Attitude towards Free Travel Card Users

I decided to start a new thread on this, it was originally a reply to someone on the seat bookings thread.

I am in my early/mid 20s and I have had the experience of being an FT user, I will keep it for a while now as I am back in work but will eventually lose it, and while it's been an invaluable tool in helping me restore my health, the experience of having it has been humiliating, embarrassing, and stressful, because of the attitude of the public, some staff and radio presenters/callers (I listen and count the misinformation - always always ALLLLLWAYS uncorrected by the host)

I'm hardly innocent in this attitude, because I've been guilty of it myself.

We all know the usual three tropes about this topic: Junkies, cost and reforms. But it's not the wider scheme I wanna post on though, it's the attitude towards people on it - a kind of cold naked contempt and I'm going to use my own experience to illustrate how this attitude feels on the receiving end.

I managed to get myself a cancer that usually affects people over 55, and after I recovered from that I developed a really severe depression and anxiety disorder that:

• Stopped me going to college
• Got me fired from my job (because apparently, though I said/did nothing in particular according to them, the customers picked up on my dark mood and took it as me being bad mooded with them, which of course it was not),
• Led to me isolating myself at home
• Stopped all socializting (all social media terminate, no interactions with friends or socializing with family whatsoever, zero zero zero)
• My mental energy collapsed to the point where showering and shaving seemed like what climbing a mountain would to a normal person.
• Developed a sophisticated suicide plan to avoid it looking like a suicide

Eventually, I was convinced to get treatment, after two years of this going on. When I got the FT card I was told it would be a key tool in our plans.

I quite literally had to be retrained how to do normality. Docs set up a skeletal routine, up and out at x time, home by y time, to aproximate the normal routine and retrain in the basics. Contrary to what you see on TV, while empathy is important, treating mental illness is not all about wallowing in what a victim you are it's about getting out of that mindset and shoving you back into normality in careful phases.

The idea is to get you out and force you to sit through your anxiety, realize the sky won't fall, repeat until it goes away. I'd get up at my old times, go to the gym, then get on DART / Bus x for x time (the idea was to get used to working a timetable again) and being out made you have an incentive to do your normal bathroom routines etc. The FT was an ENORMOUS help to breaking the self imposed isolation. They start you with nice simple tasks like get on the bus go to x and come home..see nothing terrible happened, your heart rate went down and the dizziness went away...now sitting at a desk doing some work between the arrival and home time no longer seems like such a big deal does it?
"No...I kinda feel stupid now that I was that worried about it..." progress, and off you go to the next step.

It feels great when you start to make progress, for me it was the smell of refrigerator fluid in the delivery trucks in the morning air that made me remember "oh yeh...normality"...I remember this!. Then...that feeling is SHATTERED when you hear the bus driver, during the BE strike, on the radio complaining about abuse of the FT scheme which to my rage they were blaming on BE's financial woes, where he saw this passenger (who you realize with a jolt in your chest is you) just take the bus somewhere, ask when it was going back, have a cup of tea in the centre then turn around. You think oh god he's using my case as evidence of people just mucking around with it.

People don't understand that just because you look physically ok does not mean you are in perfect health (even with cancer you'd never know half the people have it with modern cosmetics, hair replacement, less invasive treatments..)

Oh you won't look like a mens health cover, but 99% of guys don't! The problem gets worse though, when you start to rapidly recover and you DO start to look like a mens health cover (if I do say so myself, and I do :cool: what? if your'e gonna rebuild may as well go all the way!) , where you are nearly there, ready to go back to work, socialize etc etc

You no longer have an iron defecency so you don't look pale as a sheet, you look lean and muscular not undernourished, you're clean shaven, using a moisturizer, actually wash and cut your hair, working out 4-5 days a week.

This multiplies the dirty looks 100 fold and snide comments you get from people about how "nothing wrong with him/you" and its so soul destroying. There you were, everyone told you to "pull the finger out" (a moronic phrase you hear on FM104 and 98FM about mental illness all the time spoken by cabbages who don't know what the f--k they're talking about, an anxiety attack can bring your heart rate up to 140 where you literally lock up and freeze), even the docs say "loose the mindset of being a sick person you'll never get back to normal that way, you have to do the normal things , normal grooming and dress, be up early etc". You do all that, it's hard, but you do it. Then your reward is increasingly snide comments when you use one of the tools at your disposal to get better. I've heard the "nothing wrong with him" whisper so many times I am starting to get paranoid thinking I may be hearing it when it's not actually said.


You see staff look carefully at the picture then up at you, you see the mild shake of the head, you know they're thinking "nothing wrong with him" - that he can see.. He sees a college age guy extremely physically fit with nice clothes bright eyes and clear skin. Heres what he couldn't see that was still going on even as I was recovering and looking way better:

• {snip — sorry, have to remove this — don’t want to give people in a similar position ideas — moderator}
• Night Terrors
• Insomnia
• Anxiety attacks
• Crushing loneliness from being away from friends some of whom you were very close to, but too afraid to go back near them until this was sorted lest you cause them trouble with your emotional issues
• Mortal terror at the idea of a relapse
• Fear that even though you no longer want to die you might have already crossed the ireperable damage threshold with the drugs you took in your previous attempt to kill yourself which has you constantly checking your eyes in mirrors for yellow spots, looking at your legs for evidence of any swelling..

I got so embarrassed I asked the guy in the Connoly office for two blank student tickets, put them in the clear plastic pouch the pass is in on either side of the smart card, the cardboard won't stop the chip capturing, the idea was to conceal that I was using a card from people around me.

I dread when inspectors come on, in fact it makes them all the more interested in me because in their job they clearly notice anyone squriming thinking they're fare dodging. I hate it because in some of them I can feel what they are thinking. I see them on the platform and I immediatly start to pack my laptop or tablet away, zip up my jacket to hide any brand logos lest I feed into the idea that "these people" are living the high life on the public dime (the tablet & clothes was bought when I was working, laptop a gift, but of course people always assume you got them with your welfare cash)

Even when you do'n't say anything we can feel it. Go up to a dog all happy and ready to pet him you'll see him wag his tail and approach you. Try going up to him angry (inside) and he'll back off and bark at you, because he can feel it, people have that ability to , you can sense someones hostility, and when you are just following the rules and trying your best to do what everyone told you to do it undermines your confidence and humiliates you.

Yes I know there are annoying junkies on the red line, I know there are people who should not have them - don't take it out on the rest of us who are just trying to get our lives back, or (in seniors case) getting a small payback from society for a lifetime of contributions.

So spare a thought, I hope you make it to 66, any of you out there who have had this attitude (like I did), but if you don't and you're struck down with something in the mean time, a year from now I won't have a pass, and I'll see some of you with one and know what? I won't mind paying for you, because you paid for me when I needed it, that's how a social democracy is supposed to work, and give me that over the US model of "f--k you you're on your own" any day.