You know what’s weird? Reporting your health to the long-term disability insurance company and having to answer pretty invasive health questions so they keep giving you the money they owe you but are hoping desperately they can wriggle out of paying you.

I feel like I need a shower after I reply to their emails. When I see their number on the caller ID, it triggers my anxiety.

It’s like, I have brain cancer. Pretty much the only scenario I can foresee where they don’t owe me money is if I die. I gave them money before, so they’d have to give me money now. But they get to ask questions about what my brain tumor is doing to me that I have to answer carefully so as not to trigger some diabolically planned loophole that means they don’t have to pay me. It’s stressful, let me tell ya.

And it’s hard for me to picture the individual representatives I deal with as anything more than victims. They need jobs, and keeping those jobs means following the slime-covered rules. Still. The dude who thought up the first insurance company? Must’ve been born straight out of Satan’s asshole.