One of my big fears about going back to work is that I’ll somehow be completely obvious and everyone will know and therefore consider me a freak and hate me.

I know it’s paranoid.

I tended to feel that way even when I wasn’t fully aware myself that I was a multiple. I was afraid that I would flip into Max and drop an inappropriate cuss-word somewhere given he has a mouth like a stereotypical trucker and doesn’t have that good of a thought to verbalization filter as the rest of us. However he’s also got a lot more skill and less fear and embarrassment and social anxiety when it comes to dealing with people…so quandry.

I really need to get passed this fear because I should know by now that if there’s one thing I’m good at it’s playing singleton, especially as I even had myself convinced for several years. Still I’m nervous. I don’t fully feel employable. It’s hard to psych ourselves up because it’s really, really easy for us to pick ourselves down and convince ourselves that we’re worthless, we’re quite the expert at THAT. So, the fact that we keep getting turned down for jobs and in some cases don’t even get interviews further serves to undermine the fact that we are actually very smart, very adaptable and would be great at almost any job you can think of.

With each successive rejection there’s a little voice going, we must have slipped up somewhere, we must have said something that made the HR people see that we’re insane, why is they can see it but disability is certain that we’re not crazy and should be able to find a job. Never mind that the economy is in the tank and it’s very possible that several of the companies were told to just not bother hiring anyone after all, or they were just posting the job because they had to when really they were going to promote someone internally…there are any number of reasons.

As an acquaintance pointed out multiplicity is about survival, it’s very easy for multiples in general to be “in the closet” as opposed to out and flaunting, and in my opinion, a vast majority of those who publicly flaunt their switching in YouTube videos may well just be acting for whatever reason. There are times I wonder about doing that sort of thing…the forced switching on camera, then I remember that I don’t want the whole world to see me, if I did that sort of thing it would be for my own edification. I don’t see it, you see, a lot of the time I’m extremely flabbergasted when someone realizes that I’m different because I think we’re hiding things SO well, and as it is, most people can’t tell, it takes a huge amount of observation and deep understanding of me as a whole for people to be able to see differences. It’s just that most everyone I know, even before we outed, had actually known us for long enough. I don’t have many close friends, and the ones I have I’ve kept for a great deal of time, so therefore they all really started to know me long enough to realize I was weird about the same time…

…and there I go rambling off the point again.

Okay, so my point was that any employers or co-workers I have probably won’t be able to tell; I’m good at being Polite and Public, in fact one of us thrives on that sort of thing, and she’s the one who actually went to school, got the degrees and all the rest of it. She thrives on the work environment and has been abjectly withering since we’ve not been working…so it should be fine.

For some reason though no matter how many times we repeat that we don’t quite believe it.

So, here’s my update on disability, and tips and things to watch for.

When you apply there are actually TWO forms that you have to fill out and they have different confirmation numbers.

I had filled out the first one and sent it in and had been wondering why they were just asking me about financial things and not medical things, and figured perhaps that all came in the interview. Then I got a phone call from a nice lady at the disability office (they are SO much more together than Medicaid!) saying that she needed this other part of the form and I told her I wondered why they hadn’t wanted anything medical, and well, they did. Then I spent two days freaking out because apparently someone had thrown out the paper that had the confirmation number on so I couldn’t log back in, and of course, the disability office doesn’t have access to that, but then I found out that the second form, which is called the Adult Disability and Work History Report actually generates it’s own confirmation number and so I could actually fill it out, phew!

That took a while. I had to list all the various times I’ve been to the doctor, been to the hospital, even breathed near a doctor and for how long and when and if I still see them and put in all their contact information, and then also list every job I’ve ever had, and I realize now I forgot one (whoops) but it only lasted a week!, oh, damn it I forgot two…urgh, I forgot the summer I worked at my Mum’s office too. Go me. Anyway….yeah, any job I’ve ever had, not just like a resume where you put your most recent couple…and what the duties were at those jobs and how long I stood, sat, crouched, fetched, carried…that took forever, and some of them I don’t even remember so I kinda had to guess.

They do at least give you a text box where you can kinda plead your case, so I talked about the fact that I can keep up with things to a point but alters don’t always read the notebooks on how to do things, and how some times if I go into little mode I don’t even know how to drive, and that the fibro is aggravated by stress which causes issues, and then I had to print and sign NINE medical release forms, and mail them to the office.

The next day I got a call from the woman at the local office again and she reminded me (because I hadn’t written it down) that she needed copies of my birth certificate and my naturalization paperwork, now this is the tricky part, because they need originals and to make copies themselves, so in my case I had the option where I could mail those in with a return envelope and hope that they got back to me promptly OR take them to her in person and have her make the copies and give them right back, which is the option I went for.

So, now I’m just waiting to see. I had filled out paperwork for both SSI and SSDI because I wasn’t sure which one was which, as it turns out SSI is basically welfare, and we don’t qualify for that because my husband makes quite a bit of money monthly, about a grand over what qualifies you for SSI, but I can potentially get SSDI because I worked and am no longer working.

So, now it’s just wait and see.

It’s very hard to get disability at the “best” of times. My therapist warned me when I brought the subject up that I had a 2% chance of being accepted for disability right off the bat, so I’m trying to do all I can while filling out the paperwork to ensure that I either get through expeditiously or at least get to the appeals process quickly.

I’m in the process of filling out the forms online at the apply for disability page here, thankfully you can save the forms and continue them later provided you do so within 60 days, and at least with the online forms you can work on them at any time of day and night, but people are only available to help you at the toll free numbers between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

For me the first snag that I encountered was being confused about income and net income. One of the questions they ask you is if you’re self-employed and given I work from home doing blog reviews and occasionally helping people out with web design or tarot predictions depending on which alter is more active…I figured that would count against me, because I’m able to work (sort of) but I make negative income…my businesses aren’t really worth it, they technically give me some extra play cash, but the amount I put out to try and advertise, to run my computer, the phone lines and all the rest of it I actually don’t make anything, and I also found out recently thanks to someone on AO who was answering my question about what net income actually meant that I could technically deduct therapy from my expenses too, so that would mean I was making even less.

Another thing I figured would be a good idea to do is to get my therapist and doctor on board with this so that they could be writing up whatever it was they needed to do so that I could get things all together and send them in at once so I didn’t have this issue like I did with Medicaid where I was getting letters from the offices saying, “Well, we might approve you but we need your birth certificate, your husbands, copies of your driver’s licenses, passports…” and all the rest of it before we’ll process things, and in the mean time I was without insurance.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens after I call the doctor’s offices on Tuesday and as I got more pointers I’ll edit this entry.

My spouse and I have been having a debate for several months now about whether or not I should file for disability. For a while I felt it was a moot point because I was not a U.S. citizen and would therefore be ineligible, given I wasn’t eligible for Medicaid any more once our child was born.

However I got my U.S. citizenship last month thanks to a generous helping hand from my mother who didn’t want to go through the citizenship process by herself. So, my husband once again suggested that I apply for disability. I’m a bit nervous about applying for some reasons which are probably silly, like being afraid that having DID or MPD on paper like that would mean that we’d get a visit from DCF and my son would be taken away, even though my therapist and psychiatrist have both assured me that given our son is in a loving home where he’s taken care of that wouldn’t be an issue.

My therapist told me that she would support my efforts to get disability, but warned me that it would be a long hard road before we saw any light. It’s not as though sending in the application magically gives us extra money. It means that the application is sent for review, and anyone applying for disability has a strong chance of being denied, and if it’s an application for disability based on mental issues there’s a much greater chance of being denied.

I started the application today, and it’s so confusing. I’m not sure how far in to the application I am at the moment, but it’s asking about self employment income and net self employment income and I had to save it because I’m not sure what’s it’s asking for exactly, so if I can’t find out from one of my friends what they mean I’ll see if my husband has any idea.

They want to know if my net income from self employment was over $400 last year but I’m not sure what they mean by net. The income reported for self employment on taxes was -1600 dollars, I made $200 and something from tarot, but about $1200 from paid blogging. So I’m not sure if they would consider that to be over $400 because I technically made $1500 (or thereabouts) but with all the expenses there was no profit.

I seriously think it’s worse than taxes.