My tenancy review meeting

Part four
Disability discrimination

Due to how stressed out the anticipation of this review meeting had caused me to feel, I don’t remember much of it.

The only memories I have are those that seem to remain to remind me that Phil posed a danger to me.

When talking about my disability, Phil, once again, put on that voice that you hear people use when speaking to dogs, and said in a manner which sounded as though he was telling me rather than asking me, “Do you suffer with a little bit of depression and anxiety do you?”

For the now one thousandth time, I informed him that no, I don’t suffer with a little bit of depression and anxiety, I suffer from borderline personality disorder, which is a very serious and complex mental illness that affects me to a disabling level.

Distressingly, when I tried to expand on this and explain some of the ways my illness affects me, he kept cutting me off to incorrectly correct me on how my own illness affected me and down play my disability.

For example-

If I said-

I get thoughts that don’t feel like mine, instead they feel like there is a worm inside my brain telepathically communicating with me through impulses rather than words, which tells me to set myself on fire and which I respond to with emotions of euphoric and amusement to the point I want to do it publicly and theatrically.

He said-

“We all feel like we can’t cope sometimes.”

As though I was saying I was a mentally well person, dealing with feeling a normal level of overwhelmed, in a normal way, because of a normal trigger.

The two of these situations aren’t the same.

They aren’t even close.

He also encouraged Clara to join in.

While explaining how I was likely not going to remember the majority of the review meeting because I dissociate, I was force to use the last time I was sectioned as an example, because they just didn’t seem to understand, but this only made it worse, as Clara cut me off and said just the way Phil had, as though she was telling not asking me, “Was it one of those times when everything’s a bit of a blur?”

Then, when I tried to explain that I was talking in literal terms, and that no it wasn’t a blur, I literally have chunks of my suicide attempt, that day, and the following week missing, she cut me off to agree with herself that what I was describing was just an experience that was “just a bit of a blur.”

Which isn’t the case.

Dissociation is a serious symptom of serious mental illness.

And a student psychiatric nurse has told me that I experience it in a way that people having sever bi polar episodes experience it.