Gaslighting and the Unrecognised abuse of psychological violence

I should have known something was wrong when, a few months into our relationship, he confronted me with a printed copy of my ICQ history (the year was 2004, people) in which I spoke to an ex-boyfriend who was much older and wiser than me about the doubts I had going into a new relationship with this boy I knew from college. I was so mortified with the shame of what he had found that I didn’t stop to wonder how had he managed to acquire that conversation. I was so busy apologising for a more than normal questioning that I let go of the fact that this relatively new man in my life had invaded my computer, stolen my data and printed it out to guilt me into a feeling of betrayal towards him. I accepted my role as the bad guy so hard I didn’t notice I was placing myself as a perpetual victim to his points of view.

ACT 1 – The Misunderstanding of Love And The Young Adult

That small incident set the tone for the next decade of our lives together and I had already been cast on the role of the culprit, so I spent the next 11 years trying to make it up to a man that, from the tender age of 19, had already found the means to manipulate me into submission. From that day on the halls of our college in which he shamed me with evidence of my doubts, I became subjugated to victimisation. I should have know, but I was only a girl of 18 still carrying feelings of inadequacy and placed as an outcast from my peers, desperate to find a place in the world to belong, so I allowed myself to belong to him.

This could have been an isolated occasion, of course, a red flag waving its shy tip on the corner just enough to get my attention, but it wasn’t, it was in fact a pattern that I was too foolish and too in love to notice. After an initial love bomb and declarations of devotion that made me feel wanted enough to endure any hardships, the abuse that followed seemed to begin with baby steps, small comments on my clothing, a jab at my increasing stress induced weight, a name of a female colleague I never met in person being dropped a little too often while accompanied by positive notes on her figure as a comparison to mine… unfortunatelly, we’ve all been there.

Thankfully, nowadays, women have become smarter and more aware of these micro aggressions, but at a time in which “heroin chic” was still very much an aesthetic and Ally McBeal was the height of elegant body type, my insecurities with my figure were only leading to insecurities about my grasp on our relationship and this man, a little too aware of my fears, planted strategically veiled criticisms into the few compliments he ever made, turning my early 20s ever rising body struggles into a tool for constantly reminding me how lucky I was to be loved by him and his ability to overlook my evident flaws as something to be thankful for. I was not worthy of his love and yet was still getting it from such a nobleman. Every action and decision I made for the first 4 years we were together were carefully crafted towards stroking his ego and convincing myself to be thankful he ever allowed my adoration.

By the time we reached graduation, his mother has tossed him out of the house for unknown reasons that he led me to believe were my fault so I convinced my parents to take him in rent free for almost en entire semester as he worked his magic on his grandfather to buy him a hotel room complete with maid service and valet parking (I wish I was joking, but I’m not). Meanwhile, I was reaching 200lbs in my 5’5” body and still felt unfitting while being compared to his skinny coworker whose full name still echoes in the back of my mind 15 years later. As we were placed into the real world to find our adult paths, all I got was rejections from interviews in which my weight described me as lazy while occupying my time into proving this man I was worthy of his version of love. I don’t think I ever hated myself as much as I did at my early twenties. There was no room in my ever expanding body for self love while his ego was suffocating my every breath with reassurance that as long as I continue to worship him, he’d feed me small bites of tenderness.

ACT 2 – The Rebellious Cheater

The following years did nothing to appease my desperation. As college came to an end and finding a job became an ever growing task because I felt too fat to be given a chance, his abuse only grew. I think it was around this time I first noticed it, but as the first red flag, it started in small doses and I was already so conditioned to accepting his truth to be absolute, I had no strength to fight back. So as he got a better job and got paid more than we could have dreamed at the time (couldn’t pay my mortgage nowadays, but at the time it felt like a fortune to a man who didn’t pay rent and lived in a 4-star hotel), I accepted the only offer I had, an unpaid internship at the very same college I had just gotten my degree at, guiding graduate students to design their thesis, and fell very close to a boy under my tutelage. I say boy, but he was in fact a couple years older than me and we are still friends to this day, despite never again speaking of the day I cheated on my abuser with him.

Yes, I did, I cheated. This boy and I had a real connection and he never seemed to regard the fact that I was very fat, so when we fell into bed together I felt right for the first time in half a decade. I was well aware we were not in love, only infatuated and a little drunk, but for the first time in my adult life I felt in charge of my mind and my body. At that moment, cheating was my rebellion against the cage of smoke and mirrors my life had become. My abuser did find out eventually. Guess how. By going into my MSN Messenger history with my best friends and printing it out to confront me. Red flag. Redder flag.

Did I try to lie? No. Him finding out was MY way out. I blatantly told him I fucked another man, a man he knew, a man that I had welcomed into his home more than once. I fucked him good. I told him I didn’t regret it, I said I didn’t love him anymore and I wanted out. My punishment came 7 days later, as I took him back with empty promises of better days. Those days never came. It only got worse and worse from there, as if he was testing my boundaries, as if he wanted to know just how far he could go and I’d still worship the ground he spat on. And, Lord, did I? Yes, yes I did. By then, he had managed to get as fat as me proportionally (let’s say 300lbs to his 6’1”) and I had managed to get an opportunity on a (poorly) paid job and the accomplishment had felt so satisfying I had decided to take action on my weight as well.

After 7 years struggling with unsuccessful diets and a shit ton of prescription amphetamines that led nowhere, I announced I was getting a bypass surgery. Took me half an year of exams and therapy to prepare to it, but after 2 weeks of my announcement he had convinced his mother to pay for his, so he could get it before me. By the time I was almost dying from a complication in my procedure, he was already thin enough to fool people about having ever been overweight. His narcissism was so great he couldn’t bear the thought of me losing weight while he remained fat. Red flag? Reddest flag. The aftermath of me almost dying during surgery ultimately saved my life. It was his disproportional reaction to my near death experience that finally triggered me to fight back.

This is not a how-to, be warned, this was extremely unhealthy and very damaging to my life, but it did save me from him and, on behalf of that, I regret nothing.

Act 3 – The Near Death Experience That Saved My Life

As I said, I nearly died on the OR table. I had a lung reaction to the anaesthetic and had to breath through machines for a week. My parents were beside themselves with fear. My SO on the other side made it very loudly known that I had inconvenienced him with my malfunction. Oh, I’m not exaggerating, he actually used those words to describe how hard it was ON HIM that I nearly died while I was doing physical therapy to teach my lungs to breathe on their own again. That was the moment I knew we were over, but I was too weak to do anything, including breathe, much less end an abusive relationship.

So as I got better and moved in with him at the hotel, I managed to keep my career pushing forward and lost weight. A lot of it. I am today half the size I was then, and so was he. And as I became smaller in size I became larger with attention. I was finally a “normal” girl, my face was just pretty and not “pretty for a fat girl”, I had bright red hair and my tattoos have always been unique, so people started to notice me, especially men, and HE started to notice the attention, which must have sparked in his ego a fear of losing my adoration. A very well founded fear, as it turned out, because when he started accusing me of cheating just because of the attention, I started to do exactly that. I cheated on him. Right in his face. I cheated a lot. I fucked guys in bathrooms, I fucked them in dance floors while he was fucking my friends behind my back. I once fucked a guy on the street right next door to our hotel just to feel avenged. I never left the house with the will to cheat, but as we got in the mirrored elevator after I had spent two hours doing hair and make up for him and he complimented HIMSELF while looking at our reflection, my stomach churned and I felt like getting even any way I could, and nothing hurt him more than me worshiping another man behind his back, even if just for two minutes as they pumped their semi erections into my now thinner body. It never meant anything, I was just taking ownership of myself. I never game them names ou numbers and I never took theirs. I never spent the night. Most of those times I was actually staring at him from a distance half wishing he’d see me, but he never did. He was too concerned with being more than he was to ever aknowledge me.

ACT 4 – How I Finally Got any Groove Back

He was fucking a few of my friends. I had known that for a while. I might have played the part of dumb girlfriend for 11 years, but I was never stupid and none of them was ever smart enough to hide it well. Sure, the condition I was set upon to accept everything he said as gospel kept me playing the fool for longer than normal, but I was always aware of what was happening around me. The nights he disappeared, the longing in a friend’s eye when she stared at him from a distance, the time he smashed my car in front of a cheap hotel… no, I was never stupid. I was chocked at how everyone else around us seemed to pretend not to notice. That belittled me so hard.

But there came a day when his grip on me went further than gaslighting and finger marks on my arm. For me, that was the day it all ended. That was the day I decided to leave and the following 3 nights after that were just what it took for me to take that step:

On that day, we were partying, as we always did, in a very well known (shut down a couple years ago) rock house downtown called (imagine the irony) “Inferno”. We got a few drinks and shots in when we decided to go for a walk, and by we I mean a whole group of friends. I was drunk and finally the longing stare from one of the girls sent me over the edge and I point blank asked her if she was in love with my husband. He didn’t take the time to think, he raised his right arm and grabbed me by the throat. I remember my feet only touched the asphalt with its tips and the world started to grow dark by its edges. I remember my fingers trying to untie his hand from my neck and failing. I remember growing weaker and feeling my temples pumping from extra blood. I remember I tried to scream but couldn’t get any air through my throat. I remember becoming very aware I was going to pass out. I remembers my knees giving in, bending in strange angles. And then I remember the release.

I fell onto the sidewalk, my stalkings ripping at the knees, my legs dropping into whatever position they were already on. The world was clouded, out of focus, I coughed at no particular pace. I was laying on the concrete as they walked away, all of them, my husband, my friends. The only person to falter was his drummer, I could see him standing confused not knowing wether to go with them or stay behind for me. Eventually he came back, helped me up, called me a cab. The next day he called me in tears – I was still alone in bed by morning – begging me to leave. Screaming at me all the times he had witnessed me accept abuse and how hard to watch it was. After I left, we became close for a while, but he too disappeared after we fucked. I think he was ashamed.

ACT 5 – The Haunting of Adult Life

It’s been 5 years now since I’ve left that awful relationship. Since then, I’ve learned how to trust again in small doses, I’ve lost my father, which has given me a new perspective in life and I’ve become stronger, more aware of myself and less obedient. I have not cheated on any of the two partners I’ve had since because they have both given me full control of my existence within our respective relationships.

However, not a day goes by I’m which I don’t remember what it felt like to be trapped, which holds me back on a lot of things but also reminds me to value others I didn’t have before. I am still very aware of my size, even if it has become half of its former self and I do think the only one bothered by it now is myself and the ghosts of who I used to be. I have ridden my life of all people associated with those times, even those I still don’t understand how they could support the abuse they were watching, but I have come to accept some answers will never become known to me.

This is the lesson I want to leave for younger generations with what I’ve lived through: love does not need to be earned, it either is or will never be. It comes from a place of knowing, not a place of wondering and if the people around don’t acknowledge your pain, they don’t deserve your happiness. Be you; but never for others. Gaslighting should be considered a crime and, if you feel it is happening to you, it probably is. Seek help, but seek the RIGHT kind of help, that will recognise your struggle as valid. No kind of violence equals love – even if not physical, you’re entitled to feel like you’re violated. If you can’t find help around you, send me a comment and I will listen and try do so right by you. Don’t let the promise of love blind you.

I don’t know how to end this, so I’ll just remind you all: if you need help, let me know. We are stronger together.

Thank you. Goodnight.