I've spent 4 months trying to get work through the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission. I've been appropriate, aware and respectful.
They're treating me badly, and I got more nervous dealing with them today than I have gotten dealing with Presidents for 6 years.
The panic of being treated like you're crazy; you can't know what it's like until you've been treated that way. The panic is a reflex for people who have been treated that way before; I can control that panic in most situations, but being treated that way is the nemesis that you face again and again for the rest of your life, as soon as you have the stigma.
There's nothing that you can say when they have decided as a group how they're going to treat you. You also can't get upset the way that any normal person would. While being treated as if you are subhuman, you have to have a superhuman ability to know what they're going to do and say and to think of how to challenge what they have already decided to do, without being labeled as crazier.
They don't like to hear the word "No" from people whom it's their job to help; like many people who live and work in an imbalance of power that's in their favor, they think that No is their word exclusively and they never want to admit to being wrong.
I panicked so much that I was going to misspell the name of the person to whom I was sending an email today that I misspelled it. The entire email was flawless except for her name, which was the only thing that I panicked that I was going to misspell.
I'm 42 years old. I don't know if the panic that was instilled in me at 17 will ever go away.
They're not even threatening me with anything except not employing me, but the way that they're doing it, treating me like I'm stupid and that they know better than I do what I'm capable of and what my needs for support are; it's triggering the panic. They're not going to help me get work and then help me if someone harasses me at work; they're going to treat me as if the only work that I can do is the most menial work and that all I can hope to have is a job where I'll have to say that the videos online where I'm defending myself against stalkers so nobody abducts me are not what I'm like anymore.
I don't know if they think I'm crazy or if they know I'm not crazy; I don't know if they're afraid of me or of the people who are persecuting me. They work for the government; it's a government agency.
4 months; they've misled me and condescended to me for 4 months. It's why I decided to start school again; I realized that my attempts to get work from Mass Rehab were going to result in nothing but humiliation.
"Humiliation" is not even a word that I have allowed myself to use about how the conglomerate has treated me since 2010, because I know that the conglomerate wants to humiliate me and so I refuse to feel that way no matter what the conglomerate does to me or causes to happen to me. The conglomerate's behavior toward me, starting almost 20 years after I was first in a hospital, has hit against a soul that is mostly too weathered to care about the conglomerate's opinion other than to be concerned about the conglomerate's power and subsequent ability to harm me. The "you're crazy even though we're not saying that in so many words" routine from people who are supposed to be professional helpers of "crazy" people; although years of it is what weathered me to be able to endure other abuses, that specific abuse can sometimes still reduce me to gibbers, if it surprises me.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 19, 2016 @ 6:25 p.m.
