tarynitup

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know how to be one.

I’ve been manipulated my entire life by my immediate family members and as I was older, relationships I chose because they felt like home. I’ve watched it work for people, I’ve watched people suffer from it.

It’s a skill I will never choose to use again.

I was put to the test when I got in over my head and I was face to face with the biggest manipulator I’d ever meet. The situation could have swallowed me completely.. I was threatened with lawsuits and NDAs and I had never searched so much on what people could do legally to me. Karma collected quick with me, not to mention other people taking it in their hands to deal it back. They knew I wasn’t in it, they also didn’t know how much I knew about their girlfriend AND the other girl like me, plus the disgusting shit I knew about suddenly. I became so scared of the consequences of my actions and backing out that I raised their manipulation by 10 just to keep my head above water. Trying to be so awful and anxious that someone didn’t talk to you anymore was exhausting, until I didn’t have to fake the anxiety because the guilt of what I was doing was leaking out like sweat. I suddenly felt more alone than I already had, desperately wanting out but not knowing how. The best way I can explain it is a really awful drug addiction. I was addicted to yet again- a chase. Things would get bad and backed up and I’d start to question my worth and if that’s why he was inconsistent too, he’d come in at the last minute, fix everything, I’d have money.. and the cycle continued. I did it to have a cushion if things ever hit the fan, and it backfired ALMOST instantly. I had maybe 4 weeks of consistent money, and then it was a shit show. I lost financial control and I hadn’t learned about how much of a control freak I was. I didn’t feel good enough, and when I tried to get myself on the same level as them, I didn’t feel good enough because of what I was doing. I used to lock myself in my closet in my apartment and sob so heavily I’d throw up, I’d type out messages in my notes to my boyfriend trying to figure out how to come clean about it all and always coming to the conclusion they wouldn’t care to try to understand before they left. I was dying inside. The fact that I was capable of reading someone and making it through that with them never touching me… do you know how much my brain was working? Constantly reading things about them, listening to their childhood to understand that they were so fucking deprived of any love, they’d throw any amount of it at kindness and someone that acted like they cared… THATS what they wanted. They had other people they got sex from. It’s just a gross fact. I was out of their league, they felt like a savior to me, and the fact that they told their girlfriend they co-signed on the car for their secretary and she believed it no problem should tell you the kind of person he portrayed himself to be. He also tried to not have my name on it, and tried to get it back when I had my wreck. His mom got paid a huge amount of money as a kid to stay away and she took it. Our early life experiences shape us and that situation shaped him entirely. The only thing was he was either not as good at manipulating people or I had just seen it so much I knew what was going on and I countered it. One of the worst feelings I have is feeling like a thief to him. To feel bad about part of what I did requires me to take accountability to all parties, and I knew when I was threatened with a lawsuit when I threatened to leave, I was dealing with someone I did not know at all.

I’m pretty sure I said things I wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t let it stop me. Whoops. Looking back, it makes sense. Healing from that has been hard because I’ve only been able to talk about it openly in therapy, and the only thing I can do is lock away that skill and tell little me that we don’t need to do that to survive, there are other ways.

I don’t think I ever expected them to stay after, it was more of a “you’re leaving anyway, it’s easier for me to understand and let it go if it’s because of something I did instead of you just leaving, so here.. let me sabotage this for you”.

Self-sabotage is fucking real.