I'm going to rant, now. Don't mind me.
 

This morning I got halfway through applying for a course I really liked the look of and then given up, because they wanted so many details and trying to get them all into the little boxes was making me cry. I had no way whatsoever of paying for it, anyway. I want to study more, really I do, but I'm fast running out of options. It's the money. I only qualify for one free OU course, and I've done that. And I do so hate being broke.

While I am notoriously rubbish at paperwork and forms I'm not usually as bad at it as I was this morning; I got very little sleep last night and so was being spectacularly crap even by my standards :-)

I have been fired once already for being Too Mad. I spent a while recently jobhunting but have now stopped; it was proving pretty bloody impossible to find anything and to be honest I have no reason to think that I won't go stark raving bonkers and fail my probation period again. And the thing with Jobseeker's Allowance, of course, is that they kind of want you to be, you know, seeking a job...

As for Incapacity Benefit, well, I do wonder. I've been in about out of therapy and doctor's offices since I was twelve, I was in hospital for a week when I was fifteen, I have a diagnosis of bipolar II and I've been on anti-depressants for a two years, and of course a long history of bulimia and self-harm to boot. But these days I'm incredibly bad at talking to doctors about all this, and tend to bounce in being all bright and chirpy and friendly and competent and find myself downplaying things without meaning to and failing utterly to describe myself with any degree of accuracy whatsoever.

And I don't have a passport (I am trying to sort this out but it's very slow and stressful - and a Long Story) or a driving license or any 'official' form of ID past my birth certificate, and I only have one type of proof of address (being my bank statement), and the online application for benefits is broken, and quite apart from any of this the thought of having to put on smart clothes and traipse into Catford and queue at the job centre and answer a hundred questions designed to prove that I'm a lying scammer and fill out reams of paperwork just makes me want to burst into tears at the best of times. So no, it's not impossible and yes, I could probably fix some of this if I tried hard enough but my God that's a lot of trying right there.

I don't have anything to say.
But I just wanted to let you know I had read your post.
I am sending you lots of hugs.
Hope things get better soon.
Gemz
xx

I can sympathise with the OU thing. I applied for courses and then got turned down for funding because I already had a degree qualification and no-one had told me you couldn't get funding under those circumstances. My mental health team have been trying to get me to apply for an OU course again 'for something to do' totally not getting how I cannot afford to do a course.

Incapacity benefit has/is changing to something else which is probably why the site isn't working - which is geared towards getting people into work. I don't have a passport or anything other than my birth certificate either but managed to get benefit okay.