My flat viewing

part 14
Misogyny

“I lost my job because Santander wouldn’t give me the reasonable disability adjustments I needed, then I tried to kill myself, so I’m currently too sick with my BPD to work. I’m waiting for specialist therapy’s that my psychiatrist says I need to even start my recovery,” I explained to Phil.

When he responded, it was as though he hadn’t actually been listening to me, so had only heard the “I lost my job” part of my statement.

“Don’t worry about that, LMH will get you back into work in no time,” he said this so confidently, and forcefully, that he made it sound like being employed, or at least searching for employment, would be a requirement of my tenancy.

So much so, that even though I was sure that couldn’t be the case, I was afraid to repeat that I am disabled and was too ill to work due to my disability, but I did, because trying to work, even at this point in time, would have literally killed me.

“Don’t worry about that, well get you well in no time, he responded in the same confident tone, again, as though he had not been fully paying attention to what I was saying, because if he had been paying attention, he would have understood that nobody at LMH was qualified to be getting involved in my medical treatment.

Just like the information he gave me about my ESA being stopped, telling me LMH would help me get better has proven to be a lie.

In fact, they have caused my disability related health to decline, to the point I really should be dead because of that flat.

“Then, well get you back into work, he continued as though I would never be able to get myself a job without somebody else helping me do it. Before he had even finished his sentence, his eyes lit up and his speech quickened, due to how excited he was becoming at the though of telling me somebody else’s business. “I had a tenant, a lady, who wasn’t also wasn’t well, (like all illnesses are equal and the same) and I helped her get better, an then I helped her train and get a job as a nursery teacher. “Here his voice changed again, to that voice that you would use when speaking to a dog. “That could be you. I could help you get a job as nursery teacher. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t you like to be a nursery teacher?”

Extremely uncomfortable, and taken a back, by not only the fact that Phil though it was fine to even begin to discus another tenants business with me, but also with the misogyny behind Phils assumption that I would jump at his suggestion that I, little old me, who only has a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art, and had only worked in finance and banking for the last ten years, could reach the dizzying heights every woman aspires to reach of being surrounded by very young children all day every day, I stared at him, my neurodivergent brain unable to identify the correct human response I was supposed to give here. Now I’m not sure there is a correct human response to Phils type of behaviour.