Gaslighting.

It is such an extreme, calculating invasion of one’s sanity, that it should be punishable by law.

I never had the pleasure of experiencing such a sick form of mental torture, and honestly if I would have never experienced it, I would have no idea what it was, or even if it was a real thing.

There’s nothing like an habitual liar, keeping you on edge by day, and awake by night, by their constant, bogus accusations. I was literally so dumbfounded by what Chris would accuse me of, that I wouldn’t even know how to respond. I would often say to him ‘are you joking?’ because some of the shit he would say would be so far fetched, that I honestly didn’t know if he was serious in asking me. Then when I didn’t respond because I didn’t want to get into a whole-ass-thing with him, he said I was quiet because the ‘truth hurts’.

I was accused of being with his horribly disgusting friends, when I wouldn’t ever, under any circumstances, allow such trash into my presence. I was pregnant, and would get up to use the restroom, and when I came back he would ask me in a rude and condescending way, where I had been. I would sarcastically say, ‘it’s five in the morning, I’m pregnant and wearing jammies, I was at the CLUB, Chris’.

He sent me thousands upon thousands of messages; telling me that I’m with Allen, I’m with Keith, I’m with his married BROTHER. He questioned me if our son was his brother’s, because our son is left handed, like his brother. He asked if his other married brother could be our son’s father because he has green eyes, and his eyes are hazel, and mine are such a dark brown that they look red in the light. Forget the fact that both traits, lefties and coloured eyes, run in our families; our son must be left handed with coloured eyes, because ‘I’m a slut’. He would then tell me ‘wait until his wife finds out’ and then proceed to tell me how he had ‘evidence’ of the indiscretion.

He would keep me up, yelling at me about a guy named Ron, whom I had only met one time, for about an hour when he helped us move from a place Chris got us kicked out of. Actually, he was kicked out, I was welcome to stay, but left anyway because I didn’t want him to keep bringing the drama to where I stayed.

He was so embarrassing.

He would yell at me over and over again “Ron will never leave Rachel’ and I couldn’t have told you who they were if they were standing right next to me. Still, to this day, I would not be able to recognize these clowns. He just refuses to acknowledge that I don’t associate with people like the ones in his flock.

He would accuse me of sleeping with my close cousin, whom I visit out of state, especially when I wanted to get away from him. He accused me of sleeping with my colleague, with his neighbor, with the delivery guy. I was pregnant this entire time, barely able to move, and only went from work to home. He would call me on my lunch, to make sure I could not do anything or go anywhere without him hearing it. He would send me fake texts, like they would be from someone from my past, and I shot it down immediately. He would then say that I knew it was him, and I ‘got caught’.

He had to go to court one morning, to face one of his many active charges, so I took advantage of the time to sleep, since being with him drained me beyond measure. I was still at his moms at this time, so she was home. He told me he had planted a recording device, and he ‘heard Allen come in the house and heard me giving him head with a condom on’. I told him if he could produce such footage, I would sign our son over to him without a fight.

I had to sit there, and listen to an almost completely silent recording, as he kept telling me to ‘wait for it’ because ‘it was on there’. The only thing I heard, was my calendar alert that he had court that morning. Once he heard that, he said it was a message from his friend, responding to me telling him he was gone, and the coast was clear. He gathered all this information, by my calendar alert. I told him if it was that much of an issue that I had to fuck one of his trash-bag homies the moment he left the house, to screw the screens on the windows. After all, he had screwed the DOORS shut so I couldn’t leave on several different occasions. He never did what I asked, because then that would prevent the sewer rats HE let in, from being able to get through his window without passing his mom, who is practically bedridden in the living room.

I was home, heavily pregnant, taking a nap, and he told me he had a recorder under the bed, and heard me and his brother fucking. Again, another almost completely silent tape. I had only been around his brothers on rare occasions because his brothers and their wives barely speak to him. In fact, his brother had a restraining order against him even before I did. This is the same brother who had their other brother, but not Chris, in his wedding. His two brothers and their wives, literally told me to take the baby and ‘run for your life’. His niece and nephews can’t even visit their grandmother, because they aren’t allowed over if Chris is there.

But everyone else is the problem.

Everyone else is the liar.

Everyone else needs help.

If you defend yourself, it means you’re guilty.

If you don’t defend yourself, it means you’re guilty.

I would come at Chris with hard facts and screen shots, and immediately he would say, ‘you fucked my friend in my bed, how could you do that’? Then we would spend the next hour arguing about how I could do such things to him. I’ve never been through anything like this, and the more he lies about me, and lies about what he did; the more I felt like I was losing my grip. You honestly start asking yourself, ‘am I going crazy’, why does he think these things when I’m not doing anything wrong? How can I be doing these things with his friends behind his back, when I was quite literally, always in his face.

I could never get a straight answer out of him. No matter how many times I would ask him a question, he never would give me an answer. No matter what I asked, it was always turned around onto me because ‘I’m a whore’ and ‘we could have had a happy family if I just kept my legs closed’.

He would message me telling me I was in hotel room with Allen, and Cassidy. Then he would go on and on about how Cassidy, whom I don’t know; was with Mikey, and I’m ‘so dirty for fucking everyone’. I only knew Mikey because I cussed him out every time I saw him because he was usually sleazing around outside or coming to the door, knowing I hated the sight of him and his reason for being there. He would never say a word back, I think (rightfully) out of fear, as he had witnessed my get-down during previous altercations. ( I made it clear that gender didn’t affect me when I faced opponents. Male, female, single, or group, I have no problem backing-up-beef caused by standing your ground on what’s right ).

I’ve told Chris on more than one occasion, ‘if you’re telling me these things just to get a rise out of me, it’s sick and you need help; if you’re telling me these things because you really believe them, it’s sick and you need help’. It’s amazing how upside down things become when you’re dealing with a narcissist; especially a narcissist with a heroin and meth problem. It’s like scribbling circles all over a piece of paper, then asking someone to put it in chronological order.

I remember this one time, we were just about to get into it because he was telling me that he heard someone come in the bathroom. There was only a small window in that bathroom, and it was maybe 8 inches across by 12 inches in height. I kept telling him, ‘I don’t like your friends, they’d be the last people I’d ever fuck; and if I were fucking one of them, everyone you know would be talking about it, I’m sure’. But he wouldn’t shut up. He kept flapping-his-trap about his friend, and how I was such a whore.

In that moment, he was being so over-the-top insane, arrogant, and paranoid, that I fell dramatically to my knees, clasping my hands together, telling him to please forgive me for fucking all his gross friends, I know I’m a terrible person, I deserve everything that you’ve done to me. I was overacting the scene, Mexican-Novela style. I stayed down there a cool minute, waiting to see how long he would let it go on before he realized it was ridiculous and tell me to get up, but that moment never came. Instead, he just stood there, and kept his eyes fixated on me, not uttering a word; no expression. I finally just got up thinking ‘what the fuckin fuck’??! Any logical person would have told me to stop and get up. Not Chris. He enjoyed the show. I was left confused, irritated, and emotionally wiped out.

When he used to say things which had to do with cheating or being promiscuous, it hit me in two particularly painful and guarded places. My dad had cheated on my mom, and it divided the family against him. And, I shared with him in confidence the agonizing detail that I lost my virginity through statutory rape, so hearing vile things that had to do with sex outside of being with a trusted partner would literally make my nose start bleeding and give me tension headaches that made me sick. I repeatedly told him to stop saying inappropriate sexual things because it was bringing back everything that happened to me when I was 15, but he kept on. My heart was thumping, I felt like my body was hot, and my temper was making my eyes feel like they were bulging out.

I got so tired of playing the game. It never stopped, or let up. Even though it’s been a year and four months since I left him, the messages still come, and yes, I still unconsciously count the time by months. When I don’t answer my phone because I despise him, he will send me a message telling me to ‘tell Allen he’s a bitch and to see him in the street’. Or I’ll get a random text saying, ‘Allen is that good, huh’?

I got so tired of listening to his accusations, that one night while I was taking a very late bath to relax, I stormed out of the tub, put clothes on, and made him walk me over to Allen’s house. I said that if I really were the names he called me, let’s go get it in the open, let’s call it all out, just like I did with him and his recycled groupies. Any sane person would know that going over to a house of someone I didn’t know, in the middle of the night, with the steam still radiating from my body, was stupid and ridiculous. But, he methodically walked me there, forcing me into his crazy.

Right when we walked up, Chris started running his mouth. And even though he has about a foot and a half of height on him, and over a hundred pounds in weight, Allen stood right up and walked off the porch. Chris pulled a handgun out and pointed it straight at him, like it was nothing, his arm straight and steady. Myself and Allen’s girlfriend, got them away from each other, and I told them exactly what was going on. Mind you, it’s two o’clock in the morning when all this is going down. I was shivering because I just came out of a hot bath into the cold night. Allen and his girlfriend don’t sleep because they’re on one as well, so here we all are, awake outside, dealing ass-deep in demonic, drugged-out drama.

I was proudly the oddball out of their little click, but I talked to the girlfriend in the distance behind Chris and Allen on the way back to his mom’s house. I am usually a very private person, but going through a situation like this, makes me want to shout from the rooftops what transpired between us, I was quiet long enough. I had spoken to her on the phone once before so she already knew the gist-of-it, which saved me a lot of time. I remember that I just kept saying to her ‘oh my God, I absolutely haaaate thaaaat motherfucker, and only come here once in a blue moon to let our son see his dad and grandmother’. There really was no where else to have them visit, because other than a hotel, he isn’t invited or welcome anywhere.

She was admiring my necklace and my career while Chris down-talked me and then laughed it off with his friend; the same friend he was making my life a living hell over. We parted ways after some small talk, and Chris and I went into the house, and began round two. By this time, my mind is racing with ‘ ummm, what the hell is happening right now, and how am I even associated with any of these pendejos’ ?!

There was no end or limit to the constant and cringeworthy things he accused me of. I began audio taping and documenting it when I thought about it, just to prove that I wasn’t crazy or over-exaggerating.

A few months after I left him for good, I stumbled across the film Gaslight, circa 1944.

It’s about a man who has an agenda stemming from a previous altercation with his wife/lover’s aunt, unbeknownst to her. Shortly after the secret encounter, he moves her away into a home which houses a painful memory for her. He begins accusing his wife of not being well, and being forgetful. He moves a particular photograph, then tells her she must retrieve it from where she hid it. He kept her in the house, by making her paranoid to leave it. He gave her a family heirloom, took it without her knowing, then asked her where it was. He would turn the gas-lighting up, and down, after he visibly left the apartment, so that while she watched the lights go from dim to bright, he was systematically driving her insane so that he could put her away. It was both painful, and infuriating for me to watch. So many of the things that took place were a mirror image of what had happened in the quicksand I was stuck in.

I could write an entire book just on the gaslighting that took place, alone. It was something I dealt with on a daily, not once a week or during a fight. It started making me physically weak, and mentally fragile. And I don’t mean fragile like a flower, I mean fragile like a bomb.

Chris did anything to take the focus off of himself, his lies, and his cheap actions. It was only after I had left him and my adrenaline finally started coming down, that I was finally able to sift through details and process them with clear head. I realized what I had already known, that it wasn’t me, it was him, and continues to be, him.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not the narcissist.

I’m not the cheater.

I’m not the dirty, used-up tramp.

He knows he lost the best thing he ever came across in his life which explains why he is quite literally now losing HIS mind. He knows I’m not coming back, yet he still puts me through it. Only now, I don’t have to be there and only see it via message when I unblock his numbers; which I only do in order to check his state-of-mind. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, is a real thing. I feel safer when I know what he’s up to, and if he’s off the deep end.

Gaslighting will definitely make you feel that you are gonna lose it trying to prove your innocence, sanity, and emotional stability. This is a clever tactic narcissists use to blame-shift, and to convince others what a hot mess YOU are. They will have you listening to things that aren’t there, apologizing to them for whatever they actually did to you, they will plan and plot everyone against you, while running your name through the mud. They will talk shit when you leave the room, then tell you they missed you when you come back. They do all these things in such a way that only you would recognize it in a room full of people. Everyone else would be buying their bullshit, thinking what an amazing guy this is, and wouldn’t even believe you even if you told them what was really happening. They almost hypnotize the people around them with their act.

It’s really a scary thing to go through. It’s strange; tiring.

It has lasting effects.

It causes me nightmares.

They show no sense, no mercy, no remorse ….