Gaslighting

I was reminiscing earlier… My son’s dad used to be my best friend. It was a relationship I never thought could happen, and when it did I fell head over heels. He was my Ever After. We promised eachother that drugs wouldnt ruin our relationship. We werent like the others – yes, after a couple years we could admit we were addicts but our love was stronger than our addiction.

Even when things were falling apart – our fighting, the accusations…his hallucinations and psychosis, all the lies… All that and I still believed we could make it. Because as long as some small part of me could still believe that a small part of him might still love me, I would fight for us. He told me once he never wanted to date a junkie. And I never picked up a needle. Didnt seem to stop him, though.

Then there were all those times when Id be crying in the bathroom as quietly as possible so I wouldnt wake him up, because I didnt want to make him angry by making him feel guilty. Those times when Id call hospitals after he’d disappear for a few days and he’d accuse me of invading his space. Or when he tried to burn down the house because the voices wouldnt stop screaming. Maybe if I could just love him enough, I could make the voices stop. After all, at first he never heard them around me. I was his safe place where the hallucinations couldnt get to him. Until something about me changed. I must have done someyhing to make him not feel safe with me anymore.

I didnt really start to understand the term “gaslighting” until a year or so after we broke up. Thats about when I started to realize that no one should ever have to apologize (Im talking a hysterical, sobbing, begging him not to leave kind of apologizing) for getting upset when their bf admits to sleeping with & having feelings for a mutual friend that was crashing on your couch. How dare I not consider how hard it was on him – and god forbid I get angry at seeing this person day after day after day, hearing the lies they were telling you about me that you were believing while I cry alone in our room just praying that Ill figure out why Im not good enough and maybe Ill be able to fix myself and you’ll love me again. I miss being the type of person you wanted to fall asleep next to.

Then there was the day after our son was born. I was stuck at the hospital for 3 hours after getting discharged, trying to track him down because he left me there sometime in the night, and I didnt want to leave without getting his name on the birth certificate. But I was the one in the wrong, calling a bunch of friends & family like a creep, making them think he was a jerk for leaving me at the hospital. Why couldnt I be more understanding of the fact that he was feeling anxious and needed space?

Somehow I dont think Im quite “over it” yet.