Hashtag TBI Life

Let's tell it like it is, shall we?

Hellooooo, me Mateys! Updates and changes to this publication ahoy! Or…not exactly changes. Just…something that’s always been on the frontier and that is now actively coming down the pipe to you like…um…

Dookie.

Actionable step is forthcoming. Skip down to the bottom if this TBI topic is sooo not what you’re here for. Because this is a bullshit read. Bulllllll-shittery, I tell you! Winter Is Coming, and December is always TBI Season in these here parts.

Always.

THE DUMBEST SUPER-SMART, PRUDENT, RESPONSIBLE THING I’VE EVER DONE

Annnnnd it’s finally happened. My living and medical expenses now outstrip my income by $311/month.

Hashtag TBI Life! Woot.

I’ve been dreading this day and trying to play financial shell games with it since August when I learned that I would be losing almost half my income on November 1. At my most flush back in January, I was still below the poverty line. Yet since the year 2000, I had managed to save a whopping $113 in the hopes of someday replacing my computer that crashes every time I do a major video project and—

Gone.

Some random, super generous Ko-Fi patron dropped $125 out of nowhere this summer—

Whoosh.

Why?

Because back when I had my big car wreck 23 years ago, I made a decision that I thought was the smartest, most prudent and practical, most fiscally responsible thing I had ever done in my whole life.

WRONG.

It’s turned out to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

See, I did actually get a car wreck settlement after I got rammed by that drunk driver. Unfortunately, my attorney watched the video of me belly dancing¹ a couple hours before I was hit. After that, he stopped talking about maxing out my $100,000 policy and started wanting to make the opening bid in the thirties.

Know why?

He could “never put me on the stand in a trial because no jury would ever have sympathy for someone like me.”

I shit you not. That was his reasoning.

“Someone like me…” Oh, you mean a nasty slut-ass belly dancer? Is that what you’re getting at? Are you trying to say that the majority of humans would think I deserved to be rammed into a construction median?

Needless to say, I tried to fire him. No other attorney would take the case because we were already too far into it.

I told the one I had, “You WILL start with an opening bid that maxes out that policy because my unaddressed medical needs and unpaid doctors’ bills blow that figure out of the water by themselves. Not to mention the thousands of dollars I still owe on the car that was demolished—way more than the insurance company totaled it for. Oh, and the destruction of my life. And the permanent injuries I will now have to live with. FOREVER."

Kinda the definition of “permanent.”

The “best he could get me” was $37,000. Huh…conveniently the price he had wanted to start out with.

We slut belly dancers aren’t worth anything more, after all.

Did I take a few thousand of that insulting settlement and send myself to Europe for a summer? Did I stay with a friend in London and then pop off to a bunch of Ancient Roman sites because it’s been my obsession since I was in second grade? Did I also go to Stonehenge and medieval castles and a bunch of places in Italy?

YOU BETTER FUCKING BELIEVE IT.

That was the reward I gave myself for surviving the story I’m about to tell you this month.

After that, I put the remaining funds into an interest-gaining plan until the year I turned 50 so I would have a monthly cush, guaranteed for life, to augment being a 50-year-old professional dancer working to shift to professional author as I aged.

After all, by 2003 I was rabidly, obsessively confident that I would prove the pessimistic half of my doctors wrong—that yes, I would too be a professional dancer again, dang it! But I was also realistic. With that many injuries, the natural aging dancer syndrome would only be accelerated, so I planned to shift more into writing as my primary around 45. That settlement would help see me through the transition.

Prudent and wise, no?

Like I said. This was the STUPIDEST thing I have ever done in my life.

I should have taken that money and treated myself to any revolutionary spinal and brain healing technologies that were available in 2003. (Bwahahahahaha…back then, it probably wouldn’t have gotten me very far but hey…maybe I could have gotten free of abusive living situations without becoming a ball-n-chain around my parents’ ankles.)

Because I turned 50 last year.

And this settlement has OBLITERATED what little disability help I’ve ever gotten. Yet it’s not enough to live on, even when supplemented by my minuscule self-employment earnings. As things currently sit, my gross income is 54% of the National Poverty Level. If I calculate that after subtracting business expenses, it goes down to 26%.²

Yet they cut my food stamps in half and wiped out my SSI completely.

HOW COULD THEY GET AWAY WITH DOING THAT?!

Because of 1) changes to government assistance programs, 2) my settlement, and 3) a nifty little loophole somebody smart and diabolical found.

After being forced to move five times in six years while I descended back into the ranks of renter’s ridiculata after my second divorce, my parents bought a little townhouse for me to rent from them (disabled girls like me don’t qualify for mortgages). This way, I could have a stable living environment for the first time since 2000, with a housing cost I could afford to pay myself. I rent this place for the cost of its mortgage.

BUT SINCE MY PARENTS COULD EVICT THEIR DISABLED DAUGHTER AND RENT IT OUT FOR 66% MORE, THAT’S THE AMOUNT OF “INCOME” THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION HAS SLAPPED ONTO MY CALCULATIONS TO FULLY ANNIHILATE MY ELIGIBILITY.

(Extra thanks to my retired accountant father for slogging through the navigation of this Phucking Phiasco after I lost my primary caregiver to stroke.)

No brainer—this settlement that was supposed to be my lifesaver has put me into the worst financial straits I’ve been in since I originally burned through my year of car insurance lost wages back in 2001. Which backed me into returning to my Bleeping-Blopping hometown of Hell, pop. 333, where the most violent and predatory of my rapist-abusers still lives.

“Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!”

Ummmm…NO.

A White Knight Offer saved me from that, so I moved in with…ahem…someone who didn’t really want me there. But I didn’t know that then. Didn’t know he’d pity-married me either. This turned into a bad situation. The situation worsened. Which forced me to use all that self-defense I’d been learning. Alas, somebody who knew way more about fighting decided he wanted to introduce my face to his fist, and voila!

SHITSTORM.

Because there was one thing I did not anticipate back in 2003 when I set up that financial safety net.

Brain Traumas 2-4.

(TBI #2 was a double-punch to the face that locked my neck vertebrae into a backwards curve which accelerated my spinal degeneration by about 30 years, and produced the year of chronic seizures that caused even more damage. TBI #4 was “only” a dillhole not paying attention at a stop sign.)

Well, I guess I won’t have to worry about driving anymore. I can’t afford to pay car insurance.

Or gas.

Or phone.

And I guess electricity is gonna have to go because I can’t get rid of medical.

And woot, Winter Is Coming!

I just filled out more friggin’ paperwork today. This is for winter heating assistance and affordable connectivity applications for phone and internet. It’s only taken me eight months to finish them because I’ve been battling three government entities and seizures for the past ten months instead.

At least I have a small wad of credit card cush as I pray to stumble upon that elusive thing a gazillion disability agencies, government entities, voc. rehab agencies, support groups, friends, family, medical professionals, strangers, and I haven’t been able to figure out since Brain Trauma #2 in 2012—how I can support myself again.

Because I’m ineligible for actual Disability Assistance.

See, when I got rammed by that drunk driver I wasn’t a minor or elder, and I was only a few years out of college, therefore I hadn’t earned enough income credits. As such, I will never qualify for actual Disability Assistance.³

EVER.

Something else they don’t tell you about Disability Assistance until they deny you after you’ve become disabled. Now you know.

So.

Here we go.

Again.

NOT GONNA DO IT

Oh, yeah. This is not the moment when I defend myself as a disabled person, in spite of the fact that I “look so good” and that I’m capable of really astounding feats, provided my life is set up to accommodate that.

Because it’s not.

Not consistently enough to actually DO anything monetarily lucrative with it.

(Yet.)

This is also not the moment when I tell you why I can’t work such-and-such job “like heeeee does when heeee’s also had a brain injury,” or “myyyyy so-and-so who was in a coma but theeeeeeey don’t sit on their asses eating bonbons like you do, Alexx-Wah-Lexx. You slacker. Whiner. Worthless eater.”

Rest assured, all the HashtagReasons and specific nuances to MY brain injury, MY disability, MY gifts and blessing, MY inborn dis/advantages, and MY situation will be forthcoming.

Kinda the point of this whole post.

If you’ve met one neurodivergent… disabled… TBI… domestic violence… sexual assault…etc… survivor then you’ve met ONE blah-blah and yada-yada.

WHAT’S ALL THIS MEAN AROUND HERE?

Here’s your content warning, ahoy!

Remember that old blog I told you about? You know, the one I started in 2003 when I wanted to Pay It Forward to all the TBI bloggers who had shown me through writing about their experiences that, no, I had not gone insane. I simply had TBI and was expected to navigate the world of Government & Insurance Entities alone on a brain injury?

And you remember that I had to shut that thing down because people responded to it with such overwhelming enthusiasm that I couldn’t keep up with the comments and the writing while trying to rebuild my life without a shred of disability assistance or a settlement?

And you remember how I swore that, if I ever told those tales again, this time I would not omit all the stories about domestic violence, slander, libel, smear campaigns, slut-shaming, prejudice, and other interpersonal abuse to “protect the not-so-innocent”?

(They will always have names and identifying qualities changed. Heck, sometimes I rearrange entire timelines and embroider all sorts of fictitious traits of bull-dookery around these “characters” to protect the not-so-innocent.)

(Which also protects me.)

Remember how I started blogging those un-redacted tales and then got banned from social media when I shared links to them because you can’t Tell It Like It Is on platforms beholden to advertisers?

Well, it’s almost December now.

December is Anniversary Month for me.

Substack is not beholden to advertisers.

*Jaws Theme…*

While I had my old blog, the weeks between Thanksgiving and the return to life-as-normal after New Year’s invariably would inspire me to write yet another series about drunk driving, TBI, bodily injury, and Holiday Hell (what happens to someone who suffers a major trauma when the world shuts down for the holidays).

I mean, people just can’t not drink and drive during the holidays, therefore, I just can’t keep my big can closed.

I TRIPLE-dog dare you!

My plan for this year, once NaNoWriMo was done, was to start dumping all those old tales into the Olde Memoirs Section of this publication. First, I need to get the previously published tales out of my hair because there are a bunch of ye olde readers (Muah!) who never did get to hear how the story progressed after that first Holiday Hell. But if I don’t catch up ye new readers here (Muah!), there will be so much information missing if I just pick up where I left off.

YE OLDE ACTIONABLE STEP

So if you’ve already read those olde tales, or if you’re soooo not here for all the Hashtag TBI Life, or if you simply don’t want the onslaught of rapid-fire email notifications about them, head over to your Subscriptions in the desktop version of your Substack. Opt out of receiving notifications for the Section called “YE OLDE TALES.”

You can also download the app and use it like an e-reader if that makes it easier to digest a series. (It does for me.) Handily, it will tell you which chapters you’ve read, and how far you’ve gotten through them.

Seriously, there’s a 🤮💩🤮 of this TBI stuff coming down the pipe, so ABANDON SHIP NOW! Fleeeeeee for your life—okay, for your sanity. Or, you know, adjust your notifications. If it starts to feel like a rapidly, rampantly, rabidly dumping newsletter—say that five times fast!—if it feels like you can’t keep up, do what most of my longterm readers do.

Slap a marker on it, and binge this stuff like it’s a book in your hands whenever you have the chunk of time. Because that’s how it was originally intended to be read.

KEEP YOURSELF AND OTHERS ALIVE
MAIMING’S NOT COOL
SO DON’T DRINK & DRIVE

If TBI, disability, drunk driving, independent artists or anything else I’ve blathered about today is important to you, you can easily share this post like glitter! That shit gets everywhere.

© 2023 Hartebeast

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Up Next:

Or start at the beginning of #TBI Life:

1. The dance footage from 2000 that convinced my lawyer he could never defend me on the stand, even though I was the one who had been injured. I could only watch this video once, the day I got it, until I edited it for YouTube in 2020. I haven’t been able to look at again until tonight. Hearing that music and seeing that 28-year-old girl still makes every hair on my body stand up on end. Because watching her is truly like watching a ghost.

2. National Poverty Level Calculator

3. Yes. This information came from my disability lawyer, in case you’re wondering.