Paperwork

Something that keeps boggling my mind is how someone suffering from depression is still expected to do tons and tons and tons of paperwork. Do you want to apply for financial aid, here please fill in and file these papers please. Do you need to take out sick leave, more papers, do you want to get in touch with the hospital to try to help you with your issues? Even more bloody paperwork. I am only nineteen, have never had a full-time job and up to my chin with papers that have to be sent to different agencies and departments. I can only imagine how it gets later in life.

Now, I of course understand that to make sure things are done correctly you need to double-check and triple-check that no one is trying to pull something sketchy and waste resources that could be spent on those who actually need them, but there has to be a better way of doing things rather than overwhelming people who struggle to get out of bed with lots and lots of tedious paperwork.

I am lucky who still live at home and have wonderful parents who are willing to help and motivate me in my darker times, but even then it sometimes gets overwhelming.

For example just this week I finally managed to complete my application for university. Now, since I don’t have a high-school diploma I had to make an application for something they call “trial of competence” a process where you provide proof that you actually possess knowledge even though you don’t have any grades to show for it. After making sure there was no rush to upload said proof to the indicated website I began. It was a simple task of asking people to write a signature on a short blurb that proved that I had done certain things and that they provided me with the knowledge required. Simple right? Yes, but even the most simple tasks seem like impenetrable mountains. I couldn’t do it. I had my father write the blurbs. I needed him to sit by my side while I sent them out, and when they finally arrived with signatures I needed him by my side to be able to start the uploading process.

So I go to the website and log in. I am greeted with a message that says that all documents need to be uploaded six days ago.

I stand up, turn around and crash into my bed. I am done. All this work for nothing. I double and triple checked that there was no hurry. I could for my life not find a due date and now here I am six days late. It takes my dad at least 20 minutes to convince me to upload the documents anyway.

As I said before, I have no solution to this problem, besides doing away with all issues that causes depression in the first place but then all of my liberal friends would (by right) call me a communist. I just cannot imagine how it is for someone who is in the same lucky spot as I am, for someone who don’t have parents or a partner or anyone to help them take care of the basics of being an adult.