I still can't find forgiveness.

 I must be immature or something. I still can't forgive my family that tried to make decisions for me, no matter how sincere their "good intentions" were. Not only do I have people in my family that are unbelievably superficial, ignorant and reckless, they explain it all away as "good intentions" and "wanting the best for me".

There's my mother, the MLM dupe who is convinced that the only reason they never work is because she doesn't have the "right personality".

One of my sisters of which I speak, who hits the blunt regularly, and thinks she is wise.

The other of the two sisters, who is reactive, sometimes ridiculously so, and thinks that is the right way to be, because she still thinks I don't have the right to stand up for myself. 

No apologies, no reasons why I keep getting served subpar bullshit on a silver platter by people who say they love me....or I was, and am just expected to deal with it. I do not feel loved. I did not feel loved when my family was trying to make me fill out that ridiculous form that would only have ever gotten me a stern lecture from some homeless outreach worker. I felt controlled. I am still dealing with the emotional fallout from this. I think I always will be.

I can barely tolerate these people now. They drove me to be as angry as I am now. They are not willing to deal with the consequences, other than saying one of the two empty platitudes listed above, and here: "Good intentions", "We just want the best for you".

All three of these people seem to be under the silly notion that I can have a life without any problems. I swear they think that just because it sounds pretty to them. They tell themselves this, or they used to, to help themselves sleep at night. Never mind that I knew it wasn't true, and I found it demeaning. Yet. They. Kept. Pushing. It.

This is about more than just the silly form that wouldn't have gotten me anything. It's about others thinking they have the right to make decisions for me. Others thinking they get to bully me. Others being offended that I stand up for myself occasionally. Such bullshit.

Another decision that they keep trying to make: move me to a different province, because the disability stipend is higher there. It's actually the highest in the country. They take it for granted that I would be able to get on it, never mind that I keep hearing, and hearing, and hearing stories about people who have tried to get on it and can't. People who have made huge time investments in this and didn't get it. Plus, this stipend used to be indexed to the cost of living, which is why it is the highest in the country. The current premier of this province went and changed it. It is no longer indexed to the cost of living. However, this is another story that my mother and two out of six of my sisters tell themselves to feel good. They won't be stopping anytime soon.

Being babied as an adult sucks,

 but actually hearing a relative reason it away by saying babying me is necessary because good intentions, good intentions, good intentions. There is little intelligence in these good intentions that come from these people, and even less critical thinking. I am starting to think that when these relatives do sh*t like this, it is not good intentions anymore; it is more of an aggressive neglect.

There is an upcoming wedding in my family. I have been uninvited to this event, because I have begun to insist on not being babied anymore. The bride was one of those who babied me. In fact, it is as if she is defending the right to baby me, to talk down to me, to belittle me. She will not be able to emotionally blackmail me with an invitation to her wedding.

When someone, the bride of the wedding I am no longer invited to, who used to be closer to me, tells me that my life is easy, when it actually isn't, what does that mean? I find it to be hurtful, ignorant and wrong to have someone else dictate to me what my life is like. As if they think they know what it would be like to be to live my life for me, and would be able to do it better than me. What they do not understand is that there are rules to being on Persons With Disability and Canada Pension Plan Disability:

1. I have to fill out a stub every month, to make sure I get the money for next month. When I first got on PWD, I did not have to do this. For the first six or seven months, I did not have to do this. Now, it's different. It has to be done by a certain date, usually around the ninth of the month. I usually fill it out and submit it online, instead of going into the provincial office to stick it in their box, because it is convenient to be able to get it done in the evening, or when it's rainy, or when I'm in my pyjamas. What is inconvenient about it is that I can't do it right away, on the same day when I get my PWD for the month. I actually have to wait for my CPP-D to come in, so I can say, on my stub, how much my CPP-D was for that month. And both payouts happen on different days. This is also known as "claiming funds", which I have to do, or I will be causing myself some problems. Lucky me.

2. Due to me being on two different types of funding, I have two different earning exemptions. If recipients of PWD having to fill out stubs so they can STAY on PWD isn't common knowledge, the $1000 earning exemption is. The CPP-D earning exemption is $483, and yes, I Googled it.

3. For as long as I am on disability benefits, I will be at the mercy of politicians and their agendas to get and stay in power. Whatever law or regulation they decide to put forward, pass and enforce, I will have to submit to it. Drug tests for everyone on Income Assistance and Persons With Disability? I would have to do it. Cut my pension in half, or take it away entirely, thus forcing me to get a job that I hate, so I can feed myself? I would have to do this. I can follow all the rules to stay on it, but if some twit politician, who has never experienced first world poverty, decides that anyone with a diagnosis that puts them anywhere on the high functioning end of the Autism Spectrum does not deserve to receive PWD, then that would force me into taking the first job I can get, no matter what it is, or whether I hate it or how much.

A rare comment

Edit: I noticed that it's difficult to tell my arguments from those of the commenter. So I decided to make mine a different colour.

Someone actually left a comment on one of my posts back in May. I was just going to leave it, but it kept bugging me. And the commenter didn't leave a name, so I can't respond to them privately. So here goes:

AnonymousMay 4, 2020 at 11:32 AM

I notice in your previous blogs, you really come down on your mother for helping you get on disability. The fact that you are now on disability, do you feel like you’re a little hard on your mother? 

She did help me get it, but she wasn't the only one. We actually needed to beg and plead for help from a social worker who went by the name Lee. He was incredibly in demand, and I was lucky to get his help. He knew a lot about Autism, and the things that come with it. Lee has written papers on Autism, and I believe they were published. 

I don't think I do come down hard on my mother for helping me get on disability. I come down hard on her for thinking it will be ridiculously easy. She is, if nothing else, a blind optimist most of the time; she is constantly wearing rose tinted glasses, and they tend to blur her perception of reality.

Do you just have a hard time being told no? 

I don't, actually. My mother does, though, when she's convinced she needs to mount some kind of "let's screw the government, they'll never know" type of mission. They know, they always do.

Would it have been better on yours and your mothers relationship if she just applied for the disability with out you knowing ? To avoid your backlash? I mean since you’re getting it now monthly, and no longer blog about that. Pardon my comparison with the “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” quote.

I'm not sure if that's possible; part of the process of applying is signing forms and other things.

Name change, and why do "good intentions" matter so much?

I think I have realized something in the past couple of months; when Support Worker sister offered to "help" me by telling me of the form that I did not need to fill out, and then writing on it that I needed maids/housekeepers/people telling me to do chores/to-do list-makers to come (something that I have learned does not actually exist, but plenty of people think that something like this should) she was high. High as in had smoked marijuana high. Who knows how much; she wasn't giggling, or eating, but rationality and intelligence was probably too much to ask for. She had made up a household chore, after all. So now, at least on this blog, her name is changed from Support Worker to Pot Princess.

I wonder if anyone knows that the part on that form they thought applied to me only did if I had already been in public housing already, and it was for some reason, not working out; and I would have gone to significant lengths to make it work out. And if actually reading the form was too much, one of them could have called the phone number on the first page. 

Calling that number would have been better than my mother's dismissal when I told her that nothing on that form actually said it was FOR me; it would have been better than the tug of war we had for weeks over this; it would have been better than me hearing her say that it wouldn't do any harm to fill out this ridiculous form, when it actually did; it would have been better than having Defender come out of nowhere, and "defend" Pot Princess as much as she did. As if I should accept the shoddy "good intentions" simply because they were offered to me.

Which brings me to my next topic: it seems like these same family members of mine think I should take it for granted that they always have "good intentions"; everything they do is or was based on "good intentions", no matter how ignorant, ridiculous or silly. It's as if they believe the "good intentions" they have for me are printed on their foreheads whenever they have one. Do I have to say that they aren't? That these silly and naive "good intentions" are childish and tacky? That their quality matches that of spray painted macaroni jewelry that were crafted at a camp somewhere?

My family will look different in 2025; it will not be because of newly arrived babies.

If my family gets to lead me down ridiculously long garden paths because of "good intentions", I get to say BS like the following:

In an earlier post, I predicted that one of my sisters, who works as a support worker, will have divorced by New Year's Day 2025, if not before that. I believe it will happen because my brother-in-law must have his expensive gadgets; no one can say no to him. He simply has to have them. It's the same thing with expensive groceries, alcohol and giving in to what their two children ask for; no is not a word that is said often in that household. She doesn't go without either; I'm pretty sure that she has regular nail and hair appointments. And she buys expensive clothes. Still, she isn't the spender that her husband is. And I think she is the one who can be persuaded to cut back on her expenses before the debt is too high; he won't until they have collectors calling. To add to that, I don't think they earn that much money, even though they both work. Part of my prediction is that they'll divorce over money and the spending of it.

The reason I think that they will separate and divorce, is that they have sold the house they were living in and are planning on, or they already have, moved into his parents' house. That means no more mortgage. If they have any fixed expenses at all, it will be utility bills and whatever they spend on renovations and yard maintenance. If they don't need to come up with a monthly mortgage payment, what will stop him from spending themselves into another hole? Which support worker sister will see that they're in before he does. Of course she will; she is slightly less oblivious than he is. Basically, what I'm saying is that they will, or he will, rack up the debt again; there's always more gadgets and tech to buy,  and most of it is expensive, especially if it's bought right when it comes out. They will divorce once it becomes clear that they're in a significant amount of debt again, and he turns to his family for a handout to pay the debt off with and doesn't get it. Or maybe it will be the fighting that couples who have high debts often do that does their marriage in...who knows.
And of course, if none of this happens, I will simply wave my hand and give good intentions as a reason I have predicted all this. The good intention being that we should all prepare ourselves for the upcoming divorce; assuming that brother-in-law's parents are both still alive when and if this happens, he will be fine, the two children will be fine. It's my sister who will be asked to leave.

Good intentions are not love

I am slowly coming to the realization that forgiveness for the pointless "good intentions" my sister and mother had for me, will not come. At least not while I am living with my parents; which puts me in a catch-22, because the rents in my city are high.
On a sort of related note, here is a spoken word poem I did for a class I'm just finishing up: https://viuvideos.viu.ca/media/Kaltura+Capture+recording+-+March+20th+2020%2C+1A57A20+pm/0_88ij8y1e
Don't watch it if you are proud of being an armchair expert, and would rather keep the illusion that good intentions are always needed and wanted.

There is no magic form. Persons With Disabilities is designed to keep those on it in poverty. There is no workaround.

On Wednesday night, I was part of a Q&A panel of writers who had their pieces published in the anthology Disabled Voices. I was asked to read, and later, to be part of the panel, because I have a poem published in this work. Someone asked if there are things that we wish other people did not do to us. My answer was that every once in a while, on social media and in real life, I run across some idiot who firmly believes that I, as someone on the Autistic Spectrum, will always need someone who is not on the Spectrum, to run my decisions by. I posted before, years ago, about a roommate I once had, that actually believed this. I have run into others, mostly on social media, who also believe this. Of course, every one of them was either trolling, or were, and perhaps still are, notorious for being arm chair experts; meaning, they might know about a lot of things that they have had no real experience with. They also tend not to have any formal education in their favourite subject area, yet they don't see any reason for that to stop them from "helping people". Support worker sister is an arm chair expert. My former roommate was definitely an arm chair expert. Facebook and Twitter are full of arm chair experts.
Keep in mind, I did not rant about everything I have written here. We were tight for time, and we had issues with the microphone. Plus, I was not the only one who had given a reading; two other writers who had been published in the anthology had also read their pieces, and were part of the panel as well. I had to share the microphone, and the time allotted, with them. It did go well. I brought up support worker sister and my mom trying to make me fill out the form that would have led to nothing, in the past year, as the last part of an answer to a question. More specifically, the question I wrote about above. The editor, who had emceed earlier, and was guiding the dialogue we were having, added that there is no magic form; Persons With Disabilities is designed to keep those on it in poverty; and there is no workaround.
I wish that people knew this. I wish that people would remember this.
There is no magic form.
Persons With Disabilities is designed to keep those on it in poverty.
There is no workaround.
Only arm chair experts think that they can work the work the process somehow, and shake more money out of the tree.