Malachite

What with the recent revelation that I’m going to be laid off in March because my boss is outsourcing my whole department to a company willing to do our jobs for less than it costs to pay us, and the other recent revelation that I am too disabled to mop a goddamn floor, and the facts that my eating disorder makes handling food an incredibly difficult task for me and that my chronic pain means I can’t do heavy lifting or anything requiring bending over with any frequency, not to mention my extremely sparse résumé…

…I am very afraid that I won’t be able to find another job I can physically do until I get my degree. And once I get my degree, I am very afraid that I won’t be able to find a job that won’t utterly crush my spirit under the boot that is techbro capitalism. I want to write code, but I don’t want to touch Silicon Valley type shit with a ten-foot pole. Fuck.

Does anyone else with chronic pain ever have days where your pain is managed pretty well, but because of that your brain starts trying to gaslight you into believing that your pain was never as bad as it actually is, or even that it was never there at all?

Like, I have had days where my pain was so bad all I could do was writhe on the floor and cry. All day long. I had to be put in alternative schooling back then because I was in so much pain. But today, right now, my pain is low enough that I can filter it out, and my brain is taking on the specter of all those people who thought I was making shit up to get out of having to do work, and telling me that my pain was never bad enough that I actually need any of the accommodations I have, and that I’ve been exaggerating my symptoms to get special treatment, and that I’m a faker and I don’t “deserve” to say I have chronic pain or call myself disabled, and all this shit…

How do I fight that? How do I teach my brain object permanence?

One of my classrooms for this semester only has these abominations for seating. I’ve been sitting here for a fraction of the length of the class and I’m already in pain. This is an accessibility and ergonomic nightmare. Not to mention insulting! We’re college students, not middle schoolers!

This post is really two separate groups questions, but I'm putting them in the same post for the sake of having everything in one place. I apologize for how verbose this is. To make reading it easier, I've put the meat of each section in bold, i.e. the actual questions I'm seeking answers for; the rest is background info explaining my specific needs. Putting it under a cut since it's so long. This post is also on my Tumblr.

Edit: I use Windows and have an iPhone, if that helps with specific software recommendations, though both of those might change in the future.