SOCIAL INSECURITY

How does one cope with a sudden drop in income? Badly, is usually the answer. Dean's benefit has just gone from reasonable to next to nothing. This sort of worry is constant. The threat is always there. One tries to get better but the constant threat of large drops in income make one feel totally insecure and holds up recovery.

But we've been in worse positions. Living on benefits is a terribly precarious existence, especially for the mentally ill such as Dean and I. We both suffer from chronic, long-term depression. Dean has anger issues too and I have post-traumatic stress disorder. One cannot get a psychologist now, due to that referral being taken out of the hands of the doctor and given to the 'counsellors', so it fell to us to help each other. The blind leading the blind, you say, but actually compared to the 'cousellors' Dean and I know far more about psychology, sociology and, above all, the depravity of some people, even family and trusted 'friends'.

So we've spent several years counselling each other and out of it has come so much art as to be an explosion. The music is the most obvious. CRIMINAL SUICIDE LTD was born out of this maelstrom of thoughts and emotion;. with it came other arts. Photography, videos, drawings, etc. etc. etc. - things both of us had always done but now with the knowledge that it was brilliant! So we set about trying to make all our music and art and poetry etc. available to all. We paid out of our benefits and got musical equipment, the RS7000, the Stratacaster, then the studio equipment. Then we made demos of everything before going on to record full quality tracks. We have bought computers, effects boards, and, lately, a drum machine. We did all this on benefits, usually by way of credit.

Neither of us can work for an employer due to the mental health issues but we can work for ourselves, which is what we are trying to do. But first we need to get to where the action is. Neither of us can drive, we are both estranged from our families who, it seems, preferred us as the gibbering wrecks we once were so they could pretend none of it was their fault. We have no friends because everyone we knew here turned out to be a grade one asshole! To be honest, I'd given up on people until I went on the web and actually met some nice people. It was hard to recognise them at first, but I'm getting better at it.

And now £120 drop in income because the DWP have not yet decided whether Dean still needs DLA, so that has stopped til they decide and the Care Allowance that I am supposed to get but don't, is also stopped giving Dean £37.00 odd to live on per week. Nightmare or maybe not. We can not afford to go to the pub on a weekend, now. Nor will there be any more Ghurkha restaurant, no more smoking. But - if we get through it, and we shall, and they decide to award the DLA we will get a lump sum and may then be able to move. Meanwhile we shall be able to put in a lot of work without distraction. Either way we will get fit tramping the mile or so to Tesco for bargains and the 60 degree hills into town and back for sell-by-date-reached foods at the Co-op.