It was a rainy morning. At 7am I went to open the curtains, and he was standing at the porch for his morning cigarette. He quickly picked a clear bottle off the ledge and hid it behind the wall. It was a quarter.

‘Are you drinking?’

That’s all I asked and he of course denied it, even with the red bottle top still on the ledge. After a couple of minutes of this back and forth where I insisted, I knew what I saw, and he insisted that there was nothing there, I looked at him through the window, and said, ‘I’m not going to let you make me think I am insane” and with that I ended the conversation.

Gaslighting. That term, people keep saying we are misusing it, but when you pay close attention, they don’t want to accept that they do this.
This was not the first time he was gaslighting me. It wasn’t even the second or third time either.

The funniest one must be the time I pointed out that he was gaslighting me and he proceeded to gaslight me about gaslighting me. I hope you are keeping up. This was 4 years ago and after that relationship ended, I realised just how much of myself I had lost.

The thing about being betrayed and disrespected repeatedly, is that it gets to a point where you start thinking you are doing something wrong. Maybe you are, but often the wrong thing happens to be you staying and forgiving and giving yet another chance after they already blew up the last 6 or so chances you gave them.

The trust in yourself is eroded with every new discovery and one day your gut stops talking to you. You second guess even the simplest of decisions. You didn’t realise the erosion was happening. You are not even aware of it now.

When that relationship was ending after years of tears, arguments, me begging to seen, appreciated and loved, cheating, betrayal, trauma and a lot of giving up, I still thought I had to protect this man. And I did. I was painted as the reason we didn’t work out. One of his friends even had the audacity to walk up to me at a party to read me to filth for what I supposedly did to his friend.

About a year into the breakup, I found out that this man was using hard drugs the entirety of our relationship. I will not lie to you, that gutted me. I kept asking myself, ‘how did I not know?”
“Was I blinded by love or did I just ignore the signs?” I still don’t know the answers to these questions, and I have never been lucky enough to get closure.
4 years later and I am still discovering some things that were happening and I didn’t even know about them.

I didn’t even know I had lost myself until I started noticing small things here and there. As much as I was still outspoken, I would still not trust myself with my emotions. Even when I knew things were off, I would still stay or go ahead. I took jobs I didn’t want, kept friendships I didn’t want. Went to places I didn’t want. It’s like I forgot how to say no. Something I used to be good at.

The worst thing gaslighting did to me was push me to a point where I started to do it to myself.

6 months ago, I went through a traumatising experience, and I caught myself gaslighting myself about what happened to me. When I spoke to a therapist about it, they reminded me that I am fully aware of what happened. I didn’t imagine it. The medical evidence was there. The psychological evidence was there, yet I was trying to convince myself that maybe it didn’t happen.
Why?
I was there!

My self-trust was erased by years of ignoring my gut feeling, my knowing, my understanding, my perspective, my intuition. Remember that thing I said about the gut? I can’t hear mine anymore. It’s been such a struggle because I used to rely on it for a lot of my decision-making.

I know I can heal this and work on it, with small steps. Regaining this trust in myself might take some time. I must build it back up.

I want to hear myself again. Not the wounded me. Not the ‘have to play my cards close to my chest’ me. Not the ‘maybe’ me. But the self-assured me. The optimist me. The ‘likes to see the good in the world’ me. I miss that me.

I am not sure how I am going to do this. I am hoping, knowing that I am lost is a place to start, and now I know where I would like to go.

That works for me. I just have to figure out the messy in-between. Right?

I’ll trust myself to do that.
Hopefully, I’ll find my way back.
A wiser me.
Maybe.
But I will be me.