The Reality of a PIP Interview

The alarm wakes me with a start. We've not been killed then. I roll out of bed, drowsy from lack of sleep. Today's the day they decide if I deserve to have money to live. It would have been earlier but we changed it after they scheduled it for the day of my 21st birthday.

We gather my things: a fidget cube, a cuddly toy, a walking stick and a three-wheeled stroller. I don't bother washing my hair or brushing my teeth. I'm too anxious to do even the most basic things. As soon as I engage in anything remotely menial my mind wonders to terrible places. 

Bundling into the car I'm wary of the journey ahead. It's a long journey, especially for someone who's in an active battle with his own mind and shouldn't really be left alone with it. We pass a power plant on the way. I note that it could be a target in a nuclear attack. Visions of mushroom clouds, vaporisation and radiation sickness proceed. My heart beats faster, the fear returns again.

We arrive at the destination and get the things out the car. I hobble down the street with my walking stick, not being able to walk very far without using one due to my dyspraxia. Rain pours down from above, hammering onto my now-greasy coat hood. We're in a city. The nuclear nightmares begin again.

Eventually we find the evaluation centre, locked away in an alcove of office buildings. I walk in with the stroller, having switched to it from the walking stick due to its better efficiency. We sit down and wait.

I'm called in. My Mother comes in with me because I'm so anxious all the time that I can't remember anything. The woman interviewing me sits behind a desk in an unusually spacious office. She greets me with a smile and says something about how she's here to help understand my conditions. Then the interrogation begins.

She reads what I have: Asperger's, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, Dyspraxia. She reads the doctor's note saying how I'm so limited by these conditions that I can barely do menial tasks. Her attention turns to me. I'm in mid-swing of my nuclear fears, furiously clicking away on my fidget cube to try and make the thoughts go away. She asks me various questions, A lot of them I can't remember the answers to so Mum fills in the gaps, she doesn't want to hear from Mum she says, she wants to hear from me.

"How far can you walk?"
"I don't know, I have to use the stick or a stroller. I can't walk for very long unaided."
"Can you walk X amount of metres?"

"I don't know what that is."
"Just down to the lampost at the end of the road and back."
So here I am, expected to judge a distance based on the geography of a city I'm not familiar with. Unsurprisingly I don't know the answer.

"You can walk that can't you?" 

The woman is now pre-empting my response.

"I guess, maybe with the stick or the stroller."

She writes something down on her pad.

"What do you do in the day?"
"I go on the computer, watch TV and films, play games, anything to distract me from my thoughts. I like space, I recently won a NASA competition where you had to send a message to be sent into space in."

More scribbling. More clicking on the fidget cube. 

"You went to a mainstream school didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Can you remember what grades you got at GCSE and A-Level?"
I struggle for a while and then recall my grades, mostly average, some towards the top end at GCSE.

"Can you cook unaided?"
"Well I can't really cook so-"
"Could you physically cook unaided?"
"Well I can't stand for long periods of time."
"But can you use kitchen utensils?"
I'm not safe with them because of anxiety, my mind wanders, I can't even perform menial tasks because of anxiety anyway.
After many questions like this, we turn to the physical stage of the interview.

"Could you stand please?"
The woman then proceeds to ask me to raise my leg as far as I can, scrutinising my movement and writing it down. I feel like a cow in a cattle grid.

We leave and I feel awful. The lowest of the low. A failure.

We wait for a while and a letter comes back through the door just before Christmas. There is nothing wrong with me. I attended a mainstream school (doesn't matter about the full support I received), I passed my driving test with a manual car so that means I can multitask (doesn't matter how long it took, how we can't afford a car let alone an automatic one or how I barely drive due to anxiety), my medication's working (this doesn't even warrant a response) and I won the NASA competition (literally something anyone who could write 60 characters could do). 

My PIP has been cancelled. 

My Mum's lost her Carer's Allowance, her carer component of ESA and her Severe Disabled Benefit (she has debilitating Arthritis and a host of other medical conditions) because of it. 

We've lost £270 a week, and that's not mentioning all the disability cards that got me money off things.

We are poor.