Sabiya
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- Joined
- Mar 21, 2015
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It's been awhile since I last posted here, almost 4 months. I've reached the breaking point, and decided to go for Supplement Security Income. I do not qualify for SSDI because I've only made $23,000 in over ten years (some jobs paid as little as $1.75 an hour), I'm in the USA by the way.
For those that don't remember about me, I'll recap:
Basically as soon as I graduated from mainstream college, the real world slapped me across the face. In the beginning (I started working at 18 years old) I was the typical entitled teenager that didn't hold down a job because I was "too good for minimum wage" so I made some mistakes. However, as the years went by it has become harder and harder to find and keep good jobs.
In the past 5 years alone I've been:
The test thing was due to memory, I figured out a pattern for his test so it was VERY EASY for me to memorize certain keywords and definitions and answered them hence why I got 90%-100% all tests (I have advanced photographic memory from what doctors tell me). I told him that, he didn't believe me. Turned out he lied about me failing a class and I didn't find out until a week before the new semester started, it threw my class schedule out of whack... ugh.
I didn't finish Data Admin because after research I've found that it's an on-call all the time job, something I can't do 'cause I can't hear the phone. Four years later, I went back for Accounting. This time they had me take a class as an elective, then later told it wasn't an elective anymore, and then that I have to take it again as well as be put in another 'class path'. All this back and forth with the school trying to get my money for re-taking certain classes three times or taking a class that is "all of a sudden required" when it wasn't before made me mad so I dropped out.
Later found out that my state cut funding for all public schools from pre-K to community college (what I was doing), so the teachers are leaving the state and comm. colleges are screwed 'cause they can't get enough students. Good thing I left before it got worse (sucks that I can't continue my education here, I was 1.5 semesters from graduation).
So I took a break, I went job hunting for accounting-related jobs and office clerk jobs and other jobs. The moment I'm mentioned I'm deaf, they go silent and I don't hear anything. If I don't mention I'm deaf and I get interviewed, if I don't hear them, they think I'm not paying attention and am a "waste of their time". If I mention it in interview, it gets cut short. When I mention that I know how to do ______ and I actually love doing ______, they don't believe me.
For example, I told a woman I can do payroll and that I love to do payroll and bank reconciliation, it's my strongest point. She didn't believe me, she gave me the "not this canned response" look and didn't take me seriously the entire interview despite giving her examples. Another guy didn't hire me because I did accounting coursework on lined paper and not graphing paper like he was used to
With so many strikes against me, I've become demoralized. My last termination in March set me off the deep end. I was suicidal for months after, my husband had to talk me out of it. I got anxiety attacks thinking about job hunting again, until my husband in all his understanding, flat out told me to NOT get a job until I'm 100% ready. Hubby knew that if I'd get a job and I ended up fired.... well, let's just say I'd snap...
I've hid my depression and stuff from everyone in my family 'cause they were the cause of it. My brother and grandmother knows about it, they are supportive of me, grandma's my best friend we've been talking about suicide and talking the other out of it for years. I feel like I could tell her anything without judgment, and now my brother opened up that I was his best friend growing up 'cause we dealt with the same BS from our dad/step-dad so I was his rock like he's mine.
But not everyone understands. I recently said that I've "given up" on job hunting "for now". Maybe in a few more months I'll be okay mentally to try again, but now now. At first they were okay with it, but not even 3 days later, family members are sending me e-mails of job openings for jobs that I can't do. They are berating me for being lazy and making my husband do everything. They are making snide comments about how "lucky I am to have a patient, loving husband to support me" (it's not a compliment, they said it all rude like), and saying things like my husband is going to one day leave me if "I don't pull my weight".
I mentioned that I was gonna apply for disability and they said "but you can work". And that's why I feel like a fraud. I CAN work IF I get hired! Correction: I CAN work IF I get hired in a job that I know 100% that I won't get fired for unethical, Bull---- reasons within a year. I'm sure we all know how guaranteed a job is these days :roll:
Networking doesn't work, all my friends and co-workers moved out of state or out of the country, so I'm back to square one. Starting a business is hard if your spouse is only making $12,000 a year. So at this point I feel like I have no choice but to get help. I know how the AllDeaf community feels about deaf people "being lazy and getting government assistance instead of getting a job", but I wanna ask to please be compassionate.
I've been through a bunch of crap and already on the verge of the breaking point, making me feel worse is just cruel. BUT I do wanna say that somedays I feel okay like I can do anything, it's on these days I feel like I'm a fraud. Despite my situation, why do I still feel like welfare and other assistance like SSI is NOT for people like me? Why do I still feel like I don't deserve to ask for help?
To all the deafies that got assistance, did you ever feel like you were a fraud? That you didn't deserve it?
For those that don't remember about me, I'll recap:
- I have 60dB bone conduction loss in both ears. My auditory nerve is damaged, inner and outer ear is fine, therefore I don't qualify for CI even if I wanted to.
- Hearing loss was due to a medical mishap as a baby during my heart surgery (I was at 18 months). Doctors diagnosed me as mentally retarded until it was discovered that I was had moderate to severe hearing loss at 5 years old
- Got hearing aids at 5, learned to talk in Romanian until 7, moved back to USA from Romania at 7, was told to only communicate in English. Forgot Romanian, learned English via ESL and Speech Therapy by 10 years old, became fluent in English to the point where I caught up to and knew more words than my peers (thank you books!) by 13 years old.
- Raised orally in mainstream schools, was led to believe I wasn't deaf enough for deaf schools. Never learned ASL.
- Was abused for being deaf in school, was just abused at home by father/step-dad and later just neglected by mom. She's okay but mom only gave the bare necessities when it comes to expressing love, Grandma raised my brother and I with love and nurture while our parents just "ditched us" in the living room to amongst the other adults in the family. Sadly, this neglect is common in Romanian culture, but the abuse is NOT.
- Moved to different state, still mainstreamed, no more Speech Therapy 'cause I was afraid of being bullied again, thrived and became a book worm pulling in straight As or trying to.
- Real world hit, things went downhill.
Basically as soon as I graduated from mainstream college, the real world slapped me across the face. In the beginning (I started working at 18 years old) I was the typical entitled teenager that didn't hold down a job because I was "too good for minimum wage" so I made some mistakes. However, as the years went by it has become harder and harder to find and keep good jobs.
In the past 5 years alone I've been:
- Racially discriminated (black on "any skin color other than black" racism, I'm white, my boss was black)
- Worked in extremely physically intensive jobs that I'm pretty sure was a violation of human safety procedures ( a lot of people quit before they were on the verge of hospitalization, some did end up in the hospital)
- Was told I'd never get promoted because I'm deaf, so I try to prove myself by getting more hours and as 'punishment' I was cut to 9 hours a week some days.
- Was told that if their "reasonable accommodation" of bigger headphones wouldn't help me hear over the noisy environments, they'd have to fire me.
- Accepted a part-time job at $1.75/hour 'cause I was desperate, contract stated 20 hours but boss kept giving me more hours, I couldn't work full-time at the time, had to leave.
- Got my paycheck stolen.
- Fired for having a deaf accent.
- Fired for having a medical emergency that might have been worse if I went in for work, then when I was nice and gave my old boss advice for future reference to raise his voice a bit so deaf people can hear, he blew me off like the audist jerk he was (he had a megaphone to talk into and it didn't work at all).
The test thing was due to memory, I figured out a pattern for his test so it was VERY EASY for me to memorize certain keywords and definitions and answered them hence why I got 90%-100% all tests (I have advanced photographic memory from what doctors tell me). I told him that, he didn't believe me. Turned out he lied about me failing a class and I didn't find out until a week before the new semester started, it threw my class schedule out of whack... ugh.
I didn't finish Data Admin because after research I've found that it's an on-call all the time job, something I can't do 'cause I can't hear the phone. Four years later, I went back for Accounting. This time they had me take a class as an elective, then later told it wasn't an elective anymore, and then that I have to take it again as well as be put in another 'class path'. All this back and forth with the school trying to get my money for re-taking certain classes three times or taking a class that is "all of a sudden required" when it wasn't before made me mad so I dropped out.
Later found out that my state cut funding for all public schools from pre-K to community college (what I was doing), so the teachers are leaving the state and comm. colleges are screwed 'cause they can't get enough students. Good thing I left before it got worse (sucks that I can't continue my education here, I was 1.5 semesters from graduation).
So I took a break, I went job hunting for accounting-related jobs and office clerk jobs and other jobs. The moment I'm mentioned I'm deaf, they go silent and I don't hear anything. If I don't mention I'm deaf and I get interviewed, if I don't hear them, they think I'm not paying attention and am a "waste of their time". If I mention it in interview, it gets cut short. When I mention that I know how to do ______ and I actually love doing ______, they don't believe me.
For example, I told a woman I can do payroll and that I love to do payroll and bank reconciliation, it's my strongest point. She didn't believe me, she gave me the "not this canned response" look and didn't take me seriously the entire interview despite giving her examples. Another guy didn't hire me because I did accounting coursework on lined paper and not graphing paper like he was used to
With so many strikes against me, I've become demoralized. My last termination in March set me off the deep end. I was suicidal for months after, my husband had to talk me out of it. I got anxiety attacks thinking about job hunting again, until my husband in all his understanding, flat out told me to NOT get a job until I'm 100% ready. Hubby knew that if I'd get a job and I ended up fired.... well, let's just say I'd snap...
I've hid my depression and stuff from everyone in my family 'cause they were the cause of it. My brother and grandmother knows about it, they are supportive of me, grandma's my best friend we've been talking about suicide and talking the other out of it for years. I feel like I could tell her anything without judgment, and now my brother opened up that I was his best friend growing up 'cause we dealt with the same BS from our dad/step-dad so I was his rock like he's mine.
But not everyone understands. I recently said that I've "given up" on job hunting "for now". Maybe in a few more months I'll be okay mentally to try again, but now now. At first they were okay with it, but not even 3 days later, family members are sending me e-mails of job openings for jobs that I can't do. They are berating me for being lazy and making my husband do everything. They are making snide comments about how "lucky I am to have a patient, loving husband to support me" (it's not a compliment, they said it all rude like), and saying things like my husband is going to one day leave me if "I don't pull my weight".
I mentioned that I was gonna apply for disability and they said "but you can work". And that's why I feel like a fraud. I CAN work IF I get hired! Correction: I CAN work IF I get hired in a job that I know 100% that I won't get fired for unethical, Bull---- reasons within a year. I'm sure we all know how guaranteed a job is these days :roll:
Networking doesn't work, all my friends and co-workers moved out of state or out of the country, so I'm back to square one. Starting a business is hard if your spouse is only making $12,000 a year. So at this point I feel like I have no choice but to get help. I know how the AllDeaf community feels about deaf people "being lazy and getting government assistance instead of getting a job", but I wanna ask to please be compassionate.
I've been through a bunch of crap and already on the verge of the breaking point, making me feel worse is just cruel. BUT I do wanna say that somedays I feel okay like I can do anything, it's on these days I feel like I'm a fraud. Despite my situation, why do I still feel like welfare and other assistance like SSI is NOT for people like me? Why do I still feel like I don't deserve to ask for help?
To all the deafies that got assistance, did you ever feel like you were a fraud? That you didn't deserve it?
