Play the cards you are dealt

In the UK at the moment the cuts, or austerity measures as politicians prefer to call them, are very much targetted at ordinary people. There is something of a witch hunt for those who are not in work. There are not the vacancies out there, that is a fact, but that hasn't stopped the pressure from falling on the unemployed, ill and disabled. Financial support is harder to access, the sums are slashed and claimants live amongst others who feel guilt is the price you should pay for being on benefits.

For those who succeed in a claim for financial support, I say well done to them. The application process is complex, obstructive and without compassion... and they have overcome it.

Last year during an episode of depression Alicia and I sought financial support for the first time in our lives. I don't need to write here that depression brings life to a standstill, so the reality was that I wasn't leaving the house, answering the phone, opening the curtains, showering, dressing, let alone bringing my business accounts up to date. But that is exactly what was required to make an application for employment support allowance (ESA). Alicia made the call because I wasn't able to talk to a stranger on the telephone. The questions were complex, sought detail and exactitude. The sort of question that can only be answered with a great deal of preparation. An hour later an exhausted Alicia put down the phone. A few days later, a form arrived and once again we were asked the same questions, and this time with accompanying evidence. A week later another form much the same as the last and then another one, I think three in all before we gave up. The irony was that only a mentally well person could have the capacity to apply for a benefit, designed to assist the self employed at a time of ill health.

Our financial decline has been steadily driven by the cycling nature of the depressive episodes. A few years ago we began by turning to our credit cards and overdrafts when my ill health led to prolonged absences from work and reductions in salary. When I lost my job becoming self employed was the only way to be employable. We started to sell our belongings to get through the difficult periods and avoid missing payments. We cut back on whatever we could, not using the gas central heating that only a few years ago I had installed myself. Giving up the family car. Dental care, hair cuts, meat and take aways are all luxuries we don't and can't afford.

When I pulled my accounts together recently the financial cost of my ill health became transparent. The patchy periods of being well enough to work, against the dark days of ill health averaged out to an income of around £615 a month. With Alicia's salary, child benefit and child tax credits, that figure improved to £1093. It was a shock to see what depression, what I, was doing to our family.

After the monthly mortgage, council tax, gas, electricity, water, phone, insurances, TV license, prescriptions are deducted... amounting to £854, this leave us £239. With that we feed our family, wash our clothes, ride the bus, clean, and make a token payment to our creditors. I write this down here not for sympathy, but so that the descent from mental ill health to homelessness is less mystical.

This month will be the first time we default on the mortgage. But we are proactive, and we are survivors. The mortgage company have an application from us to transfer to interest only for a few months, we have more things that we can sell and we are cultivating the back garden to reduce our food spend in the future. In the kitchen we are creative and accomplish something akin to alchemy with seasonal (and therefore affordable) ingredients.

When I said a couple of posts ago that we had to adjust our lives to accept and survive the periods of health and ill health this is what I meant. There is no point anymore pretending that we can aim for a time of stability. The last four years have been devoid of stability and nobody is going to magic away the cost of living in this county or employ someone who can't tell you if they will be well from one day to the next.

From the very first day that Alicia and I came together it was made difficult for us. We have always felt and still do that it is us against the world. Never more so than now. With a compassionless government in power that asks 'what will we get in return' as though human kindness and compassion were themselves born of capitalism. We live in a climate where our compassion for eachother and our unequal and different loads are obscured by the witch hunt and a competitive drive. A drive that has us attacking the weak, just as one would prune the smaller shoots from a sapling... and disgard them so that others can flourish. Alicia, Xavier and I are occupying a part or society that is expendable, inconsequential, burdensome. It is the luck of the draw.