The Last Straw (1)

OK ... I think I'd best explain where the hell that last post came from. Quite an impressive rant if I do say so myself but I think it needs some context. This is my story.

I'll start in December 2000. I could go back to my birth and tell you all about being born with a physically disabled hand and how that really fucked me up right throughout school (and for your information ... being deformed is NOT the fucking same as being ginger or being fat mmmk!). I could also tell you all about the dysfunctional way I was raised but that's way too personal and as bad as I was raised, my folks don't (quite) deserve that. So Yeah ... December 2000 ... the 19th ...

At 6pm my best friend (who thought he was Merlin reincarnated) comes to my door and I let him in to see that he has a rather large longsword in his hands and a maniacal look in his eye. He thinks I'm Mordred and he's there to finish me off for good. Somehow I managed to thwart the sword attack but in the ensuing battle, he breaks a whisky bottle and proceeds to plunge it into the palm of my deformed hand and attempts to gouge off it's remaining digits. At this point I realised that this guy is not the kind of friend I should be with-holding violence from so I responded with extreme prejudice and left him needing 300 stitches. It's only by pure luck (HIS luck) that MY broken bottle somehow evaded his jugular vein, which I was aiming for. I finally manage to hit him over the head and leave him lying there unconscious in a pool of blood while I ran screaming from the house terrified. I later found out that he had been taking Prozac for the last 3 weeks or so but his reasons for doing what he did is academic. He did it and I've had to live with the consequences ever since. Incidentally, for this rather brutal attempted murder he served just 7 months in prison.

So ... I think that it's safe to say that this alone gives me ample reason to be very depressed and emotionally fucked up, wouldn't you? I mean not only have I had to go through life learning how to cope with a deformed hand, this sick fuck makes the whole thing ten times worse and I'm left to try and get used to a new deformity and one that is much more severe than the one I had already learned to live with. I put the picture up of my hand to show how it looks visibly. That index finger (which used to work perfectly well as a thumb after an operation that was performed on it when I was aged 5) is now locked permanently in the position shown. I've also lost about 75% of all feeling and sensation to that side of my hand. I could spend paragraphs telling you all about the resultant nightmares, anxiety, emotional disturbance, hyper-vigilance, sheer anger, self loathing and shame at the things that I wanted to do to that bastard in revenge ... but I'll leave it there. I think you get the idea. It's left me pretty fucked up both mentally and physically.

Now this is how this fits in with the rest of my life at that time. 3 months before the attack I'd chucked in a job working as an administrator for a local small business because I was sick of working my nuts off for peanuts and endless unfulfilled promises of a wage increase. I was on minimum wage and doing about 5 different jobs for them. Accounts, sales, credit control, purchasing, desk top publishing, building a new website, controlling 4 databases of sales and clients etc etc etc. National Sales Director was one of my titles ... pffft! I always give my all to a job. I'm an all or nothing type of guy. Well one day the manager says to me "You have to do more" so I flipped him the finger, told him to fuck off and walked out. As a result the woman I was living with at the time decided that she was going to leave me (it was her first husband that attacked me by the way). I can't go on without saying that she is the only person who I can count on to help me out in times of need. When there's been no-one else, she has been there for me. The results of the attack were hard on her too so I totally understand why she had to leave me.

So anyway, I'd already decided that I would NEVER work my nuts off to make some greedy lazy cunt rich on the back of MY hard labour whilst they pay me peanuts EVER AGAIN. So 3 months after the assault, in an effort to find a place for myself in this world I started a course on Owner Management with a view to starting my own business. Unfortunately, I took this on too soon after the traumatic event and I was unable to complete it due to my precarious state of mind. The woman I was living with finally left because at the time she couldn't cope with my anger which would all come out of me when we had a drink. We used to drink lots. This did not improve my mood. I sank into total depression for 2 years and basically did nothing but play computer games and browse the internet.

In 2003 I decided that I needed to get back on the horse so I went pounding the street. I decided that I wouldn't object to working for a charity so I went in to the offices of the local "area regeneration" scheme and asked if they had anything. It turned out that they were just setting up a furniture recycling scheme and needed someone to kick it off. I got an interview and was given the job there and then. It started at 2 days a week but within several months I had built up the scheme (and my own ability to deal) so that I was doing 4 days a week. Things were looking up. The manager was really cool and she basically left me (and the 3 guys who were also eventually taken on) to ourselves and we went for it. I won't say too much about that here because it's a really good story about how worker run workplaces can function so much better than the traditional boss and hierarchy deal. I'll be covering that in a future post. Anyway, the cool manager left and in her place, nine months later the umbrella organisation took on and appointed two part time managers (yeah I know, don't get me started) who turned out to be self serving political animals with no idea ... about anything. Anyway, I managed to work fairly well with them but over time relations deteriorated. One morning (July 2005 if I recall correctly) just as I and the other guys were walking in through the door (10 minutes before we should have been starting) we were dragged into the furniture showroom and given a nasty and ranty bollocking over something really trivial. I tried to remain calm and politely pointed out the reasons for this oversight only to be given the classic response "I don't want to hear your excuses". So I wigged out and told HER to fuck off too. I complained about this mistreatment to the umbrella organisation but in a breathtaking exercise in self justification, they maintained that it was ME that was in the wrong and they basically sacked me ... for being unwilling to be spoken to like a piece of shit by someone who basically couldn't find their own arsehole with both hands. So much for working for an ethical organisation.

And now recent history. The experience with the furniture recycling scheme laid me pretty low. I'm still not over it and I don't think I ever will be. It would appear that there is nowhere that you can work where you are treated with respect and paid a fair wage for a fair days labour. I've lost all hope in finding a place in this society and I've felt that way for several years. So not only do I have the ongoing depression which I still suffer from the assault (along with the permanent disability which it gave me), I also have to suffer the depression of knowing that I live in a society where I can't find a place to exist with any kind of dignity or honour. I've been on various forms of Incapacity Benefit for the last several years due to my anxiety, stress and depression and my experience within THAT system has made things infinitely worse.

I've gone on here longer than I expected to so I'll leave the whole sad and sorry story about how I've been treated by the DSS and benefit system for the next entry. If you're at all interested in knowing about what happened next I'll (try to) post part two in a few days time ...