I'm insane. Clearly I don't have a grasp of the political realities and actual life experience of Bureaucracy.
So therefore, I'd really appreciate it if somebody could please explain the logic to me.
You have to Pay money for a form, so you can get a job, so you can earn money, to pay for the form. But you have to pay the money first.
Somewhere in there, I lost the train of logic.
(Crazy Man Talk on the flip.)
See, here's the deal. I was pretty much Non-functional for about 2 years. I'd talk the talk, walk the walk, and jump through the required hoops, but I wasn't getting any better. Slowly, a form would disappear, license would go missing, etc... etc... I was functioning, but like a satellite in a degrading orbit, I wasn't anywhere NEAR where I needed to be, and it was only a matter of time before the inevitable would occur.
And then I went on medication. Suddenly I became aware of both how screwed up I was, and how easy it was to slip back into that drain circling cycle. I had help, thank the man upstairs, from my folks, who helped me get to the people I needed and the people I needed to talk to.
Today... Today was successful, but the thought of somebody who doesn't have the support structure in place to help is shocking.
1st Thing, I needed my Driver's License. I haven't had one in about 2 years, and If I want to get back to work, I NEED it. After I have paid the rent, and counting the loan I got from my folks, I'm sitting pretty at -894.00. Of course I'll have the 33 bucks to renew, right? After all, remember, a license is a privilege, not a right! Mentally smart people know that I should have paid for my documents before I paid for a place to sleep for my children. No waivers. No aid. Nobody even MENTIONED them. I'm sure somewhere, in some little corner of the welfare department there's a program that helps with that. Would be nice If I was told about it. Course, A mentally ill adult would know that he needed to hunt for that specific program, right?
2nd Thing: I no longer have a copy of my birth certificate. Need that for my Social Security card. Also need one for my daughter. Fifty Bucks. No waiver. Once again, I'm sure there's a program to help me with that. I just would need to show some ID to qualify. Not that I have the time to hunt for that program, but hey, that's what we people with ALL the time in the world do, right?
3rd Thing: Social Security Card. Office closes at 12. Today. Any other day, it closes at 3. Hope you don't have a job or anything that might take up that six hour period. But don't complain, because that's FREE. (Birth Certificate fees are somebody else's problem. Don't blame us.)
And that's just one day. One day of trying to get my life back together with zero help from "Social Workers" who seem to be RIGHT THERE the instant that your math and their math with regards to your income and your expenses is off by a few bucks, but are nowhere to be found when you need help.
I'm a highly functional madman. I'm on medication. I'm raising two kids who are doing well in school. I was paying my rent. It was only when I stopped being able to do one of those things that anybody started paying attention.
One guess as to which one it was that they started paying attention to. I just worry about the mentally ill person who doesn't have an advocate to get through the day. When social workers are there to enforce compliance rather than help, it changes the system from one that is looking to help folks into one that just looks for an excuse to pull the rug out.
And Madmen already have enough rugs pulled out from them by their own minds.