Please Don’t Call

PLEASE DON’T CALL

I really want to thank you for calling me today to tell me all the things I should be doing. You haven’t responded to any of my friendly messages for months now.

I had some good news to share, but you didn’t ask, nor could I get a word in edgewise. I’ve just had a 4-day weekend on the 4^th lockdown in Melbourne, some appointments cancelled I’d been trying to get done since they didn’t happen in 2020.

Fuck you COVID! No, I really mean it this time!

It is imagined that people with disabilities have not been financially impacted, since we don’t work. We haven’t lost work and why should we matter.

Well, I shall tell you how. Allow me.

These days I do take more ‘healthy pills’ than medications so I can live to the at least 65. I can afford to live till then.

herbal pills in wooden spoon with ginger root, Kaffir lime fruit and flower on dark brown wood background with copy space. Above view.

Shut up! I will explain that expiry date another day.

COVID has meant everyone and their cat and dog has been out buying ‘healthy pills’ to avoid getting or dying from COVID. It’s a fair call. I can’t blame you all. However, many of my healthy pills I buy in bulk so I can get bulk discounts and pay less over time and because my suppliers have had limited stock, they have not allowed me to do this. I’m not talking about truckloads, just 2 x 200 tablets of magnesium. Just an example.

But I don’t need someone who is not on the ‘coal face’ of living on the edge financially and choosing what I’m meant to do without to ‘help’ me decide I can give up my weekly chiropractor visits.

You all realize I have lost many of my pain management appointments due to lockdown, right. And you want me to deal with a rib out as well. The rib still hurts despite being put back in last Friday. It’s Thursday night as I write this.

So, it’s really shitty when people who are meant to love me are awfully opinionated about what I can do when they are not me.

You know that moment when if there was a statistic that said if there was one person in every family of four to have a disability. The only person in your family who could deal with said disability well, it’s you. Yeah, I knew this some years ago.

Now I needed to ask for a loan, quite happy to pay it back. But without even knowing what it was for, you decide to give me a lecture about managing dollars better. Stop helping!

You are upset, because I didn’t ask how you are. It was hard to get a word in edgewise, and I was already having your opinions and the opinions of other people who are not me to get a word in edgewise.

So, now my days is not done, I don’t have the energy to ‘deal’ with anything else today.

I’m feeling really shitty. My head hurts, my left eye is pounding (the indication of my migraine these days). So, I’m going to bed for a cry and a kip.

Now I need to feel like eating sometimes so I can sleep tonight and get up and do all the things again tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the rent gets paid. The lights go on. I’m not starving and I can put one foot in front of another knowing I don’t ask for help often but when I do, I really need it.

Then, maybe I’ll be able to smile a little. Or I can try and if that’s how you are going to be, please don’t call.