Fight or Flight: Star Trek Enterprise: Season 1, episode 3

I have just been looking at my various projects, blogs and websites, and I am embarrassed to realise that I have hardly written anything in the last year.

In my defense though, it has been an extraordinarily hard and painful year. A year of sheer torture would not be an exaggeration.

I applied for PIP, Personal Independence Payment, the welfare benefit for the disabled and chronically ill in the UK, in October of 2021, but at every stage of the process, I have been assaulted be official lies, inveigling, obfuscation and denial, despite a mountain of evidence, and so now finally I have a date for a Tribunal, more than a full year after my application.

‘Fight or Flight’ feels like a very apt title. It has been a battle, but I am so far beyond exhausted I can hardly describe how the process has added to my health struggle, both mental and physical. I am at the point where I just want it to be over and done with, for the torture to end. I almost don’t care at this juncture whether or not I win, I just need it to stop.

Summary of the Episode

The crew of the Enterprise NX-01 are starting out on their journey of exploration, and discover an abandoned alien spaceship containing corpses which had apparently been used by another alien species for some kind of experiment. It is all rather macarbre, and Lt. Hoshi Sato – the communications officer – is particularly freaked out by it and is embarrassed afterwards by her reaction.

If I recall correctly, a little space battle ensures because they have a bit of a failure to communicate with the aliens who come to investigate what has happened to their people, and they wrongly assume that Enterprise were the ones responsible for the carnage.

On the Bridge

When is it right to stand your ground and fight, and when is it safer to flee? Back here in the real world, I really don’t feel as though I have any choice but to fight on. If I were to withdraw my claim now, the last year of torture would have been in vain. It is just another week or two, and whatever the result, it will be over. I will be free. I will be able, finally, to relax.

LLAP

Dream of a Better Life

Since I last wrote I have completed my application for PIP (Personal Independence Payment, the UK’s diasbility benefits) with the help of the Citizens Advice Bureau. It is an enormous, almost 50 page form which took so long to complete, and by the end of that stage of the process alone I felt mentally and emotionally brutalised. I will most likely have a medical assessment to look forward to and, if my previous attempts to get PIP are anything to go by, a battle for mandatory reassessment and even Appeal. Previously I had not bothered to go to a formal Appeal because I simply wasn’t well enough to fight the decision makers on my own. But this time, I have the support of the Citizens Advice Bureau who promise to see me through the Appeals process if it comes to that.

For now though, I have had enough. I don’t want to think about it any more. I don’t want to worry (about looking the right kind of ill, about having written the form correctly, about possibly having forgotten to sign it, due to the ADHD, about not having sufficient’ evidence’ to support my claim, about my GP and consultants potentially not writing supportive letters. The list goes on and on.)

Now I want to get on with my life, to the extent that I can within the limitations of my illness. What that means in practice really is spending a lot of time on the sofa, trying to ignore the constant pain, watching a ridiculous amount of telly, sleeping at all the wrong times, lying awake at night, crying a bit, enjoying the company of my teenagers who are still mostly home due to Covid, attempting mostly unsuccessfully to read, and enjoying the technology of Alexa, Audible, Spotify and various phone apps that connect me socially with the outside world.

It’s not much of a life, set out in that context, but it is the life I have led for at least 3 years full time, and intermittently for the 15 years prior.

It is my hope that, if and when, I am awarded PIP, it could improve my life just enough. If I’m able to afford the restricted low histamine diet, I would potentially have a lessening of pain and symptoms. In the best case scenario, it would give me increased mobility and energy enough to volunteer or even work part time.

For now though, that’s just a dream. For now, I only dream.

p.s. Since I last posted, I changed the name of this blog from Seaside Therapy to Star Trek Therapy, to match my facebook group. I had intended to change the blog theme to make it look more Star-Trekky but I haven’t had the energy so far. If you’re familiar with WordPress (.com) and can recommend a theme, please let me know!