The Disability Insurance Dilema

This article may provide the reader with a little insight into my life and personal history. At the age of 19 I was diagnosed with a certain medical condition, which falls under the broad catagory of mental illness. By all appearances this is a condition that I was born with, its genetic in nature. At the present time I am considered to be a Bi-Polar person, but I do take medications and they have been quite effective. I have lived most of my life at the very bottom of the scale of social acceptability because of being labled mentally ill.

For a long time i was recieveing dissability benefits here in the USA from the Social Security Administration. This is a kind of insurance benefit that all people who work in this country and pay the taxes, pay for. I have tried to work in the past, and I was successful to some extent; I had a job with the Federal Government at the National Archives in Saint Louis, Missouri. I worked as a mail room clerk for 3 years, on an intermittent contract. As an intermittent employee I was only allowed to work a certain number of hours per year, and when that amount of time had been reached I would be laid off until the anniversary date. Essentially I ended up being fired from that job, and after this happened I started getting the dissability benefits.

Over the course of time that I was receiveing the benefits I also tried to work off and on with less success. Now since my medical condition is considered treatable, and I must admit the medications are quite good these days, the SSA determined that I should be able to work. Therefore I was taken off the dissability benefits, but also the SSA made a determination that I had been overpaid. Unfortunately this has resulted in a rather large amount of debt for me.

In addition to this SSA debt, I also owe a growing debt of child support. I have two young sons and I am legally divorced from my wife, she won full custodial rights and the judge made that decision primarily based on my medical condition. My financial means have always been meager at best, in fact I have always depended on my family for support even during the times that I was employed. After the SSA removed my benefits I went directly to work and paid child support during that time. Unfortunately I have never been successful as a competitive employee in our job market, and I have reoccuring fails at staying employed. Most employers in this country would be unwilling to make the allowances that I would need in order to stay employed, and a few practice outright discrimination.

For the past five years I have been fighting a battle with the Social Security Adminstration to reinstate my benefits. My case has been denied and appealed and denied again. And for all of this time I have lived in retirement in my father's household, I have been entirely dependent on his support for the past five years.
My life has been fairly comfortable and secluded, and although it may have been better in a variety of ways, I have no complaints. In my own mind I have been a successful human-being, I have a few accomplishments to be proud of. Just the fact that I have managed to survive into old age is an accomplishment in itself, I just turned 46 years old. I have managed to become a father 3 times over; I managed to have sex with a woman, in fact more than one. I have become a priesthood holder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, even though I haven't been a good church goer. And I managed to find God, or at least find out that there really is one. And not only is there a God in Heaven but evidently he's paying attention, and he was paying attention to me one day and I was favored with a sign. The events from that one day in my life alone, is enough to provide the full measure of a lifetime of success in my opinion.

On April the 2nd, 2009 I have to appear in court before a new judge, and my benefits case will be decided once and for all. If I get a favorable decision, my debts will be paid because the SSA will owe me past due benefits. And if I lose this battle, there will be a personal crisis concerning all these debts, and I may very well have to appear in court again before another judge.