[renamed]: HERE! TASTE THIS BRICK!

[navkat]

Fuck you, Department of the V-fucking-A. You're utterly useless for anything but throwing more drugs at a problem you have utterly failed to accurately diagnose treat, or give a horse's hooty-tootie about. I'll do it myself...NO DON'T BOTHER GETTING OFF YOUR ASS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. THANKS BUT NO THANKS, I GOT THIS.

So now, due to being horrifyingly paper-fucked and violated by you, the US Navy, my ex BF who was a Navy Corpsman and who raped my medical records but suffered ZERO as far as accountability is concerned, you have robbed me of:
1. 2 clearly service-connected disabilities and Tx for the same
2. A proper rating of 20% or greater, leaving me for TEN YEARS with a rating that inadequately addresses or acknowledges the REAL level shit I have to put up with as a result of the shit you broke.
3. My GI Bill benefits (THAT one REALLY stung: getting the shaft when it comes to fixing shit that's broken is bad enough but having you BREAK what I already paid for MYSELF simply because "time ran out" while I was too busy managing the aforementioned disability is fucking sadistic).
4. Now, you are trying to exclude me from the one option I have left through a game of "Delay her paperwork and keep kicking it back until the disqualification date."

Fuck you.

FUCK YOU, BUREAUCRATIC JUDICIAL SYSTEM.

I have put up with unimaginable amounts of shit and watched my entire life fall apart in front of me to FIGHT my way through enough school to CLAW my way out of this sewage hole IN SPITE OF every obstacle imaginable. I have been separated from my son since June 2011. I have been beaten down, physically, socially and psychologically by every motherfucker to encounter me in my weakened state. There is no shortage of contemptuous KICKS on behalf of the weak, bitter and insecure. I have been victim to fraud, abuse, violence, theft, waste and utter incompetence. Been surrounded by sickness and alcoholism. CRIED OUT for help, using every available resource only to be mocked and ignored by a system whose attention seemingly goes only to those willing to act like total fucking PSYCHOPATHS to get what they want and need.

I am exhausted.

I don't want to try anymore. I can't live a life of being a total fucking asshole: it is a strategy I have neither the lack of conscience or aptitude to employ but it's almost certain at this point that I am nearly completely FUCKED.

I need HELP. I need a fucking BREAK.

I have come close to making "the final cut" but I know that I will never actually do this. My little kid is entitled to my utter devotion to being an endless source of strength and unconditional love for him. If no one else in this entire fucking miserable WORLD, at least he has me. At LEAST that. That's far more than I ever had and I wish little more than to be sufficient at providing THAT.

We are falling through the cracks, though. Too smart and resourceful to be taken seriously as one in need of any help and too weak and lacking in skill and resources to pull us to safety...like a flood survivor, clinging uselessly to a sinking piece of flotsam: the fact that I have not yet let go the only criteria for my being ignored while wild apes loot my home and empty my bank account and I uselessly and powerlessly look on, screaming "STOP! THIEVES!"

I'm so angry, it's all I can do to bite back the tears and swallow the lump in my throat. To be faced with the fact that my hard-won education has been utterly POINTLESS. That I am of no more value here with it than before the investment and struggle is a slap in the face.

So what will I do? We both KNOW what I'll do. I will wipe your phlegm off my cheek, buck up like a good girl and keep fighting. Quietly. I will stand up and scan the room for another exit, will assess the resources available and feel the gears turn in my head while I try to fashion a battering-ram out of found objects in a room full of splintered wood and broken things while the hateful continue to frustrate my efforts with butane and salt rubbed in my wounds.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Holy fuck. 

[Doktor Howl]

To be faced with the fact that my hard-won education has been utterly POINTLESS.

What?

[navkat]

When I was 14, I lived in a shitty neighborhood on Long Island--a Hamlet in the Town of Islip called Brentwood.

I was the "weird girl" in school. Teachers resented me because I was bright and capable but so fucked up with untreated ADD and who-the-fuck-knows-what-else unspecified social disorder (Mild Asperger's? Maybe?) that I was a mess of frustrating disorganization, unfollowed instructions and a demeanor that seemed to rub everyone the wrong way for reasons I couldn't comprehend.

My parents were psychotic: my father profoundly violent, my mother profoundly neglectful. I carried myself with a guilty conscience. I still have a hard time looking people in the eye when they're speaking to me.

I was a total social misfit: too smart to get along and go along with the stoners and retards. Too much of a basket case to be considered for inclusion in anyone's "reindeer games." This was fine with me. I had an old Walkman and an endless array of cassette tapes containing everything from The Beatles to pop music nicked from Casey Kasem's Top 40 to the then, bizarre "nu-wave" alternative shit nabbed off WLIR, WDRE and the SUNY Stoney Brook station; WUSB.

There's an incident that's sort of a defining event in my life. One day, walking home from school, these boys who walked my same route were behind me. One of them had somehow obtained a new pellet gun and they were laughing and shooting at stuff with the thing: street signs, whatever. This was in 1990--way before anyone got it into their heads to do bag searches at school.

Eventually, shooting inanimate objects wasn't enough and they began to shoot at me. Hitting my book-bag, at first, they moved onto my head and my legs and shoulders. It stung. Each pellet left a sting bright enough to pop flashbulbs off inside my head. But the thing that still puzzles me is my response.

Something in my head told me "Don't turn around. Don't acknowledge them at all. Just walk faster and endure. This will be over soon." I don't quite comprehend this tactic. I suppose my fear at the time was that if I turned around, I'd get a faceful or an eyeful. If I ran, they'd run too and it would get worse. So much worse.

So I walked fast and tried not to flinch. Tried not to indicate that I felt anything at all. I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a run. Eventually, I rounded my corner and they went the opposite way.

But the thing that stands out most is that I didn't say a word to anyone. No one would believe me. My parents didn't care, the school would question them and drop it altogether when the accusation was denied. After all: it didn't even happen on school grounds. Bringing it up in school could only result in further humiliation. Already ashamed and aware of the pointlessness of fighting the situation, I let it drop and hoped it would be a solitary incident that faded into distant memory, facing instead the reality of what is.

I both respect and detest this instinct to at all costs endure within myself. There is a part of me that deeply feels for the injustices of others and an inner, suppressed rage at those which I have endured that I am only just beginning to uncover. But the overwhelming instinct is to not act out or respond in a way which would cripple future efforts or foreclose future opportunities to get the last laugh and to not, whatever I do, allow these things to poison me. To turn me into an animal of equal cheapness. I have this unquietable drive to not become the monster myself--to not lose my humanity.

But there is no question in recent years that I have undoubtedly led a life of cyclical violations to my good nature and disrespect of my fuzzy boundaries. The only constant factor being myself, I have to face the probability that I am, through my silent endurance, bringing it upon myself.

Becoming more and more disillusioned with the concepts of "inevitable justice" (Their behavior will certainly lead to their own doom) and "pick your battles," I feel something I've never felt before: a hybrid of helplessness and anger and (dare I say?) vengeance.

And it seems the only preventative measure I can take these days is to simply hide. To limit my interaction with others. To not waste my efforts and to guard access to myself. To close up. To live in sort of a state of fear.

Ugly, ugly, ugly fear.

[Freeky]

You are not alone, nav.  I feel exactly the same.

[navkat]

To be faced with the fact that my hard-won education has been utterly POINTLESS.

What?

Oh yeah! I'm seeeeriously considering the Tucson thing as of late. NONE of my graduating classmates in EMT-Basic have found work in EMS and while I'm the ONLY one of my class to pass the National Reg for AEMT, my prospects are even lower around here due to the ironic existence of the "You're overqualified to be a Basic but we don't want to pay anyone to be an Advanced" dichotomy. They can't legally employ me as a Basic and force me to ignore my skillset and legal Duty To Act as an AEMT but no one wants to pay more than 12 bucks an hour here in 'Bama and I'm faced with the "can't find a place without a job/can't legally work in EMS unless I'm a resident" bullshit in New Orleans.

If the VA would get off their ass and grant me Voc Rehab to finish my degree as a Paramedic, I'd be better off because medics are in short supply but they're stupid. I get letters from them telling me they've scheduled an appointment from me 100 miles away in Biloxi and that I need to report in 2 days. If I reschedule or fail to show, they drop my application. No one ever picks up the fucking phone (I've left the phone plugged in on speakerphone while I do my household chores for over an HOUR and not had anyone take me off hold).

I feel STUCK.

[Doktor Howl]

To be faced with the fact that my hard-won education has been utterly POINTLESS.

What?

Oh yeah! I'm seeeeriously considering the Tucson thing as of late. NONE of my graduating classmates in EMT-Basic have found work in EMS and while I'm the ONLY one of my class to pass the National Reg for AEMT, my prospects are even lower around here due to the ironic existence of the "You're overqualified to be a Basic but we don't want to pay anyone to be an Advanced" dichotomy. They can't legally employ me as a Basic and force me to ignore my skillset and legal Duty To Act as an AEMT but no one wants to pay more than 12 bucks an hour here in 'Bama and I'm faced with the "can't find a place without a job/can't legally work in EMS unless I'm a resident" bullshit in New Orleans.

If the VA would get off their ass and grant me Voc Rehab to finish my degree as a Paramedic, I'd be better off because medics are in short supply but they're stupid. I get letters from them telling me they've scheduled an appointment from me 100 miles away in Biloxi and that I need to report in 2 days. If I reschedule or fail to show, they drop my application. No one ever picks up the fucking phone (I've left the phone plugged in on speakerphone while I do my household chores for over an HOUR and not had anyone take me off hold).

I feel STUCK.

Hit the want ads, etc in Tucson.  Not the paper, it's worthless.  Monster.com or something.

I happen to know EMTs are in short supply here, and also in Benson.

[navkat]

The only thing is: how the FUCK could I pull that off? Where the fuck would I live? I'd be starting over AGAIN with no stuff, no resources, no connections except through you guys.

I can't go back to New York. I tried that and it was the most abysmally depressing thing I've done to myself in a long time. I. Do. Not. Fit. There. And the Seasonal Affective Disorder is like a prescription for tri-weekly panic attacks.

FUCKING FUCK.

[Doktor Howl]

The only thing is: how the FUCK could I pull that off?

Dunno.  Look around first, see what's out there, and THEN worry about that.  Sitting where you are obviously isn't going to do much good.

[Freeky]

The only thing is: how the FUCK could I pull that off?

Dunno.  Look around first, see what's out there, and THEN worry about that.  Sitting where you are obviously isn't going to do much good.

Yes, this.  Look on Craigslist for ideas on if there are people looking for roommates, search jobs.com or jobing.com or tucsonhelpwanted.com for what kind of jobs are out there, and keep your spirits and sense of adventure up if you're really going for it.

[East Coast Hustle]

I don't know what the job market or wage scale is for an EMT in PDX, but as far as you as a person goes you'd fit in just FINE here. I wish I could offer something more helpful than advice, but I have no connections here since I'm gone 8+ months a year and don't really have much of a social circle.

As for dealing with the VA's bureaucratic crapflood, well, yeah. I feel ya.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I'd tell you to move here, but I LIKE you.

Seriously, though, you could have the job all lined up first like Dok said, and it would make getting a place easier.

[navkat]

FUCK YOU.

You heckling, bitchy little snot-fuckers. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that you act oh so conscientious. Your wailing about social justice is poison to my ears: I saw you step on that poor bastard in the mud outside your own little home...I saw the tension on your leg, how your weight went down just a tiny bit harder on the back of his head, pushing his face into the mud. You wear your mock-concern like a fashion statement. Heaven forbid anyone rise out of the shit to your level and take it from you.

And fuck me.

Fuck me for taking this long to sort it all out. Fuck me for wasting my time. Fuck me for committing the cardinal sin in letting my reality squeeeeeak out into your consciousness: there is is no greater contempt than that for she who is in real need. I ceased to be fun the moment I ceased to be juuuust fine.

And fuck you. He who sits on his creaking throne, salvaged from the trash and judges me. Manic Pixie what? What did you call me, punk? How dare you judge my being? My coping mechanism? My will to keep laughing in the face of the glorious, glittering shitstorm? A shitstorm you are now part of? And what of you? Who the fuck are you to tell me what people want? How they want me to behave? And when you can hardly behave yourself! For you to reduce my existence, to diminish me to an archetypal plot device tells me two things:
1. You never understood a goddamned thing about me.
2. You are sour grapes.

I have had enough.

[Doktor Howl]

But you are a manic pixie.

's one of the reasons we love you.   

[navkat]