Still learning to see sanity.

TW/CW: Gas lighting and talk of controlling/abusive relationships.

It's been nearly six years.

There is so much emotion that comes up this time of year. My birthday just passed around the corner and the anniversary of a day I started breaking free is around the next.

His last words that night "no-one will ever love you like I did"

I didn't believe those words and still don't, knowing he never loved me. He loved what he wanted me to be and resented that I wouldn't ever be that.

He loved the mound of clay before him. He loved the idea of making me in his own image, he resented that my "baggage" was real, so he convinced me it was not. He spent four years forbidding me to speak of myself. He spent four years speaking for me. I was the age he preferred me to be, the girl who had never smoked or had sex, the way he wanted me to be. He told others lies and constructed a Dean that didn't exist.

I already felt crazy for choosing a life without god. I felt crazy for my diagnosis, but still tried to live with it and be at peace with it. I felt even crazier when he assured me that I made it all up. I felt even crazier for the narrative he provided which was that my position in life was my fault. That my bi-polar was imagined, that I created it for attention.

I felt crazy for trying to make a life for myself and crazier for not being able to live the life I wanted, because he told me it was crazy.

I felt insane for being molested, assaulted and raped because he never forgot to remind me that if I hadn't placed myself in a position alone with boys, they would never have done what they did. I felt even worse because despite this, I constantly wanted to have sex,

Who is she?!

but his libido did not match my own. I felt crazy because I wasn't the perfect image of slender he desired and crazy for taking offense by the jokes he made at mine and my friend's expense. I felt crazy for the eating disorders that plagued me; He told me I was worthless and incapable of being a mother because of it.

I felt crazy for never dressing exactly as he wanted. Crazy for wanting short red hair. I was crazy for dreaming of a life in which I could love more than one person. I am crazy because he made me believe I am crazy.

I was crazy for needing medication, so I don't take them. I was crazy when I don't take them, but I was crazy because I caused my crazy. I chose to rebel and therefore I am insane. I chose to question, to deviate from the "norm" I was born into, and therefore my crazy is my fault.

I can't talk about being gaslit for four years because the voice in my head tells me he was young and didn't know better. I can't talk about it because I still believe I am making this all up. I can't talk about it because it is all my doing, all my fault. I can't talk about it because talking about it makes the crazy even crazier and more real.

I was too crazy for him to love so he tried to strip me of my crazy and reconstruct me to be this beautiful sculpture, but he created a sculpture that had to fake so much, it was no longer anything. His sculpture was not the age I am. His sculpture was not the weight, the personality the vibrancy I am.

This is all made up, my ailments are my own doing. I fight because I have no choice but to fight the crazy he made me.

I am caught off guard when people don’t shun me the moment they hear I am not straight, or cisgender. I am shocked when I am not treated as insane by every human for living with mental illnesses. I fought so hard for four years to hide so many parts of me, to just fit into this ideal space that he had created for me, but that space was not real and I didn’t fit. I couldn’t fit.

I died upon entry into that relationship, I stayed for four years so that I could escape the grasps of a country full of hatred and judgment, accepting a person who was full of judgment so that I could be in a country where eventually the day would come that I could be out and proud. I have realized that day, and at times I still believe I am this crazy for it, I still believe I fake everything. I am rarely the sculpture he made me but when I am treated as not insane, I feel even more so.