On top of my current thoughts and feelings I also have to face my PIP review. I’ve requested my second extension because I just couldn’t bring myself to face it. Yesterday I enlisted a friends help to talk me through it, but now I actually have to do it.
What this means is that I have to review my initial application and tell them if things are the same, worse or better.
I’ve made no secret of how devastating the changes to my life have been over the last 3 years. It took me a year before I even considered filing for PIP or other benefits because I was so adamant that the change would be temporary.
What I didn’t know, that I do now, is just how fucking good I had it at the time of my initial application.
For instance I wrote ‘I can only walk Bella 2-times a week, for 30-40 minutes with a walking stick. But due to the impact this has on me I can’t do this on consecutive days and it means I can’t do other activities like a food shop.’ I’ll be honest I don’t even remember being able to walk so much or so often with Bella. It’s like it’s been erased from my memory, but then I find a lot of things have over the last few years. Another good reason to keep on top of my writing. But ultimately, from what I read, I sacrificed everything else to be able to walk Bella a few times a week, including seeing people and self care. So it may sound like I could do a fair amount, but it meant I could barely do anything else and I wasn’t walking fast, I’d barely manage one field in those 30-40 minutes.
Now I only get to walk Bella maybe once or twice in a 3-4 week period and for a maximum of 20 minutes. With a stick, with rest stops. Often tripping or trying to fight against legs that don’t want to get me back to the house safely. I often find my legs become unresponsive, they don’t ache or hurt, they just don’t listen to signals after a while and so they don’t lift sufficiently to avoid trips or scuffing…which also leads to trips and a feeling of not being safe. People probably don’t understand when they see me why I use a stick if I’m walking anything more than 100m or so, and this is why. It significantly reduces my fall risk, I can walk steadier and therefore more safely too. It also gives me something to lean on when I have to rest.
Of course there are many other examples throughout my application of how ‘good’ I had it when I was already really limited. I just used being able to walk Bella as an easy example to explain, plus being the thing I miss the most and I would trade the world to walk her 2-3 times a week now. I guess that’s down to hindsight, because I just think how grateful I’d be to have those levels of limitations back. And I was significantly limited then, I wouldn’t have received help if I wasn’t. It’s really not as easy as some think it is to get that help.
But compared to now, I had it so good.
So perhaps having my review at this current time isn’t the best for me mentally. Perhaps it’s my review that has triggered the thoughts of comparison, resentment and shame I’ve been having. Perhaps it’s all just a coincidence designed to test me to the limit. I don’t know.
I do know it’s making me feel particularly shitty and I really don’t want to do the review because I dread to think how I’ll feel once I’ve compared then and now in full. But I also know the stress of continuing to avoid it won’t make it any easier. So I’m going to do it, just bear with me while I feel a little sorry for myself and focus on overcoming this trauma.