I've been down this road before...

and I don't like the return trip I may have to make.

Heard from SSA on Friday. Turned down again. Next step is Administrative Law Judge review. A process that takes damn near a year to get to.

They feel that I'm not disabled enough to get benefits. They feel I can still sit at a desk for eight hours a day and do a full time job. I know I can't. I can barely get thru the part time job I have now that pays me next to nothing. I'm in quite a bit of pain after 5 hours at school in which I am allowed to move around at my leasure. I'm still taking 4 and 5 hour naps every day because I'm exhausted.

I'm still depressed, though it has been better lately. They said that I am not depressed enough to keep me from working. They should have seen me this time last year, when I seriously considered suicide.

What did they do, talk to my sister who, to this day, thinks I'm faking the whole thing for attention and sympathy? Believe me, if I wanted attention that badly, I'd do something other than fake chronic pain, exhaustion and depression. Unfortunately for her, everything I am feeling is all too real. Before I was diagnosed with FMS, I didn't even know what it was, much less know enough about it to fake it.

On Tuesday (5/31) I'm calling the lawyer I can't afford to get his ideas about how to convince SSA I really do have a problem. I work because I have no choice, I need the money. I'm going to school to learn a new trade so I can make money, but that takes time (at least 6 more months).

So that long road to this point has come to an all too familiar crossroad. In September, it will be three years since I originally filed for Disability and SSI in Massachusetts. Maybe, in retrospect, I should have stayed there. I might have had it by now.

But, then, I wouldn't have come to this point in my life.

Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, shit, I should be fucking Hercules by now!


--MorelaterZ--