Long Gaps when Progress was made

In all honesty, had I not had a strange week I would never have returned to this blog. I haven't seemed to need it for sometime now. That isn't to say that nothing medical has happened. For Pete's sake, its COVID out there, people! Yet as I foolishly told my GP when I saw him last year "this is quite the most stable I have been in sometime". Which is honestly a testimony to him as a business model and honest practitioner. With other people to worry about and chaos in the world I only had a few developments. Yet silence is always punctuated by something and I am trying to bend my mind around my reality now at least to save my sense of self. 

My parents are ill, I am ill, my sister is ill. I really didn't need to be thinking about my ability to have a roof over my head or mortality, but here we are. The following I am including as a time capsule, for my mindset when I first had a traumatic visit to the ER for my eye (autoimmune fun) and what has happened after. I hope to be in a better mood tomorrow after having a day out with sister and being nearly halfway done taking strong dose steroids which is making me moody as hell.

I've always been of the belief that your upward trajectory in life is equally weighted by efforts and willpower as it is to general skills you get at birth. I was granted disability eleven years ago as my health suddenly imploded between my two college programs. I adjusted my perspectives in order to continue my education in a adjoining field. I have held onto the idea that by some random act of chance I could at least marginally improve myself in the future. The pipe dream being entering the workforce full time again. This year as I am up for CDR once again (roughly my third, they never come on time) I expected much the same cycle of wanting to improve and then karmic interference. I tend to self soothe by reassuring myself of hard facts and that the logic processes will still be the same so I will continue on as usual, at bare minimum. 

This year however, months after my CDR cleared no problem I am thrown during a particularly bad week at my household into not only my near-yearly emergency room crisis, but also by getting an appointment for financial review. General google consensus is to just take it as a bureaucratic time waster, but they are asking for very specific documents which are not relevant to my life. (VA/Burial/ ect.) So I was trying to decompress by talking to my sister and mentioned that I am not coded for SSI status under the condition I applied myself under. When I was trying to find where I had footnoted it, I instead dropped into the large files and came to a horrifying discovery. I am notated as being severely cognitive impaired and incapable of likely handling finances. The oversight doctor said this would most likely have been due to stroke (Affected IQ: 70).

Needless to say my ego is beyond bruised. My family has been complaining for so long about changes I have made for my own comfort that they do not like. I thought I was just mellowing out and being more honest in how I am willing to spend my time/energy. Now I am smacking straight into a pillar, that for over ten years people have let me believe a lie. I did finish my Bachelorette and Masters degree during my first few years on disability. I thought I still might have a way to finish any sort of ascent in my lifetime goals. But now here sits the truth, that person was not possible and will likely never be possible. I will never leave poverty, I will never earn equal to my partner and I will always be looked at by a failure by those who should be peers, because I cannot heal this brain injury. 

Normally, I would take this news as celebration that my responsibilities to perform for others sakes are nulled by this knowledge. I could be liberated by it, but the people in my life don't work that way. So now that I have reached my ceiling I guess I am looking for lateral moves. There must be someway to broaden my scope again by breaking down walls around me, even if the ceiling height will always be fixed? Why is the SSI program so cruel that we aren't allowed to make better for ourselves without utter horrendous fear placed upon our person.