By now, there’s more than a few people out there who think I am the epitome of evil and that I’m a monster of the most heinous kind. That they didn’t see me for who I was all along, and I’d bet my legs that they’ve spent the last few days asking themselves “how could I be so blind!?” They think this blog and my story of what happened to me is malice and revenge. It’s anything but.
But maybe they’re right. Maybe I am a monster. Maybe I am awful, and cruel and terrible. In the past few days, I have thought about that question a lot. I have, in fact, obsessed over it.
Am I an awful person?
The honest answer?
Sometimes. Yeah, I can be. I can have awful reactions, and I have a pretty terrible temper. I did not handle some scary emotions well, and for that, I am embarrassed and ashamed. I feel a tremendous amount of shame for not being able to implement the things I know to do to manage my RSD symptoms. I spend most of every day wishing for a magic button that would allow me to rewind time a few days. I feel a lot of guilt and shame, and cannot for the life of me figure out how I got here. I hate that she has turned me into this person I am not. A person that none of those close to me or who know me recognize. Someone that the people who love me know I am not.
BUT, here’s the thing; I know – and those who matter know – that as a whole, I am an amazing, caring, giving, wonderful, attentive, thoughtful, kind, compassionate, empathetic and GOOD human being. For me to be an “awful” person, I have to be pushed pretty far, and pretty hard. I will take an INCREDIBLE amount of shit before I get to my breaking point. And this is my breaking point.
The Mayo clinic website states that a “pathological liar not only lies frequently, but may feel a compulsion to do so. Pathological liars can’t stop lying even when it causes psychological distress, puts them in danger, and creates problems with relationships, work, or other aspects of daily life. Furthermore, pathological lying tends to start early—in adolescence and young adulthood.”
As my abuser is a pathological liar who lied since the very beginning of our relationship, this description is accurate beyond measure. From the very start, lies came as natural and axiomatically as breathing. The lies just flowed. Big lies, little lies, lies about things that didn’t matter. She lied to “protect” herself from the reactions of people who she knew would react in a terribly negative way. She lied so she could do whatever she wanted without consequence. Because honesty was inconvenient in her desire to whatever she wanted or didn’t want to do.
As I said in an earlier post, lying is gaslighting. When you’re constantly being lied to, when you’re being told something that you KNOW doesn’t add up or make sense, but you can’t prove it in the moment, that shit makes you feel crazy. When later, through an argument or circumstance, your suspicions were proved 100% correct beyond any shadow of a doubt and you know with unwavering certainty that you knew you were being lied to, it makes you hypervigilant about seeking the truth. You doubt everything, and desperately search for the truth.
From the Newport Institute website,
“Building trust with a pathological liar is difficult if not impossible. It can feel like being gaslit—you’re constantly questioning yourself and the other person about what’s real. Pathological or compulsive lying can also be part of an abusive relationship pattern.”
I can’t tell you how goddamned validating that is. I’m not being overly dramatic when I refer to her as an abuser. When you exist in a constant and heightened state of mistrust and dysregulation because you have zero trust and zero faith that you’re being respected, and then get vilified for how you react and what it does to your sanity, you are being abused by that person, regardless of the relationship dynamic or connection.
A small example: We are in the drive through at Wendy’s last week, getting a snack. I get to the order board and order a large “strawberry iced tea, no ice, please”. I made a mistake and said the wrong thing, as I was a bit flustered because I couldn’t understand the voice in the speaker. (I’m partially deaf) I meant to order a strawberry lemonade. We get it sorted, I get to the window and she hands me my drink.
“So much for no ice” I lament. She tells me I didn’t order it with no ice. I tell her I did. She gets annoyed at me, looks me dead in my eyes with that twisted up look of disgust she does so well that says “are you really that stupid?‘ and in exasperation, tells me with absolute certainty that I absolutely did not. I waffle. Didn’t I? I was sure I did, but I must be wrong. Fuck. I SWORE I did, but if I press it, it’s going to become a fight. I drop it, she wins, again.
I get home later that evening, and I pull the memory card from my dash cam in the truck. Put it in my laptop. Find the video. “I’ll have a large strawberry iced tea, no ice, please.” Clear as day. I ordered it without ice, just like I knew I did. But because SHE thought she was right, I was wrong. Full stop. “Sit there and shut your mouth. You’re crazy and don’t even know what you said.”.
Being made to question everything and having to always wonder what the truth is is the worst feeling.
The unfortunate drawback to searching for that truth is, it can be manipulated into looking like controlling behavior or subversive coercion that now makes it a domestic abuse situation. And even though you were the one being lied to and having the truth twisted and reconstituted to fit a narrative, you’re the “controlling” one because you’re constantly on high alert, looking for the truth. Especially insidious is the fact that she is a trained, professional therapist who is an absolute MASTER of spinning MY actions to convince me I’m being controlling and abusive. Clinical word salads being thrown at me to make me believe that I’m awful and need to get help.
Another form of the abuse I suffered at her hands was only apparent at the macro and micro level:
More times than I could POSSIBLY quantify were subtle, almost imperceptible statements of “you’re an abuser. You’re physically violent, dangerous and I am afraid of you. I believe that you are going to physically violate and hurt me.”
“What does that look like?”, you ask?
It looks like those times when I reached into the back seat or center console of my truck, and she recoils. When I reach to get a glass out of the cupboard she’s standing next to and she flinches. When I reach up to touch my face and she winces. When I reach out to touch her arm to offer comfort and she pulls back while squeezing her eyes shut. When I try to hug her and she backs away while shrinking to get as small as she can. When I make ANY kind of sudden movement and she braces for the impact a physical altercation that has never happened, never WILL happen, or has even been threatened or so much as been hinted at.
The message is clear: “I believe you’re going to hurt me”. It’s gaslighting and it’s manipulation. It’s making a person believe that they’re dangerous, because this trained professional who specializes in working with victims of violence and KNOWS what violence is is saying to me “you’re perpetrating violence on me!”. That really fucks with you. But where it’s manipulative is, it makes me work 3 times harder to make sure that she feels “safe”. It makes me travel with a bottle of Advil, tums, muscle relaxants and antihistamines just in case she needs something while out on a drive. It makes me pack an extra pair of gloves and a neck gaitor on my bike in case she gets cold on a bike ride. It makes me stop for water and chocolate on the way to a rupture induced talk just in case she needs sugar to regulate. It makes me go overboard with care just to try to reassure her she’s being cared for. To counter the subliminal accusations that she has made, implying that I’m going to hurt her. Fucking absurd.
The funniest part to me is, I’m so violent and so terrifying, dangerous and psychotic that she fears for her safety, yet when she returned some stuff that she’d borrowed prior to this world ending event between us, she had her neighbor who is half her size and is the most demure, quiet and kind woman I know bring my stuff to my house – alone. I’m so unsafe that when she’s in a tent, huddled in the pitch black as a storm rages around her in the dark, she calls me in the middle of it all to help her regulate and feel safe.
To react to years of pathological lying, constantly being told that I’m wrong, and the never-ending gaslighting and brow beating does not make me a monster. It does not make me an awful person. Being pissed off about being lied to and holding her accountable does not make me a monster. And most of all? Finally, after 4 years of being brow beaten into silence, finally having the ability to talk about it it all without secrets does not make me a bad person.
It makes me human.
Next topic: Dating apps, lies, broken promises and more gaslighting.
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