An American EBT (Food Stamp) Narrative...

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Imagine this...

You have a great job, you make a good living...you can even afford a pretty decent car, and an iPhone on a cell plan (even though iPhones are basically expensive pieces of shit)...you have a nice purse because you splurged, your best friend gave you a gift card to a Guess store, and so, because you were making money, you paid the difference and got yourself a nice Guess purse.

You're doing well.

But then, an unforeseen circumstance befalls you...your company has a massive layoff...the country's economy tanks...you fall ill...and you lose your job.

The job market is shit, you are over-qualified...under-qualified...the job market is saturated with people; you struggle...but you need food.

You get food stamps...begrudgingly...but you need nutrition just to survive.

You drive the car you bought from when you were employed, that you're now struggling to make payments on, to the grocery store. Hoping you'll get a great paying job soon, you're keeping the car, because trading it in is a crap shoot. You put some food in your cart, a bag of chips maybe...because it's a treat. You get to the register and you pull your wallet out of your Guess purse and extract your EBT card...and you can feel the judging eyes...your phone rings and you pull out your iPhone and answer it, you hear scoffs of those judging you further, you walk out to your can get into it...and you can feel the people who know you're "on the dole" watching you, hateful, angry.

This happens for months while you apply for job after job.
Even getting a job at WalMart would be fine, but it would keep you below the poverty limit; you wouldn't make much, but at least your income would be augmented by your EBT "food stamps"(1).

You're the working poor.

Or...

maybe you got a great job and now you don't need your EBT, and so as a final blow-out you use the rest of the funds on your EBT card to buy lobster and steak...after all, as a single person, in most states, you're only getting about $130 month for food, but it's early in the month, and your new job is great, so why not celebrate and use it all up.

But now some asshole found the receipt on the ground, was appalled at how you spent HIS tax contributions...and he posted it all over the internet (and it's now been trending nicely there for over two and a half years as an example)...making the ignorant public into a bunch of giant douchebags who don't think anyone should require this (often) much needed government assistance.

Welcome to America. It's God's country.

Maybe some people need to remember the "Great Recession" brought on by the Bush Jr. Administration, and recall how the economy tanked, what the word "recovery" means and understand that it's not an instantaneous occurrence...and gain some fucking perspective.

And before you pull out your bag of assumptions. NO we are NOT on ANY government assistance.
We have been on food stamps (EBT) two times over the past fifteen years, but not for long (no longer than a year and a half), and it was only when we needed it.

Perhaps the majority of the 14.3%(2) of Americans on Food Stamps (most of which are the elderly, families with children, and the disabled) actually need the help they are asking for...and the (rare) exceptions to the rule shouldn't be the reason you hate on those people.

What a novel concept.

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Sources and Citation:
(1) Walmart: America's real 'Welfare Queen', Daily Kos, Paddy Ryan, October 10, 2012 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/10/1141724/-Walmart-fuels-inequality-epidemic-taking-advantage-of-our-safety-net#

(2) Americans Significantly Overestimate The Percent Of People On Food Stamps, Business Insider, Walter Hickley, October 11, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-really-overestimate-the-percent-of-people-on-food-stamps-2013-10

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On The Topic Of Same-sex Marriage

Image Source

Same-sex marriage, hot topic in the media lately...we finally came to a place where we want to do a little entry about it...because we're tired of discussing it with ourselves, and getting angry over the ignorance and intolerance.

Religious people want to preserve the sanctity of marriage, as if there is any left. Divorce rates are high, infidelity is high, society has turned it into reality TV fodder, many of the younger generations (and mid-30's) aren't even wanting to participate it in because they have witnessed the marriages of their heterosexual parents, many times full of neglect, misery, abuse, hate, alcoholism, divorce and distrust.

Sanctify that.

Add the media coverage and law to the equation, and the idea of restricting marriage to being between ONLY a man and a woman becomes such a conflicting jumble of bullshit being ploughed into the minds of the public.

Many developed countries in the world recognize same-sex marriage. The few countries in the world that refuse to recognize it as a right (and in some cases don't even recognize homosexuality exists [China]) are countries many citizens of United States, that oppose same-sex marriage, would be hard-pressed to alight themselves with. Enemies, terrorists, countries not generally recognizes as developed (most of Africa and the Middle East).

We were channel surfing the other night and landed on a news show (not sure what channel it was, could have been msnbc) where a group of woman were talking about prenuptial agreements (for those who may not know what they are, while we abhor Wikipedia, in this case it'll give you the gist of what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenuptial_agreement), and the fact that marriage is a contract agreement between two people, and that's why prenuptial agreements are so important because it helps clearly defines rights and protects both parties in the event of the dissolution of the contract (some even include clauses regarding pets).

Separation of church and state, true separation, where the religious beliefs of a group of people do not impact the overall laws of those who are not a part of that religion is part of what American was founded on - it's part of the Constitution of the United States of America. You can see here where separation of church and state, and religious freedom, TRUE religious freedom, go hand in hand. American freedom is great, as long as you have access to that ever fleeting illusive ideal, lately it seems like freedom is fine as long as the freedom you want doesn't make the religious people uncomfortable (*cough* pro-choice abortion rights and Planned Parenthood in Arizona *clears throat*)

It's fine that people whose religious beliefs dictate that marriage is between a man and a woman adhere to that belief. It is their right to believe what they want. It is not fine, or their right, to unfairly shape the lives of others, using those beliefs. Churches have a right to deny a religious ceremony, just like they can deny heterosexual ones, if they so choose, based on their pre-determined criteria. Plenty of heterosexual couples get married outside of religious institutions, in courthouses, in parks, in Vegas, by non-clergy. Why not extend those rights to any human being, of adult age, who love each other enough to enter into a binding legal contract?

And as a side note, those people who like to interject with "Well then, why don't people just marry a sandwich/sheep/vehicle/etc" you look like a fucking idiot when you indicate that homosexuals/gays, are not even the same species as other humans. But looking like an ignorant fool is also your right.

The law that was recently passed in North Carolina is a step in the opposite direction of progress, progress being equal rights, part of the definition of a developed county (you need only look at undeveloped, third-world countries to see that).

Furthermore, who somebody loves sexually is none of anybodies business (with the obvious exception of a child, or another person who is married)...at least the people entering into that permanent relationship recognize they love each other, just as a heterosexual couple getting married love each other, and are willing to make that commitment.

And finally, mind your own fucking business. If you oppose same-sex marriage just remember, it doesn't affect your life, affect your "after life", hinder your freedom (which it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT in any way), so what's your fucking problem. Just because you don't understand it, and therefore fear it/hate it, doesn't make it any less legitimate. It just means you have a narrow view of love...and meanwhile, how dare you love the person you love? Some people think them unattractive, too fat, too skinny, too bitchy, too nice, too slutty, too mentally ill, they're of a different ethnic background as you, a different financial class as you, they've already been married once, twice, maybe more, they have children...how dare you love them.

Let people love who they want, in a world full of people who increasingly find love to be an alien and distant concept, or worse, reality show entertainment, let somebody be an example of true love...they fight hard for their right to love the people they love.

~ Ivy et al
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'Same-sex marriage legislation around the world'  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_legislation_around_the_world (complete with map)

Sam Gets Set-Off

God damn people piss us off, more notably, they piss me off.

We respect that writers who write make money, and to survive, to pay their bills and such have to come up with creative ways to sell their books, stories, etc, to gain notice, or whatever; but they should be cautious as to how they are doing it, what methods they are using - it doesn't matter if it is working for them if it is also causing harm and spreading ignorance.

To fain multiple personalities, or to talk about voices in their head that they don't actually have, to gain notice for their own financial/personal gain, is offensive to us. It's probably offensive to other people who suffer from disorders like Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder and Schizophrenia too. For us, whenever I catch wind of someone "abusing" symptoms that they don't have, and WORSE, mixing up mental illnesses (most commonly Bipolar, Schizophrenia and Multiple Perosnality Disorder), I get angry.

I get angry that people try to claim Multiple Personality to describe their "alter-egos" - the other sides of themselves; everybody has to have a work them and a public them and sometimes a family them - that's a given. That is NOT DID/Multiple Personality Disorder, because inside you, you are still you. You maintain the same value system, you maintain the same opinions, even if you have to lie about them - it's still you on the inside. Nobody is taking your body for a drive that you are not in control of, that you are a passenger of.

One of the hardest things for those with DID/Multiple Personality Disorder is that people assume it's used as an excuse to blame the stupid shit that The Body gets used for on someone else, and not take responsibility for the actions that took place; but like we've said before, and we maintain now: We take responsibility, collectively, for everything that The Body gets used for, and everything it gets blamed for. Like the others getting in trouble at work for some of the things I do and say; the others take responsibility, even though they know they didn't do, or say anything - it's not thier fault that I get pissed off at stupid fucking people, and can't always maintain the pitch of my voice, or the way in which things come out of the mouth.

That's a little off track, sorry about that. Back to the issue which brought my to the front, and brought me to writing this entry.

It's not that you can only make fun of disorders if you have it, (though, you might want to consider why you feel the need to do it) but to do it for ones own gain, that's a huge no-no to us. In addition, if you are going to make fun of it, like I wrote this week in 'Sam Gets Angry About Ignorance', you should educate yourself on it first, don't mix up disorders. There is almost nothing worse than spreading ignorance, with ignorance.

It's offensive because we are mentally ill, some might say severely, depending on your view of what is severe, but we are functional. Every day is a struggle, a struggle to maintain control, a struggle to keep our job, a struggle to make sure we get tasks done; simple things, like paying taxes, getting the mail, paying bills, cleaning up after ourselves, feeding ourselves, and taking care of our stupid cats.  That's just a short list. And it's not because of Twitter, if it were not for Twitter we would be laying in bed staring at a wall, medicating with massive amounts of marijuana, like The Other Girl did before we killed her off, and we would be in the same place she was; which is to say sick, but in a different way in which we are "sick" now.

Mental Health Month is coming to a close. We never really got to do the Monday posts on talking about illnesses, such as depression, eating disorders, and other things that people struggle with, and that some of us struggle with. We want to continue to help raise awareness, and we will continue to do so through this blog. We want to help other mentally ill people fear less about being open about their illness, by decreasing societies fear of them; we want people to learn, to love and understand - because people hate and fear the things they do not understand.

Next month we hope to be able to get back to some fun posts, stuff about writing, cooking, music, philosophy, art, movies, poetry, travel, and so many more things that interest each of us, and the completion of our life story, to bring it all to this last year and a half, so we can share with you some of the things we've experienced that brought us here, to the last year of blogging, to being fearful of leaving the house, and not wanting to be around people anymore, and then eventually...to Twitter; where we have made friends with beautiful people who let us be all of us, with one Twitter account, just like we have to be all of us with one body.

I had to come here and post this; we got angry, I got angrier, and when that happens it shuts us down from being able to be on Twitter...mostly because I take over when there is anger, and I fucking hate Twitter, but I also need a healthy release, which is writing for most of us. If I am not around none of the others get angry about this kind of stuff. They see and hear shit all the time that would piss me off, they tell me about it later, usually after it's too far in the past for me to take any sort of action, or to look into the matter further. The others are afraid to deal with anger once it hits a certain level. The head starts throbbing, the blood beings pounding in our ears, it sounds like a wind tunnel is forming...sometimes we get dizzy.

I can handle it, they can't; but now Emmie is gone for awhile and I have to be by myself, which is just going to make me upset until someone else wants to step in for the day. I really wish Frank would come back to us, I'm tired of all this bullshit.

~Sam

I wrote this week about being angry about ignorance: 'Sam Gets Angry About Ignorance' http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/05/sam-gets-angry-about-ignorance.html <- I talk about symptoms in this one, criteria required for diagnoses of DID/MPD just in case people haven't caught one of our symptoms posts.

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For the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month, we will be posting this at he bottom of each of our entries, to help provide additional information about us, and about Dissociative Identiry Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder.

10 Things You Should Know About US That MIGHT Surprise YOU:

1. We used to be a Baptist missionary (yeah, can you fucking believe that shit?!) [we are NOT religious]
2. We were once married (didn’t last long) [one of our stories talks about him]
3. We have had nearly 30 physical addresses in 30 years, mostly as an adult (nothing could contain us in the early days) [we actually own a house, but choose not to live in it]
4. We’ve lived in 2 countries: 1 province and 6-7 different states (running much)
5. We have lost 120 pounds since the age of 24 (100 of it when we were 24) [and it's close to 140 pounds now)
6. We have a full time job (well, now it's 32 hours a week - but they actually let us work around the other humans!) [it get's harder everyday, and this is the longest we've ever had a single job since we were 17. We've been there almost a year]
7. We deal with social anxiety type symptoms every day (and these days we choose not to leave home much, but for going to work) [there are about three people we feel comfortable with being in public with and sometimes we have to be out there alone]
8. We have multiple “mental illness” diagnoses (doesn't everybody?) [p.s. all misdiagnosed]
9. We have two beautiful cats, who piss us off every day (but they are special, because they put up with us) [though one of us hates them beyond belief]
10. We have struggled to survive, over and over, defeating the odds thrown against us (read our stories) [seriously, how are we not dead yet?]

We've copied the stories written here that are specifically about our past (mostly abuse) and moved them to our other blog, called:

Addressing The Issue of Frank: The Origins, History and Life Story of Frank, from "Just Call Me Frank: One Womans Endeavour At Being Frank"  

(this blog also contains our artwork/photography - the following links will take you to that blog)

•  1. Addressing The Issue of Frank: Part 1
• 2. The Emergence of Frank: The Beginning
• 3.The Emergence of Frank: The Second Coming
• 4. The Emergence of Frank: Three Times A Rescuer
• 5. The Emergence of Frank: Frank's Failure
• 6. We Go To University & We Take A Lover (links to our other blog)
• 7. Life Without Frank - The First Two Years
• 7b. Collision: The Other Girls Terrible Car Accident - Franks Coma

Some of our writing on this blog we like to promote (consider them highlights), these are those entries since mid-January 2011. There are bits of writing in this blog that we do not actually promote due to embarrassment over things that some have written - they are here for our own tracking - they are angry, mean, scary things. If you feel like it you can find them on your own (they are in the What We've Been Up To over on the left). Here are the highlights of what we have written so far this year:

The Mental Health Entries:
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder

• Mental Health Awareness Month: Our Introduction
• We Chat With The Father About DID (this post contains information on what DID is)
• Frank Gets Candid (We talk about Catherine, one of our alters)
• **We Freak Out** (this was a very important day, the day we met Marisa, recoverer of DID)
• We Are Fragments
• We / We Get Random / We Have Questions
• Marisa Answers Our Questions
• Frank Gets Candid, About Memories...and Bethany (we talk about one of our alters)
• A Note From Frank, and ONLY Frank (actually not written by Frank)
• Standby and The Death of the Other Girl: Part 1 of 3 (we start talking about the death of one of our alters)
• Our Ears May Be Burning (we talk about what people we recently knew might be saying over Easter)
• We Just Need A Good Map (Mental Health Awareness Month Post - Frank talks about DID mapping)
• We Don't Do A Blog Post (we talk a little about mapping, Bethany, unicorns & stuff)
• We Discuss Three Mis-Diagnosed Mental Illnesses
• A Day In The Room
• We Have Nothing To Lose (Cassandra talk about the death of a mentally ill "friend")
• Frank Lets You Know Bitch (me!) (Bethany got to write her very own entry about herself)
• Sam Gets Angry About Ignorance  (Written by Sam)
• A Little Bit Of Emmie (Written by Emmie)

Health:

• When Anxiety Attacks 
• Franks/Our 100 Pound Weight Loss Story
• Collision: The Other Girls/Our Terrible Car Accident
• Stress and Expediential Weight Loss
• New Pain and Old Fear

Family:

• Why Most Of Us Dislike Our Mother
• We Chat With The Father About DID (this post contains information on what DID is)
• A Few Hours With The Father and Baby Brother

Relationships:

• Relationships, Frank...and Love 
• Our First Girlfriend
• The First Boy We Liked, That Liked Us Back
• An Ass-Face Comes A Texting
• We Go To University, We Take A Lover
  
  Standby:
• To A Human, If Indeed That Is What You Are (1 of 3)
• The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain (2 of 3)
• Standby: The Final Chapter (3 of 3)
• Standby and The Death of the Other Girl: Part 1 of 3 (to be continued)
  
  Fuck Face:
• A Mistress Without Cutlery
• What Become Of The Broken Hearted
• Fuck Face: Who He Is (also work related)
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 1
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 2
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 3
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 4
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 5
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 6
• We Have Drinks With Fuck Face
• To Send, or Not To Send...The E-mail Is The Question
• Situation Stand Still
  
  
  Friendships:
• Friends: A Tale of The Non-Bestie
• Our Ears May Be Burning
• We Have Nothing To Lose
• Girl Crush Gets The 411 on Us
• A Frank Evening With Fabulous People and The Pup

Work:

• All In a Days Work
• All In a Days Work II
• All In a Days Work III
• A Day In The Room
• Another Day, Another Dollar; Fuck Our Life
  
  Life:
• Please Don't Let Us Be Misunderstood
• All We Have Is Hope
• Cooking With Frank
• A Distraction, In The Form of The Jeans
• Seriously...And @NickSilly Answers Some Questions
• We Get A Guest Blogger - Kinky Sex!
• We Have Nothing To Lose
• How We Feel About Advice...and We Ramble

Opinion:

• Religion, You Say? We Have A View On That
• Growth and Change; An Artist Standpoint
• Birds of A Feather, on Twitter, CAN Flock Together
• For Us, It's All About Team Awesome...and Twitter
• Reading We Recommend: Casey Hannan
• Hell Ride: A Film Review

Art/Poetry:

• Evil of Three: A Painting
• Saviour: A Painting
• Deadly Catch: A Painting
• Pretty Things: A Poem
• Erase This Poem
• Envisage of We: A Poem

Humour/Random Fun:

• The Tale of the Barbie Massacre Trail/Part 1
• Happy Zombie Day A.K.A Happy Easter

If you have any questions for us we are very open and will answer to our best ability - this is totally the month to ask us questions. You can either ask us on Twitter, in the comment section of a blog entry here, or e-mail us at justcallmefrank2010 (at) gmail.com.

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Resources for You - facts, figures and personal stories of other people can be found on these sites:

National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml

American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/index.aspx

Canadian Mental Health Association: http://www.cmha.ca/bins/index.asp

Mental Health Europe: http://www.mhe-sme.org/

World Health Organization - Mental Health: http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/mental-health

Mental Health America: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/may

World Psychiatric Association: http://www.wpanet.org