Updates, rants and whatever

"I think that food is a human right. Water and air and food are essentials. They’re not nice-haves: they’re must-haves. If you don’t have each of those three, you die. (For one week, former Alliance Atlantis CEO and Samara charity co-founder Michael MacMillan subsisted on the offerings of a local food bank to experience how many Ontarians who live on social assistance eat when money runs out before the end of the month. )
My opinion on this:
-Yet when someone asks you for money or food you automatically shift into the mode where its easier to convince yourself that you are in the right by saying that that hungry person is a drug addict and a derelict and lazy because rather than “working hard” like you they are out on the street begging “expecting handouts”. We are in a recession people. How are we going to get jobs when jobs are still being cut back or just don’t exist?

Back to the article:
If we think it’s important to look after the most vulnerable in our society, and those who are down on their luck, we ought to give them enough. Me(It’s just too bad that the average person doesn’t think this way. Even the people who came to this conclusion only came to it after exposing themselves to what hundreds of people in this province have to resort to because of various issues, be it the recession, mental health issues, addiction – god forbid --, and whatever else has plagued our lives these days.)
Article: The purpose of welfare is not to hurt somebody, or kick them when they’re down. It’s to help them in order to get off welfare, and back into more productive, social, healthy and useful lives.
Me: Yes, but what we don’t realize is that welfare doesn’t help you get off of it. They only give you enough money (or what some pencil pusher with a 50k salary a year has decided what is enough money for you to live a month) every month just to streak by. It is a vicious circle. And if you work so you can eat every month, you have to report in and they deduct it from your next check. How are we supposed to get off welfare when all the system is, is one big opportunity for people to be subjected to subhuman conditions legally, and its there so that our government can say poor us look at all the people ripping us off. We tried to help these people and they cant even help themselves. Maybe its because we don’t get enough AID to remove ourselves from the rut that the government put us in. I should just leave to country, move to another one and claim refugee status, who knows maybe then I’ll get a decent paying job, I will definitely have a decent place to live. And people will respect me.

“The Do the Math campaign focuses on th0e amount of money that somebody in Ontario on welfare or disability assistance gets. Of the $590 [allotted], about $356 is specifically designated for rent. If one is lucky and clever [enough] to find a spot that costs less than that, they don’t get to keep the money: That gets clawed back. If you don’t use it, lose it. About $225 is the balance for everything else: that’s clothing, that’s TTC, that’s food. Try living on that. It’s hard to figure out why we choose $590 a month to be the total for welfare.

^^^^^So this is what i had to say about the above statement^^^^

I can give you a breakdown of what me and my boyfriend receive on welfare for support. Our basic support and rent combined is $939 after which something like $40 is taken off in overpayments because after being notified that my boyfriend was in jail Ontario works STILL sent him a few checks where someone managed to forge his signature and cash those checks. In any other situation with any other organization that wouldn’t have happened. The people who cashed the check illegally would have been found, charged and/or be made to pay the money back. But this is not an ideal world and we definitely do not have an ideal system so every month money that could be spend on food goes back to Ontario works to be used on God knows what. After that we receive $110 – $55 each in special diet funding (as if that would be enough to purchase soy milk and high protein ingredients) and an additional $214 for bus passes that we are expected to purchase not to get to our doctor appointment every week so that we can stay clean but to make it to the few and even further away spaced appointments with various workers. They do not care about your problems only theirs. Most workers at Ontario works are sooooooo jaded that they don’t care that some people are trying to improve their situation. So in total we get $1215 a month to live on (Back in 2007 I worked as a security guard for $9/h 36h/w but in 3 12h shifts. I made $568 every two weeks, totaling to $1136 a month. Had I not been living at home at the time I wouldn’t have been able to rent an apartment and support myself on that. We get a mere $79 more than that but for TWO people instead of one. How do you expect someone to live like that?) After rent ($500 for a room in a house-we can’t even afford a one bedroom. We have no space and because of the stress of this, we fight often which only increases the stress) and buss passes ($107 each so $214), we are left with $501 for the rest of the month, which really split down the middle is $250 each. Tell me, when was the last time YOU lived on $250. That’s all you get to pay your bills so say like $50 for a phone card for my cell phone because I can’t get a house phone due to bad credit and not being able to actually afford a house phone. That leaves me with $200 after which I pitch anywhere from $50 to $80 for groceries, he does the same. So that leaves me with say $120. Now I have that much to buy whatever I need for that month whether it is tampons, razors, toothpaste and all the other things that I might need for the month. Or maybe I might want to treat myself and buy a new bra or some underwear because what I have is getting old and starting to fall apart.

I want you to take a good long look at yourself and your ideas about what a poor person asking for money on a street corner should be like. I don’t do drugs…I am in recovery and have been drug free since the 13th of August, 2009. I don’t drink and haven’t drunk excessively for at least 5 years. I smoke cigarettes, but it is a far cry from what I was doing this time last year so its not something I worry over. My time will come when I quit that too. I am not a loser. While I am a drug addict I am a recovering one, which is supposed to be a good thing right. So while I have to pan handle every day to make things meet because the food that I bought at the beginning of the month is starting to run out, I dress neatly with what I have, I try to find socks with no holes in them and I plan to set aside $14 dollars to fix my only pair of dressy –ish shoes next check and maybe some money for a hair cut. Mother’s day is coming up so I gotta get my mom a card and hopefully I have enough money for a flower or two.
Most people have become hardened and jaded against this sort of shit. They convince themselves that calling every panner a lazy drug addict who abuses the system to get a fucking job because they have one is ok. And that they are justified in degrading people who have already swallowed their dignity to ask for a handout. We hate asking as much as you hate us asking. But that doesn’t give you the right to treat us like sub-humans just because you are having a bad day. And you know what, Mississauga is my hometown. I moved here 22 years ago when I was just six years old and I have to say it is just about of the rudest cities between here and Vancouver. The people who give are the ones who are on Ontario disability and get about a grand more than we get, or they are the pensioners who have a little money set aside or better yet they are the other panhandlers. I will say one thing. I am proud to be a panhandler because we take care of our own. I cant say that for people who can afford do help.

I was planning on printing the above out tomorrow and going out and making some real money by educating people about my situation.

I have been clean since the 13th of august, 2009 because on that day i started the methadone program(opiate replacement for those who don't know). every week i get piss tested and i can tell you that since then all my tests have been clean for both opiates and stimulants. i actually have proof lol.

Me and jay rent a room in a house not too far from my moms house for five hundred a month. we still cant make it through the month without pan handling and my mother refuses to buy me food because someone in the family (my half sister probably) has convinced her to use the excuse that she is enabling me to stay with Jay (she hates him for whatever reason) so rather than enable me to stay with him she lets me starve. she talks shit about me to my face. puts me down whenever she can and uses her alcoholism as a weapon and states that it is ok for her to be an alcoholic because it is completely different from my drug addiction even though it has caused her to have a drunk driving conviction where as i have never been arrested so therefore not charged for my indiscretions. it makes no difference that jay has also been on the methadone program since just after last thanksgiving. and now apparently she is tantalizing me with hopes that are probably just empty promises.

she only just recently told me she was thinking about THINKING ABOUT getting me a car so that i can get a job working security again. now that minimum wage has gone up to 10.25/h i don't mind working a 12 hour shift. but the problem with this is that the next time we talk about this she will just turn around and say that she said no such thing and i will once again be disappointed and hurt by the one person who was supposed to love me with no expectations in return. it isn't the case
my mother will not help me unless i break up with my boyfriend whom i love very much and am still very much in love with. however i can see it now. i will finally break down, break up with him only to go home and be treated like a slave and second class citizen. how nice. this is my own family who is doing this to me.

my mother doesn't seem to realize that every lie, every cruel word that comes out of her ever negatively assuming mouth is what enables me from being with my boyfriend. that and the fact that i love him.

and she will tell you with conviction, because it is what she believes to be truth, that i left and it was not she who kicked me out originally over two years ago. Because she and my other jealous half sister have convince herself that it is the case. She says she has compassion, but how could she when all i ask for is food. i don't even ask for cash but instead i ask that she load some onto a loader gift card for price chopper where there is no cash back available. but no not even that. people that i talk to go well maybe your mother can authorize funds from your trust fund to help you out for all of these things and maybe so that i can finally finish college. what a fucking joke that is. not a chance because you know what I DON'T DESERVE IT, because I AM NOT DOING WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, but when i ask my mom what that is she says that i already know even though to tell you the truth i have know idea what is truly expected of my.

Well actually that's a lie. i honestly think that even if i come home and sacrifice my happiness and sanity to go back to an unsupportive environment that is both verbally and emotionally, and sometimes physically abusive, i will never receive the help that was promised to me for doing so. i truly think that my mother has conviced herself that she is right and we are all wrong for wanting something very basic. All i want is my mother too love me with no strings attached. I just want her to treat me with respect and to respect my choices and to help me out of this rut.

I want to do things with my trust. my family is shitting on my fathers name and it bothers me. you know i can't even go visit his grave because he is buried in Greece next to his father and i have no way of going. my mother is never going to pay for a ticket for me and jay because if she buys me a ticket she's going to do it for over a month and i get separation anxiety if i'm away from jay for more than a week or two. it was agony when he spent a month in jail back in September for a failure to appear. the only thing that made it bearable was that i got to visit him a couple of times and he called me almost every day. but i know that if my mother only buys me a ticked its gonna be for at least a month cuz according to them its the only way its worth paying for a ticket and the whole time im there she's gonna be trying to brainwash me into breaking up with jay or trick me into doing something that would make him break up with me. i wouldn't be surpised if she purposely did what she accidentally did when i was 16 (leaving me with someone who ended up drugging my drink just so that they could rape me. it was my first time and it definately wasn't special) i honestly think she would do it on purpose this time only so that jay will think that i cheated on him so that he could do her dirty work for her and break up with me. i know it.

heh. you guys must think im crazy and paranoid. maybe i am after all i am diagnosed with borderline personality disorder...i have the scars to prove it. but my mother is, in my mind truly that vicious if it means that she could have me back. if that ever happens. i am letting you all know that i will kill myself and it would be all her fault. i don't picture myself being with anyone but him. everyone could try and convince me that in the event of a break up that i will find someone new. but i doubt it.

anyways im gonna let you guys go.
if anyone whats to talk to me i can be reached at my email
wateredsun@gmail.com
or
tina_k@rogers.com

talk to you guys later

Tina