularly satisfying to those of you who have measured your own successes by the extent of not just my failures, but the disproportionate (and utterly unconscionable) losses that I have incurred, personally, and every type of lasting damage that it has caused. Because it has caused lasting damage. For years. YEARS. And just because you only know about the more recent months, doesn't mean you're not responsible for the excessive damage that your own action, inaction and intolerable lack of compassion, dedication and basic human decency has wrought in compounding ways on top of every single thing that has already been done to me. If anything, the ease of your victimisation says more about my astonishing capacity to persevere than any kind of cunning or skill on your part. 

Nothing is worth this. It has gone on for too long. I have given too much for too long and now my answer is no. No more. You will have nothing more from me until you have made good on all of your promises, past, present and future. And I'll get on with the daily business of surviving my depression, anguish, and the actual physical pain and illness that I have no money to get treated. 

(P.S. Because, again, the pain is keeping me awake. Just so you know).