Gaslighting

Last Saturday when I was working my Instacart shift, there was this very annoying couple grocery shopping together. They were always in the way and they were really just clueless about the hordes of people around them who didn’t care about what kind of diced tomatoes they were choosing. JUST PICK ONE FOR FUCK’S SAKE AND GET YOUR CART OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE!

But then I heard it. I heard him say to her “Oh, calm down”. And she was like “I’m not even getting mad!” And I could see she was pissed and whoooo boy, did I have a flashback moment to this exact scenario with the Lying Liar.

He used to tell me this ALL THE TIME. And it really wasn’t until I was out of that horrid relationship that I realized how fucking controlling he was, and how much of a gaslighter he was and trying to manipulate my every move. And it can all be summed up by those two words that should only ever be told to someone when you’re singing the Taylor Swift song to them.

I’m a very expressive and emotional person. I always have been. I wear my heart on my sleeve and literally tell you how I feel at all times because I have no poker face and am incapable of lying. I’m loud, I talk with my hands, things get me excited, or pissed off and I WILL TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT. I think this is a super charming part of my being. It’s who I am, and I am 100% unapologetic about it.

So when he used to tell me to calm down, it made me rethink everything I had ever thought about myself. Was I too emotive? Too expressive? Was this a BAD personality trait? Is this why I was single and never in any kind of long term relationship? It must be. So he’s right, I need to take my personality down a notch. Relationships are about compromise, so clearly this needed to be my compromise. In the words of Taylor, I need to calm down.

(I’m cringing just writing this and seeing just how bad it was.)

He used to do other things too. They were always small things. He would comment on my drinking, especially if I got drunk. So I stopped drinking (a lot of it was because of trying to have a baby, so that wasn’t 100% on him, but I did cut back a lot because I didn’t want to hear the comments from him when I did have too much). He would complain because I was loud and dropped things a lot. He’d call me a klutz, a bull in a China shop. And I am! I have been my entire life! I broke bones, I have bruises all the time that I don’t know where they came from, switching to glass food storage containers makes A LOT MORE NOISE. ALSO YOU’RE WELCOME THAT I COOKED EVERYTHING FOR YOU.

But I never said anything to him. I let him go out and get drunk with his friends because he should have. I let him just subtly put me down. I let him turn me into a shell of the badass person that I am. It was all so subtle that I didn’t even realize it was happening.

Looking back now, I mad at myself for not standing up to him. For letting him do all this emotional and mental abuse. For worrying about being mean or not nice.

Compounded with that from Saturday, I heard from him for the first time in two months yesterday. I have him blocked on my phone and my email, but the blocked emails go to Spam and I regularly check there just to make sure I’m not missing something important.

He was being nice. Because he needed something. And I was going to do what he asked, because I am too nice, and then I remembered I didn’t have to do anything. I don’t have to respond because that’s the polite thing to do. I owe him NOTHING. Because as the MFM ladies say, FUCK POLITENESS.

The incident Saturday made me so thankful I’m out of that toxic relationship. It made me happy that somehow I decided enough was enough and kicked his ass to the curb. I am so much better off and I am back to being myself – all loud, emotional and full of opinions. Just as God intended.