I thought winning my benefit appeal would be an end to the worst of my troubles. I've been focusing on that for so long but now it's here, nothing really feels better. I'm still waiting for the rest of my backpay but given the amount of debt I'm in and the interest that's built up, the backpay won't cover it. Overdraft, interest, backrent plus various amounts like a lot of petrol money I owe my landlady.

And she can't even be blamed or criticised for wanting repayment, she's kept me living here with no rent payments for like a year and a half, driving me around, mostly paying the petrol out of her own pocket (apart from when it was supplemented by a few mutual aid requests when times got too hard), and being on a low fixed income herself, an old age pension, she's got into debt because of this. So of course I need to pay her back so she can pay off her own debts.

So instead of my problems being over I have these debt payments stretching out ahead of me and only two years of guaranteed benefit payments before I get reassessed all over again. So I have my normal rent and share of the utilities to pay, plus paying off backrent and other debts like utilities and petrol, paying off the overdraft and massive interest, transport because although I have a disabled person's bus pass, the nearest bus stop is nearly a mile away and my mobility isn't good enough for that walk so I still need to pay my landlady's petrol for driving me around.

On top of this my landlady's daughter has become ill and is in hospital so my landlady will go and stay with her, maybe for weeks, when she comes out of hospital. Who will drive me to all my hospital appointments and to the supermarket? I will have to pay for taxis and food delivery and my benefit payments already aren't enough for all this. I have lots of medical appointments coming up like the physiotherapist, podiatrist, ophthalmologist and others and some are in hospitals in other towns, it's expensive getting to them all. I'm not eligible for free transport like the St John's Ambulance (as I don't have the required medical conditions to qualify) and you have to pay for hospital transport.

My clothes are basically rags, I thought I'd buy new clothes after winning my appeal but nope. I thought I'd be able to have some actual pleasures once the appeal was over but that's a pipedream. My landlady took me to an appointment this morning and as we drove past the harbour on the way back I saw all the people sitting there, eating fish and chips and thought how I would like to do that but still can't even afford something as simple as a portion of fish and chips. And I'm just today coming to terms with the fact that this is permanent. It's not going to change. Society says I'm a useless eater and useless eaters should get barely enough to survive on, if anything. This constant anxiety about money is something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. Why does everything in our society have to be money, money, money? Why does Jeff Bezos have the UK government paying his staff benefits out of taxes so he can underpay them and keep more profits for himself while I have to beg for mutual aid?

Money is the whole reason I'm disabled to start with. Coming from a low income family I wasn't fed adequately as a child and so later went on to develop a malnutrition-related cancer which has ruined my life. Then when my symptoms started it took the NHS nearly 4 years to diagnose me because they didn't want to spend money doing any tests. The only reason I got diagnosed in the end is because my employer at the time decided to give the employees a private healthcare package as a perk, so i was able to go to a private hospital who actually did some tests. Everything is always money-based. Without that I probably wouldn't have gotten diagnosed and would eventually have died and I'd be better off that way.

And on top of this I have all my usual problems to deal with - the mobility issues on my left side (caused by my stroke) are flaring up again, my achilles tendon is so inflamed I'm having trouble walking again and my whole left side is painful and debilitated. The pharmacy/GPs have messed up my prescriptions again, people look at me like I'm worthless trash whenever I go anywhere because my clothes are tatty, my hair is falling out, I have edema and skin infections and can't walk properly. Even though my income is much lower than an average person's I have more expenses due to being disabled, even the fact I need so much laundry disinfectant and can't use normal detergent is a massive constant expense. I stupidly thought once I won my benefit appeal I could do things like paying for extra physiotherapy since the NHS is so shit I don't get anywhere near enough appointments, and paying for a carer to help me with some basic things, but that is not going to be possible.

Society wishes people like me would just go away but they won't legalise assisted suicide. What is the point of this life? I try to find meaning by telling myself maybe I chose this life to learn some lesson, but I know that's just cope.

I can't even have the simple pleasure of meeting with friends. Everyone gradually drifted away and abandoned me when I got sick. I even spoke on here about how I recently reached out to an old friend and was rebuffed. After two messages he couldn't even be bothered to respond any more. I left a greeting on another old friend's facebook page and he didn't even bother answering even though he's very active on his page and has almost certainly seen my message. I haven't met up with friends or had any kind of social life since 2010. Since then the only people I've spoken to are my landlady, hospital and shop staff and people online.

And while most people on hexbear/lemmy have been kind, even on here some people have been mean or used me for their own fun. This month alone I've had two people on lemmy repeatedly tease me with offers of mutual aid and never come through. I had one person a while ago tell my my problems don't matter, it doesn't even matter if I become homeless and give me suggestions on suicide methods.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I just don't have the energy to write out any more now. But I have no-one else to talk to and everything is just too much. I'm even constantly eaten up with anxiety that there might be an afterlife, and maybe I'll be punished in it, this terror, pain and misery might never end.

Please sign and share.

I haven't been too active here this past week or so as I've been having a lot going on. I thought once my benefits were sorted things would calm down but the opposite has happened. I think I've been in a mental health crisis this past week or two, plus personal and financial issues.

This mental health thing is something that has happened to me on and off for around 18ish years. I think it's some kind of religious mania and it's embarrassing to talk about but I once brought it up with a therapist and she didn't know what to say about it, dismissed it and changed the subject, and I need to talk to someone about it as it's really worrying me. What happens is that I suddenly develop an intense belief in Christianity which can last for weeks or months. During these times I intensely fear hell, feel what i can only describe as an intense religious ecstasy, and feel determined to try and stop all my sins (basically whatever things I do that the bible is against) and even go so far as to throw away all my personal items that are anti-Christian, this time for example I threw away some of my books such as ones about evolution.

This happens every few years. It hasn't happened in so long I thought it was over, but it started again and at first I felt good about it, determined to stop all my sins and repent. However last night i felt like God was telling me off because of my dishonesty towards the DWP - you know how I've been asking people to give me food vouchers so the DWP (the UK benefits office) don't find out I've been receiving financial help? I felt like God was convicting me of that sin and telling me I have to pay everyone back as obtaining that money involved deception towards the DWP. I also felt like I was being told I have to go out and preach the gospel to everyone I know - like literally contact people I haven't seen in years and preach to them.

Well I felt completely overwhelmed by the thought of having to pay back the financial help I've received as I have no idea how I would ever afford it (I still need help as I'll mention in a minute) and I also felt embarrassed to preach to people, especially as I have had this issue before and know it wears off eventually. I knew when it wore off I would be embarrassed if I had done that. Maybe due to the reality check of these two things, when I woke up this morning, the need to repent and preach had died down a lot. I feel almost back to normal except there is still a huge nagging part of my mind telling me I'm going to hell if I don't do these things. There's no point asking the NHS mental health services for help as they're worse than useless. I just wish this issue would go away permanently and completely. i feel so alone with this as I've not heard of anyone else having this issue.

During this episode something happened that also made me think this issue is some kind of mental crutch because of how crappy my life is. I spoke in chat about how I'd googled an old friend, Steve. well I decided to google all my other old school friends. I found one had died a few months ago (and became worried he's now in hell), but I actually managed to get in contact with another one. One of my best friends in my school days was James. His family lived in another town but he was staying in our town as he'd got a place at our school. He lived on the same road as me, a lodger in someone's house. During our A-Levels we were such close friends he'd often sleep over at my house for days on end, we'd sleep in the same room, even the same bed - totally platonic, he stayed at my house for pretty much an entire summer holiday once so we could be together instead of him going home to his own town. Last time I saw him I was 22 and he came back to our town for a visit, then we lost contact. Well I googled him on Wednesday and found a youtube channel with his first name and very unusual last name. I left a comment asking "Are you James C T______ from (his hometowns name). Yes it was him. We swapped emails and spent the rest of the night emailing each other.

He seemed just as thrilled to find me as I was to find him. We caught up, looked up our other old friends on social media to see what they were doing and I mentioned I wasn't working due to health issues. He seemed concerned and asked what was going on. I then did what can only be described as a huge trauma dump on him, about my health issues, being unemployed, being embarrassingly ugly now, being unable to socialise. I finished by saying I'd love to see him again and though I'm not feeling up to it right now, how about next summer as that will give me time to try and improve myself physically (get better at walking and try and look less hideously ugly) before then. I went to bed that night so excited I couldn't sleep at all, feeling like I finally have something to look forward to and work towards, an incentive to try and improve myself physically, put more effort into my physiotherapy etc, get better at walking as there would be a purpose to it all now. I also briefly felt less religious, like now I had something real to look forward to I didn't need that after all. That was on Wednesday night and he hasn't responded. I suppose he doesn't want to meet up, and finding me again doesn't mean as much to him as it does to me, and he doesn't want to deal with all my shit. It feels really crushing.

On top of all this I am going to have to make another mutual aid post. I got a letter saying that my backpay will be divided into two parts, spread out weeks apart, and I'm not actually getting my monthly payment for weeks yet either. So everything has been intense and I'm just really confused and I haven't been sleeping well at all.

I received a letter telling me I have been granted disability benefits until March 2029. However they can start the reassessment process a year before that date, and if the assessment process is quick and I lose again, my benefits will be stopped again as soon as I lose, even if it's before 2029. So I only have guaranteed payments until March 2028. Two years before this could all start again. This is despite the fact that I had letters of support from my GP, mental health therapist, a social worker and my landlady all confirming my disabilities, the amount of help I need and the fact my condition isn't likely to improve much.

On the plus side at least I didn't have to have another assessment. I sent in so much medical evidence that they judged me on the evidence alone - confirmation of my conditions and how they affect me from hospital consultants and the physiotherapist, copies of medical records, letters from people who know me like those already mentioned and print outs of my prescriptions, along with a statement I wrote about myself and how much help I need.

But I'm so worried about the fact that I only have two years. I had been hoping get the maximum 10 years, and to quit the medical treatments and medications that don't help me and just cause me side effects and stress. But with only two years to go until the next assessment I feel I have to keep attending unwanted medical appointments and taking unwanted drugs or I'll fail the next assessment as they'll use it against me. Plus the fact that the government keeps threatening to make it more difficult to qualify for disability in the future, and says they are slashing the amount in a few years.

I want to thank everyone here profusely for the incredible amount of help I have received - moral support, friendship, food vouchers, money and physical items sent through the post. I can't imagine how I would have survived all this time without you. I was so desperate at my financial situation I was actually on a suicide forum trying to find someone to kelp me un@l1v£ myself, and that is how I discovered hexbear/lemmygrad - someone on there told me about it and suggested I ask for help. I thought I'd be lucky to get one meal, I never imagined you would all support me so much for over a year.

There have been a couple of people here during this time who have spent weeks teasing me with offers of help that never came and seemed to enjoy doing it, but most people have been wonderful. Prior to finding this place I actually asked Christian organisations for help and was rudely turned away. The food bank is a nightmare and many only allow you to go three times every 6 months. Macmillan stopped giving grants to cancer patients and my local council stopped the household support fund, I had literally nowhere else to turn.

So, I now have a (low) income for the next two years. It's still going to be a struggle - along with typical expenses like rent/utilities/food/transport etc I have additional expenses like buying things I need for surgeries and other medical stuff that the NHS doesn't provide and if anyone ever wants to keep helping with supermarket gift cards to make it less of a struggle I would be so grateful, but even if no-one is able or willing to do that I really appreciate everything and wish I could repay it somehow.

Thank you all, you're the best people I've ever known.