Existence Security by Appointment

I call not because I want to, but because apparently the right to exist is something I have to earn again every year.
I only call once a year. Not because I want to, or because somewhere inside myself I still possess the strength to voluntarily seek contact with an institution that has misunderstood me for years, but because I have to. Because not calling means my benefits are withheld, because a system I never chose decides that I deserve existence slightly less the moment I fail to respond within their timelines. That phone call is not a choice, not an act of freedom, not a “quick check-in”, but a moment of coercion in which I have to prove that I am still here, that I still move within their frameworks, that I still obediently “cooperate”. And it hangs around my neck like a cold, rough wire throughout December.
The night before was exactly the way my body always predicts when something is approaching that I cannot escape. The Waterlinieweg was filled with machines hammering their metallic rhythm through the air deep into the night. I never truly rested. I only drifted away in short fragments in which the tension gathered inside my chest, as if my body had already begun rehearsing for what was coming. Where I normally dream about the strangest things, I now dreamed only about what awaited me. And when morning finally arrived, the noise began immediately. Not rhythmic, not even, but endless. And then that cold settled into my spine the way cold always does: slowly, relentlessly, without anything I can do against it.
And at nine in the morning, while my hands kept growing colder and my muscles trembled with exhausted alertness, I had to call. Mart sat beside me, laptop open with all my passwords ready, and enough space to take over things in the meantime if I could no longer continue.
The conversation always begins before I have even spoken a single word, because the other person already knows, or thinks they know, who I am and how I live. Today they even filled in my meals for me. “Do you bring your mother food upstairs, or do you go downstairs to get it?” she asked, without asking whether my mother is involved in my meals at all. As if dependency automatically belongs in my profile. As if I am someone who should be looked after, cared for, managed. The reality is exactly the opposite: I have been preparing all my meals upstairs for years, on a desk that functions as a kitchen for three people, because downstairs feels unsafe to me on multiple levels, and because I live with my mother rather than together with her.
But the system does not see those kinds of details. It only sees what it expects to see.
When she asked why I could not simply take a walk during the day with someone nearby, here in the neighborhood, because I had mentioned that I occasionally take Fannar out at night, it was as if walking suddenly became proof of functioning. They do not know that I walk weekly in nature with Mart, because I never dare say it, because the moment the system hears that you walk, they think you can work; the moment you move, they think you are participating; the moment you get air without collapsing, they think you are healed.
They do not understand the difference between a walk in the silence of a very early morning nearby, or across a forest or field where I do not have to carry people, where I do not have to hold on to anything, where I do not have to form words, endure social expectations or tolerate smells that can literally make me ill, and a walk in a strange city within the framework of this job coach, surrounded by the sound of cars, voices, children, construction sites, countless smells and endless movement, all of which have been carving themselves into my nervous system every day for five years.
My weekly walk is not about functioning. It is about not completely going under.
When I said I cannot try anything as long as I live here, she asked how we would ever be able to pay social housing rent from two benefits. As if that is the core of our problem. As if housing is a luxury you must earn through functioning, instead of a basic condition required to function at all. She asked why I used to be “like this” less often, as if my current state spontaneously appeared out of nowhere. But before this we had a camper and a reliable car with APK inspection. Every day silence and space. The possibility of disappearing daily if needed. We could leave the city, escape the walls closing in, escape the smells that made me sick, escape the roles we never wanted to carry. Now we have lived for years in a room without space, without room to land, without privacy and without safe ground.
And while I explained this, my mother kept walking upstairs. That alone changed my voice and my words. You do not speak freely when someone in the house can later use, feel, twist and claim your words. So I dose everything. I tell partial truths, not because I want to lie, but because my nervous system automatically protects what feels vulnerable. The system interprets that as avoidance. But it is survival. It is the only thing I can do in a house that never feels quiet and never feels safe.
After the conversation I became cold. Not slightly, but deeply, from the inside out. My chest trembled. My jaw tightened as if my body still believed it had to flee. That is the moment I once again understand that my reaction is not exaggerated but logical: whoever lives in constant tension reacts intensely to coercion. It is not a personal failure. It is a physical response to a yearly test in which you must prove that you are still dependent enough for the system to capture you, but not so dependent that the system has to change in order to understand you better.
The UWV sees none of these layers. It sees a phone call. It hears a voice. It adds assumptions. It turns my sparse walks into a possible sign of “recovery”. It confuses rest with resilience, and healing with resilience under pressure. They do not see that I function in microdoses of control: very early outside, in silence, in nature, where I do not have to carry people, enter buildings or filter unexpected voices and smells. What they call “possibility” is, for me, an island of survival. They see what I do, but not what it costs me. They see what I avoid, but not why I avoid it. They see movement, but not the price of that movement. They see that I walk, but not that I walk in order not to collapse completely. They see a partner, but not that he is the only safe presence in my life. They see that my mother is in the house, but not what her presence psychologically means. They see that I call, but not that I call under threat.
Maybe that is the greatest gap: the system thinks I am stuck here because I do not want to move forward. But I am stuck here because my body protects me from a world that is too harsh, too loud and too much.
Because for years I have pulled everything out of myself just to avoid disappearing completely.
Because all this time I have never had safe ground on which to recover.
And maybe this is the only truth that still needs to be spoken: I have not become less because I react this way. I have not become weaker. I did not collapse because I failed. I am overloaded because I have lived too long without rest. I am exhausted because I have spent too long without a place where I could simply be without tension. I did not change because I refused to grow, but because there was nowhere for me to land.
And that yearly phone call, that moment of coercion, that ritual in which I have to justify my own existence, reminds me every single time how fragile the support is on which I am trying to balance.
I call because otherwise I lose anyway. But the real loss has been happening for a long time already, every day that I have to continue living here in conditions no one would call healthy. And still I remain standing. And still I hold on to words, because words are the only thing that does not distort my reality.
And this morning, with noise shaking the walls, a body clinging to cold, and a conversation once again trying to reduce my reality to something simple, does not prove that I do not want to recover, but that I have been fighting too long without space in which to recover.
Maybe that is the only truth I still have left to tell.