Wallflower

(A song for Lech Walessa by Peter Gabriel).

Five years ago I visited my father in hospital to see him on life support with Pneumonia. When I came back, I heard three local twats shouting abuse at me as they walked by. They didn't know where I'd been; maybe it would have made a difference to their attitude. It's been five years since I discovered there are some where I live that think I'm an alien in a place I'd lived since before they were born. An alien in the sense of being the local oddball - I'm guessing; I've never had the chance to discuss their perceptions with them of course. I'm a figure of fun deserving of mildly cruel nicknames and ridicule. They tell you how to behave, behave as their guest.

Today I visited the GP to help sort out my pursuit for an Asperger's Diagnosis. A convoluted process that will take time. I also explained the stress of dealing with the jobcentre and of the panic attack I had. He said he'd write the Jobcentre a letter. Well that's fine, but what good can it do? The system is the system and unfortunately doctors just don't understand it anymore than JC advisers understand anxiety. Anxiety caused in part by abuse from the ignorant. Now we are facing more ignorance: government ignorance. The colour of anxiety is the same; it is the colour of desperation soon to breed anger.

He doesn't want to sign me onto the sick. That's understandable - who wants to be sick? But it's not motivated out of well meaning in the purest sense, but only in the financial sense. That is, people want what's best for you through the lens of capitalism. If I sign onto the sick my chances of securing work are lessened, while work is the great panacea to a man's weaknesses: his vices, including idleness, fecklessness, worklessness.

So he doesn't help me out of a sense of what's best for me as a human being living on this beautiful world. But as a cog in the relentless wheel of capitalism. He is concerned for my economic worth, not my human worth. That is the greatest tragedy of the sick. We regard sickness benefit as a second class life and why should we? If someone can't work, even for a time while they get the support they need to straighten out, cope and move forward, why should that be less of a life? But it is only thought of as such because people are paid such a pittance on benefits that they can't do much (excepting health related restrictions).

What a stupid way to look at life.