incapacity / dreams / income support

I spent most of yesterday ignoring the world by geeking out heavily on psychopharmaceuticals and constructing a number of pointless lists. Then I found Neutotransmitter.net: Drug Reference for FDA Approved Psychiatric Drugs which does it so much better. I was trying to avoid thinking about my finances, because all such thoughts were sprialling towards a panicky suicidal nightmare.

I’d received a letter from the benefits people telling me that, no, I’m not entitled to incapacity benefit. Because I haven’t paid enough national insurance contributions. Well, hang on there a moment, benefits people. I’ve been employed for most of the time since I finished university. There’s been a few gaps (the longest of which would have been 6 months or so), but I’ve paid you lots of those contributions. Plus I was, you know, working full-time for two years before I went to university. What gives?

Apparently my contributions in 2004 weren’t high enough. Bastards. I finished university in 2004 and didn’t get a proper job until the end of the year. Now, if only I could claim back the national insurance I paid in 2005 and 2006…

This is why I was metphorically sitting with my hands over my ears going LA LA LA LA LA!

Sometime around 3AM, there was a very loud sound of something falling and smashing just outside my window. I panicked, closed the windows and sat shaking for a while with a knife held in my hand. This is not rational behaviour, I know. I managed to get to sleep a bit later and had a dream about work.

In the dream, my colleagues were mostly people I knew when I was in school in [CHILDHOOD CITY] and the city we were in was [CITY I USED TO LIVE IN]. I’d arranged to meet a couple of them, the only two who weren’t people from my past masquerading as extras in my dreams. I turned up and nobody was around and I couldn’t remember where to find them. And I was naked.

I can’t remember ever having an “Oh god! I’m naked in a public place!” dream before. And I wasn’t so much embarrassed as bemused. Why had I come to the city naked? I lingered outside a tattoo shop, thinking about getting a tattoo (of a skull on my wrist for some reason), then went to a clothes shop and bought some clothes.

I met the people I was meeting in a pub. One of them was a girl who I don’t recognise outside the dream. The guy didn’t turn up. Things devolved into weird sexual tension, strange arguments and accusations. Then I woke up.

I have a cheque from the benefits people, because I’m now getting income support. This is welcome and lets me hate the benefits people slightly less. I need to send them my more recent sick note so they’ll continue to pay me. In fact, I need to send copies to a couple of places: My workplace and the insurance people who deal with my loan. In a move of astounding foresight, I’d already made these copies. Unfortunately, I have only two stamps, meaning I’ll have to go somewhere to purchase some more. Hence, I’m going to go shopping even though I’d rather curl up in a moderately useless fashion for the day.

Still, it’ll do me good to get out, where I can let my paranoia about random people on the street rise to gut-churning levels and find my vision messed up by the cursed light of the sun.