Neither is disability.
Neither is getting on disability.
It’s not giving up either.
It’s not a shameful word. It’s not a shameful concept.
Why someone needs to get on disability is different for every person. Even if two people who both are go on SSDI or SSI are both autistic. Or both depressed. Or both injured at work. It’s never going to be exactly the same reason from person to person.
To me, getting on disability (SSDI in my case), would be a saving grace.
I am exhausted. I have worked in a toxic job for nearly 8 years**. It isn’t anything close to what I had in mind when I went back to school (graduate levels). So many conditions of the job make it toxic to me (starting with the fact that it’s retail, a field I was trying to escape from by getting another degree). I was told if I wanted better income, I needed a better and higher degree. And then after I chose my program, I was told I would never make it. I’d never succeed in that program. It was too hard for me. Graduate students, at least where I went, do not graduate with honors, even if they technically have them. I would have graduated with honors. I had a very high GPA. I did very well in the program I was told more than once I couldn’t handle.
But all I got out of it was a lot of debt and a terrible, unrelated job.
My physical health is shot.
My mental health is shot.
Also, I’ve learned that no one really wants to hire an autistic adult outside of the jobs that autistic people excel at — based on stereotyping of autistic people. Please note that I am absolutely not saying that some of those jobs are perfect for some autistic people, and some autistic people will flourish in them.
But not me. Data entry? No. Programming of any kind? Definitely not. Car washes? Nope. And nothing that will pay me less than minimum wage solely because I’m disabled. (Yes, places do this.)
Being bored in a job is one of the things that makes it exhausting to me; doing repetitive work every day with no actual challenge, and risking a write-up if you do the wrong thing (even though no one told you the rules had changed, again) exhausts me. Data entry would fall under that. I don’t have a clue how to program, and with the huge debt I have from graduate school***, I’m not keen on the idea of acquiring any more of it! (Not interested in programming anyhow.)
Will I physically feel better in a year? Two years? Three years? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m in the process of being diagnosed with other things at the moment, so maybe I’d never be able to go back to full or even part-time work. Maybe I would. But I have no way to know.
Plus, I’m still going to be autistic no matter how many years go by. And I’ll still have the same difficulties getting hired into gainful, meaningful work. Just because I’m autistic doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be considered by employers for meaningful work. But retail is almost all I’ve ever been hired for. I have depression too. For as long as I can remember, even before I knew what it was. And probable situational depression on top of that because of my work/financial situation.
I am mentally and physically exhausted.
Even if I was granted my dream job right now, I couldn’t do it. I have nothing left to give of myself that way.
I tried to stay active by volunteering, because it’s so much less demanding. But eventually I had to stop doing that too.
I wish I understood better how to make friends, but I don’t. My coworkers would always talk about their plans, in front of me, or come in and tell me how much fund they had doing whatever with another coworker. And even if I expressed interest in it, I was never included.
But large groups of people I can only take every now and then, so occasional outings to amusement parks, museums, or volunteer events, are fine, but then I am peopled out. You can’t do that with a regular job.
I can’t go on like I am in my current job much longer.
I don’t have anything left to give for another job at this time.
I can’t afford not to have income.
I can’t leave my current, toxic job without replacing that income.
If I continue to stay in said toxic job, I will spiral down even further.
Getting on disability would let me have income.
It would mean I could stop working and recover physically as much as possible, and see if my depression eases off. (I don’t take medicine for it because I have a history of reacting poorly to all types of medication. But while it never goes away completely, if I can keep myself in good situations, it doesn’t bother me so much and allows me to function better.)
So, for me, getting on disability is not giving up. It’s saving myself. It’s taking care of myself. It is doing what is best for myself in an untenable situation.
Will I need to be on disability for the rest of my life? I don’t know. But for now, it’s what I need to survive.
Please don’t make things harder for me, for people like me, by telling us that we’re giving up by trying to get on disability. There’s no way for you to truly know everything we’re dealing with that has brought us to this crossroads.
To me, giving up would be going on in an awful job until I was in such bad shape that I got myself fired. I have never been fired. I am not looking to start now, no matter how toxic the situation is.
Giving up would be continuing on in my current situation until I was in even worse physical shape and maybe needed to be hospitalized because my health got so bad.
Those would be giving up situations because it would mean I had stopped caring about myself altogether.
I still care. That is why I am fighting to get on disability, because it will save me.
I am disabled.
There is no shame in that. It is part of who I am.
I am autistic.
There is no shame in that either.
** At the time I wrote this a few years ago, I was still in my toxic job. I never ended up posting this back then but felt the post is still important to share the way I wrote it then. I no longer work there, but I am still not in any kind of dream job. And at this point, I think, I will never be. I am also not on disability, but that’s a long story that’s best told in another post.
*** I was able to have my graduate loans discharged. I will write about that as soon as I can in case it helps anyone else (in the US).
I searched and searched for an image I could use as a featured image on this post. Eventually I gave up because it is all wheelchairs when you look for clipart to represent disability. I use a wheelchair from time to time these days. But I was disabled before I needed one. Not all disabilities require a wheelchair, so why is the only visual imagery of disability, why is the only world-recognized image of disability, a person in a wheelchair? Can we change that? Can anyone offer me ideas of what I could use instead? Are there images out there that already do that which are public domain or free to use with credit given?
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