Note – I have not edited this piece – I hope to return to the subject more eloquently – but I can’t right now as I am utterly depleted. I am sharing it today anyway because I want to respond to a headline while my response is still pure. (Then I can rest.)

How’s this for irony? (Is it irony or just shit? I don’t know I can’t think right now.)

I am at the kitchen table with my phone in front of me waiting to speak to an advisor about my PIP reassessment. I need to ask for an extension to the deadline for my form because it is such an exhausting labour- intensive process – mentally and emotionally – that I know I will not get it back in time.

I have been on hold on the line 50 whole minutes. I don’t blame the staff, they are polite and helpful once you get through but the waiting time builds the anxiety and fatigue. (Ironically – yes I think this one is irony – I overdid it writing my blog this week about Pacing and am now paying the price.)

But I can’t put off this phone call as it may mean my claim is stopped. I am trying to distract myself. Our cat Sefi must be picking up the tension because she is shouting loudly for action. I speak to her but it does no good; she knows I am preoccupied.

I open The Guardian Online to be confronted with the news that Rishi Sunak is considering withdrawing disability benefits from people with mental health conditions (in a… “full-on assault on disabled people”) He is using language like ‘sick note Britain’ .

Once again the privately-educated millionaires in charge deceive us into believing that it is those who have the least that take the most. And that you can bully people out of chronic illness: ignorant, dangerous, disastrous thinking that is genuinely frightening for those it will lead further and deeper into bleakness.

Nobody wants to be chronically ill. Most people would do absolutely anything to be able to function in a way that feels ‘normal’.

People thrive off a sense of purpose and value and have enough of their own internal feelings of shame and judgement without adding systemic punishment and desperate debt to their existential mix.

Perhaps those in charge would like to educate themselves on the political factors that cause people to be so utterly debilitated that they aren’t able to sustain work. Factors that we actually have the resources to address. Let’s start with Poverty. Housing. Food. Accessible trauma-informed mental health services.

I want to write so much more on this. But I need to stop for now.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Rachel