What's coming up is a repost from my personal Facebook page/Instagram that I threw up there a couple months ago. I wrote it after reflecting heavily on a particularly difficult time in my personal life that completely threw me off course, redefined my worldview, and shook my sense of self to the core. People I trusted with my creative output and considered friends pulled the rug from under me and it's taken awhile for me to process what's happened. What really gave me courage to post these thoughts was being able to confide my side of the story to a couple friends who already knew the outline of the events in question. To have my experience heard by some genuinely kind individuals with open ears gave me what I feared I didn't deserve: compassion and understanding... because months upon months of gaslighting will make you believe you never deserve to feel understood, let alone happy and safe. This post goes into no details about the actual events I experienced because at the time I was still in touch with a couple of the folks involved, but rather out of respect and a hope to encourage other people who've experienced similar circumstances, talks about my general experience of emotional abuse and gaslighting in a few scenarios throughout my life. I am posting these thoughts again here on the blog because this subject is very much in line with what I intend to cover in future posts anyway, and gives some personal context to whatever musings I will post here about abuse/gaslighting/manipulation, etc. I only ever intend what I offer about my personal experiences to be helpful. Talking about these things can sometimes be interpreted as looking for attention or wallowing in a victim mentality, but the truth is the truth and there is no point staying silent about narcissistic abuse and emotional manipulation. The only way we can recognize these situations and put a stop to them is knowing what they look like. That is all. Now, to the post: Over the last few months, one topic has dominated my thoughts and I wanted to talk about it just briefly because I know this is not unique to me: (just to be clear, this is not at all going to be a political rant.)
If you have ever had to deal with the fallout of harassment and mental or emotional manipulation from significant individuals in your life, you know that it affects every aspect of your walking around life. When you have been gas-lighted, manipulated, and made to feel unsafe by someone else on a consistent basis, it is hard to feel that anything will ever be okay again. It can be hard to enjoy life, think calmly, and feel normal when you're always ready for the same shite to happen again with other people you trust. In my late teens and early twenties so far, I have encountered several cases of personal and vocational harassment/gas-lighting in previous friendships and former work places. I've had to leave jobs, been forced out of friend groups, and have had huge setbacks in my mental health because of gas-lighting, manipulation, and harassment from people I thought were safe for me. And the more this happens, the easier it is to start to believe that you deserve such treatment, especially if there is never anyone there to advocate for you on your behalf. Experiencing such things on your own feels like drowning, yet I have always felt on some level that such treatment from other people was somehow warranted. And thinking you deserve it is really all just part of the head-f***ery the toxic relationship is putting you through. Because no one deserves that. No one deserves for their head and heart to be misused by another person, for their trust to be broken and to be unable to assess what's real in the relationship because the other person is capitalizing on your confusion and fear. And if you've ever experienced these things for yourself, I am so sorry, and I see you, and I believe what you've gone through. Our society tends to normalize toxicity and harassment in all arenas from the personal to the professional, and it makes it exhausting to stick up for yourself, especially if you harbor fear that no one will listen, care, or believe you. But as scary as it is, setting up boundaries to stop the toxic behavior and then telling the necessary people who can hep you about it is key in making sure it never happens again to you or to someone else. Asking for help and asserting yourself is frightening, but being trapped in manipulative situations is so much worse. I will be working through what I've experienced for a very long time and I certainly do not quite know what to do with the things I've gone through. It is not easy for me to put things in the past and leave them there, especially when I initially had hope for the relationship/connection that turned out to be inherently broken and toxic. But at the very least, I have gained a lot of empowerment from learning how to leave situations that were incredibly unhealthy, even though if I'd had my druthers, I would have never chosen to go through those things. Ultimately, though, I hope these things have shown me how to be a better friend, family member, and (someday) partner to other people. I hope I know more about how to love since I've experienced a lot of pain. But that's not to say that you necessarily have to learn anything from stuff like this... but I hope I have. Thank you for reading.
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Edna Mode said in The Incredibles to, “never look back, darling - it distracts from the now.” And while I think that is sound advice, I have been thinking over my past often in the last few months. I feel I’m at a crossroads in life and want to learn from my past, and also never forget who I’ve been.
When you have an anxious trauma-brain, it can be super easy to look at the past and only see the negative. And while my aim is to always bring positivity and hope to all spaces - especially online spaces -, I feel like I want to share what I’ve learned when it comes to relational loss/rejection/pain. I don’t necessarily have a solution to the circumstances I’ve been through, especially since they put me through my own levels of debilitating emotional pain which I am still growing through. Also, I believe that pain is super relative and I am teaching myself to look at my pain with compassion, not minimization, judgement, or feelings of guilt. We experience what we experience how we experience it and I’ve found the only healthy response is growing through it, slowly and surely. And never, in my relation of my truth, do I intend to project hopelessness or hatred. Only hope, love, and solutions if possible. One last point and then I’ll get to the meat: I share all of this in a semi-public format because my childhood was full of people who either minimized my experience, never listened to and honored my truth, or had little to no personal relationship with me when it was their vocation to do so. As a result, I have always felt embarrassment at sharing my personal experiences with my corner of the world. I have gone through years of self-imposed silence because messaging I received when I was young taught me that very few outside my immediate family really wanted to hear it. I was a people-pleaser and my truth was not pleasing, so I kept silent. By sharing what I’ve learned from my experiences, I hope it encourages silenced individuals to speak up in their individual ways, to share what they’ve been told no one wants to deal with, to speak when they’ve kept it all back. I believe that is the ultimate bravery and I honor those of you who speak your truth. Thank you. And now, the meat: I don’t know about you, but one of the things that defined my young adulthood was folks I loved leaving my life, often under traumatic circumstances and without closure. Between my early teenhood and now, quite a few prolonged, formative relationships in my life broke apart and left my heart destroyed. I remember rejection and betrayal from friends I cared for with all my heart, boys who lied and made me question if I could love again, mentor figures who left me high and dry when I needed their help, close relationships that were not what I hoped... and I feel the power of these memories like it all happened yesterday. I often wonder if it’s just the way things are - if your youth, teenhood, twenties are meant to be a slew of misunderstandings, losses, unrequited love in various forms, and nights crying alone in the car. Is life supposed to be a pandemic of hurt people hurting people, with no solution? I ask myself, the universe, my mother, that if all these relationships meant something and if I gave them my all, why did I lose them? I construct karmic structures and expectations for my behavior, in hopes that I can obliterate any chance of future heartbreak. I guilt-trip myself, thinking of all the minute ways I could have been better, and maybe they wouldn’t have left. My fears of abandonment take over and I begin to believe that I am destined for loss, after loss, after heart-crushing loss. Sometimes, I start to believe I’m too weak to sustain anything meaningful in this world. But then a softer voice, with no anger, blame, or panic reminds me that yes...
We all experience the pain of losing ones we love, sometimes without justification or a satisfactory resolution to the situation. And sometimes, we need to learn the hard way how to protect our love and give it judiciously, not willy-nilly with the hopes that it will work this time. Sometimes, I feel like a bit of a veteran when it comes to heartbreak. I get a little bitter, grow a little chip on my shoulder, walk around in the world lonely, expecting anything good to end in a busted soul and tears rolling down my face. Sometimes, I start to think the cynicism makes me stronger. Sometimes, I think the lone wolf lifestyle looks good on me. But sometimes, I sit crying over something that happened years ago, and I know that lone-wolfing it doesn’t suit me, that learning to love and being loved in return is my bread and butter, that I need to hold onto hope even though my past sometimes seems to be telling me otherwise. And at that point, the only solution to my heart breaking apart in my hands is to remember that none of it was for nothing, that the wholehearted love I always try to bring to my relationships has absolutely resulted in ones that have lasted and deepened, and that there is hope for the future because of that. I remember that heartbreaking situations teach me more about human nature, about how to hold my own heart through disappointment, and about how to be stronger for the next time. I never know if everything will be alright, but I have some assurance that it’ll all be good, somehow. Thank you for reading; much love. X |
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