Homecare & Objectification

My neighbor is also on SSI. He had, for over a year, told me to feel free to ask for help beyond the very necessary grocery runs he’d been helping me on. I was nervous to ask, as I didn’t want to overburden another disabled person. He eventually disclosed he wasn’t physically disabled, and I allowed that I could use more help sometimes, a few times a week, with dishes and walking my service dog. That was over a month ago.

It was a mistake. I should have kept it to the monthly rides to the store. I had hoped another disabled person would understand autonomy.

It started well. I had, a few times before in desperation, asked for help with dishes, so I knew he did those well. He started picking up other chores, despite my objections. “You need help, and I can do this.” At first, it seemed kind. I started to feel better.

I started cooking again. I made a few meals, and shared them (something I’ve always done with the building).

I had paperwork I needed to do. My care coordinator suggested I ask my neighbor for help. He agreed. It wasn’t much, an hour’s total work, but I have a TBI and get a migraine looking at dense text — it’s a purely neurological issue, I know what’s on the paperwork, I know what to do, I just need to be pointed to where. I made a list and cross-stacked the papers.
It took until they were late, he always found a reason to put them off, and each time I tried to work on them myself he took them away. They ended up mailed without all the paperwork I printed for them, because “I didn’t need that paperwork, why would you?”. He still says he did nothing wrong.

Yes, he was coming over every day. He lives next door. He is bigger than me. He was ‘walking the dog’, then sitting on my ‘safe’ chair in the kitchen while even refusing to move to the living room where I could put my feet up for my circulatory disorder. I was on a hard wicker chair that cut off my leg circulation. I would try to move to the living room, and he would try to talk to my deaf self from a room away, and either get frustrated I couldn’t understand, or tell me that if I wanted to understand, I shouldn’t have moved.

He would stay until 0300, despite me telling him my bedtime was 2200, that I needed my rest, that I wake up at 0730 even without an alarm, to please let me go to bed. This went on for a month.

I couldn’t eat properly, because I have times when I’m able to eat, as well as physical issues around eating. It takes me a long time, and people watching me waiting for me to be done makes me feel I must rush, and then I end up choking. It’s safer to eat alone. He knew this and said I should just get over it, and stayed. I could not eat. I lost weight. I pointed it out several times. He mentioned jubilantly that he was losing weight because he was no longer drinking as much alcohol. I have trouble maintaining weight.

There were also incidents where maintenance came to do work, and he offered to help get the apartment ready. He would help with part of the work, then stop and insist on a therapy session for himself. This would take my time and energy, and then after he would leave for bed, I would either have to finish the work, or do it before maintenance got here the next morning.
Sometimes this involved removing and assembling furniture from multiple rooms, as there have been multiple issues in my apartment for years that I have been working with the voucher issuer and my care coordinator to get fixed since I moved in.

But all of this was ‘small’. When I got my hair cut to my preferred length, everything got worse.

Where before there was smiles and gentle treatment, suggestions and occasional breaks and “ok, I’ll head back”, things became oppressive. I was not allowed to help at all in my own house.

He would reach over me to manipulate my computer, tablet, phone. No amount of protest or explanation as to why that was inappropriate would work. No, I could not push him away at that point, I was afraid of what that would be labeled. I am trans and disabled, and have multiple TBIs.

One night, after I told him I was afraid I had either bronchitis or Covid, and maintenance was coming, my bed was broken down, my couch in pieces, and he said he had something terribly important on his mind about my being trans, but he wasn’t sure it was the right time.
How could I work in the house with him with that over me? I sat us down and told him to get it out.
“I don’t see how you can be genderqueer, you should be a woman. You’re too pretty. Your voice is feminine. You have very soft skin. And, uh, your figure…” :gestures at chest:
“Uh-huh. I have vEDS. Soft skin is a symptom. The rest is all very superficial. How do I act?”
“Masculine.”

There are ways to hand someone couch pieces without dislocating their shoulders. He did not do that immediately after that conversation. He swears it was a mistake, but he left after with everything undone.

The next time he was over, my service dog ran to him at the door, he started dressing her to go out, she ran to me and wouldn’t go near him again, cringing and hiding behind me where she had been eager seconds before.
He denies hurting her.

I had to physically push him from the apartment to make him leave.

This is still the person I have to rely on to go to the store. I do not know if they will still do it. This is what life is like if you are disabled and need help.

My care coordinator has apologized for telling me to take abuse in return for what help I can get, but how else do I get food? She cannot answer.

To see why all these things are concerning, follow this link. See how much they line up with what happens in Assisted Care Homes, and why we call them what they are, incarceration.

What would you choose?

Being able to at least take your HRT, and having no or bad help; or, going to Long Term Care, where one staff member objecting to who you are can dictate it, not just tell you what they believe you should do?