A shitty month in a lifetime of shitty months.

So, January was shit.

I made the decision to come off the contraceptive pill, because my migraines? They were *insane*. I was having between 2 and five a week, often with no break days inbetween. They definitely weren't rebound headaches because I have never actually been given proper migraine drugs to treat my migraines. I've been managing on co-dydramol, which I've had to limit because I need it to manage my joint pain too.
I was also having a hard time remembering to take the pill. My mental health is not all it could be and between sleep lags and just not being 100% present and accounted for in my own life, I knew I could not take it responsibly.
My sex life has not been amazing recently, by any means. Multiple illnesses have wiped me out, and Mr A has been doing nightshifts, so The Beast has been sleeping in our bed a lot, so that she sleeps better.
And yet, somehow, I still managed to get pregnant.
And of course, because I'm me, it didn't stick.
So while I was whinging on facebook about my hideous cold that went to my chest, what I was really crying over was pregnancy number 5 and its swift departure from my uterus.

But I couldn't dwell too long. I had my Disability Living Allowance tribunal on the 31st, I had to figure out a way to make it there and survive the ordeal.
It was.....horrifying. My appointment was for 3:40pm, we didn't go in until close to 4:30 if not after, and in the interim I got so anxious that I was freezing, shaking and sobbing in the waiting room while my poor friend and advocate sat beside me. I held a menthol scented tissue over my mouth the entire time I was in the tribunal because when I took it away I hyperventilated and got dizzy, and almost as soon as I got in there they told me they didn't think my case had enough medical evidence so they wanted to adjourn in order to collect more. I held it together until I left the room when I fell into a wall and broke down in anxious sobbing again. Eventually they called me back to confirm that they were adjourning for more evidence, and worst of all, that they would be sending a doctor to my house to examine me. At that point my world caved in and I just needed to be out of that building. I nearly collapsed in the lift again, dizzy and nauseated.
There is nothing, nothing I can imagine that they could do that would be worse than sending someone to my house, to examine me. I feel sick just thinking about it. My house is my safe place. My house is where I can be sick, where I can hide. They are literally invading my sanctuary and violating me inside it. They couldn't have come up with something more designed to make me want to close the whole case if they tried.
I got home that night and spent hours in shock, freezing cold and shaking, desperately suicidal. I honestly thought I was going to have to go to A&E and admit myself to keep safe. Luckily some good friends were around and verbally held my hand until the shock started to fade and they distracted me like the fabulous people they are.

You'd think, given that that's already quite a lot of shit for one month, that it would be over, right? No. My husband announces the next morning that we don't have enough money to move. Not devastating, I hear you say? Actually, it is. The flat we live in is wildly unsuitable to our needs, and I'm miserable, and moving was the only thing giving my near-future any structure. I *needed* the idea of moving to keep me putting one foot in front of the other. And now it's gone.
Simultaneously, the British Government were busy passing what I like to call the 'Fuck those dirty cripples' law, which is so horrific and vicious in its nature and so unrelenting in its hatred of disabled people that actually knowing that it's real and not something from a history book takes my breath away.

I am physically and emotionally battered. I feel like I've climbed out of a car-wreck and I'm wandering around the roadside, dazed.

January did not, in any way, start my year off well.