DisabledAceSocialist [comrade/them]
Even if I was willing to publicise myself, it’s pointless. There have been stories in the news of disabled people literally starving to death and committing suicide when their benefits were stopped. Did anything change? No. Did anyone care? Not really. In fact most commentators were victim blaming the deceased for not trying hard enough to access help.
Thanks. I’m way past caring about judgment for it, it’s just the stress of the unreliability, never knowing if anyone will respond or if they do, if I’ll get enough to last for a week or more. Same thing with benefits, the stress of the unreliability - will I win my appeal? if I do, will the government do what they are saying and cut benefits, etc. There is never any security. I can only get from day to day, always worrying about food and homelessness.
In fact, I get far more messages offering “helpful” suggestions on making money, than messages actually helping. So many messages where people tell me to monetise my situation by blogging about it, give tips on investing in stocks (invest what? I have no money) ask me to join in their money making schemes. Apart from anything else, on disability benefits you’re often not allowed to make money, or if you do they’ll deduct money from your benefits, so all these suggestions are no use to me anyway.
I mentioned in my post that I do make posts on mutual aid. However I often get ignored. Sometimes I have to make up to three posts over the space of a couple of weeks before getting even one response. When I do get a response it’s usually not enough to last very long to the point that I have no food security. When I finish what food I have and make another post, I don’t know if it’ll be weeks and multiple posts before someone responds. The food bank access here is terrible and takes ages.
I mean, I get it, there are people in literal war zones posting on mutual aid. People who donate prefer to donate to a refugee who’s in an even more desperate situation than me. But I’m still often hungry and that just makes everything even worse. Mutual aid is just a really unreliable way to stay fed. Sometimes people even make offers of help and then don’t follow through.