So this is basically just me venting to the sub because I feel like most people in my life don't really understand.
To start off, I know I'm in a relatively good position, as I live in a country with mostly free healthcare and better accomodations for disabled people than most. Still sucks, though.
I was a ~'gIfTeD cHiLd'~ and have a better education than anyone in my family, but we were fucking poor and disfunctional and could never afford stuff like tutoring, extracurriculars or even goddamn school lunches. I dropped out of Uni because I kept having panic attacks because of the money problems. Every time I started building something for myself I ended up in the mental hospital and then back at square one. It got so far that some pencil pusher from the government decided 'MJ can't work 4 hours a day, so…fuck them I guess' and they wanted to put me on pension payments for the rest of my life – I was 25. Those payments ain't shit. They basically told me to live off of minimal handouts for the rest of my life, begging for scraps and having to prove to them that I'm a good poor cripple that doesn't get any bad, illegal extra money on the side every month.
I want to work! I want to be productive! I want to be a self-sustaining adult! I went to the people in charge and said, hey, is there any way in between? Is there anything between not working at all and killing myself- and they said no! Until I found a program that helps people like me get into the workplace again and they were like 'why didn't you come to us sooner?'
Because nobody told me this program exists, that's why.
They asked 'why didn't you apply for a disability card?'
Because I didn't know I could. Because nobody, no doctor, no government employee, ever told me that frequent stays in the mental hospital and living most of my life with crippling depression entitled me to a disability card.
And now I'm in this fucking program, working my ass off, getting less than if I'd taken the pension and decided never to work again. My contract is still months away. I earn less than minimum wage. Sometimes I don't know why I get up in the morning. But there's no alternative. If I quit I'm on the street. I hate it.