[5/8] Part of a larger story that starts here.

Brenda was prone to gaslighting me at times during our arguments both before and after the incident with Adam (but mostly after), something that my therapist spotted and pointed out. The most disturbing of these instances was when I went over to her house one night. I was admittedly high, something I told Brenda when I struggled to find the words to tell her how I felt. She seemed to keep this in mind, or at least she seemed to expect me to not clearly remember the events that took place that night, as she tried to tell our mutual friends that I was trying to enter a door code or shoulder my way past her when in fact neither of these things occurred. While I was at her house, she said that she only let me know that she was interested in me on our picnic to let me know that my “radar wasn’t off” but saying that she wasn’t so sure about it now, causing me to doubt not only my own feelings, but her feelings in the past towards me and if it had all been a lie. Brenda also never seemed to take me seriously due to our age difference, a fact she admitted to early on and said that she would be careful not to let my age distract her from the fact that I am an adult. However, she always kept a more controlling posture with me, getting upset if I so much as tried to test a boundary or “step out of line”. 

The first time we got into an argument she stated “this is why I had misgivings in the park” referring to our picnic. I knew then that it would be something that she could use against me whenever we argued, if I dared to argue with her. I didn’t ask her to spend much time together for fear of pestering her, but she later seemed upset at this fact when I went on a mock-date with her roommate, Rose, and Brenda became jealous. Something that I had intended, as I wanted to ascertain if she really wanted to spend time with me since she never asked. To me, her jealousy was a sign of possessiveness, although she could have other partners and go on her own dates, a fake date with her roommate made Brenda jealous even though she didn’t ask me to spend time with her instead (and I felt bad for even having that fake date). She was angry at me for making her jealous, not understanding how I felt. Clearly in all of this, she had the right to feel like the biggest victim (it wasn’t a competition) as she stated she was “just caught in the middle”.

“I WOULD SAY YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER” Part of a letter form Brenda. Despite her starting the sexual contact with me and using me as masturbation material, she accused me of seeing her as a sex object. I no longer wished to “be friends” with her because of her defending the actions of her predatory boyfriend and because of her manipulation of me. She also feels very sad for Adam because he doesn’t have friends and I was clearly using him.

Brenda seemed quick to assign negative personality traits to me. When I first met my (now ex) girlfriend K, a transwoman, during DEF CON 26 and expressed confusion to Brenda about being uncomfortable with some masculine features of my ex’s face and a male body, as K was transitioning, Brenda suggested that I was transphobic and not to “get my transphobia” on my “new friends” (despite knowing nothing about them, or who they were), while stating that maybe it is because she is bisexual that she doesn’t see a problem with masculine features on a transgender partner. I had told her that I felt uncomfortable as I had never had a casual hook-up before and wasn’t sure how I felt about it in general, or if I was okay with hooking up with someone I had just met. I felt vulnerable, but her focus seemed to be on finding some negative quality of mine. I later talked to K about this, who didn’t see how me being unfamiliar or uncomfortable with features K was uncomfortable with was transphobic in the slightest. K also didn’t think that was something that someone who is not transgender should say. But Brenda felt that telling me, a lesbian, that my sexual boundary is transphobic was her right to do so. This was yet another example of Brenda’s ongoing gaslighting. I hooked up with K a second time, (to prove to Brenda and myself that I wasn’t “transphobic”) and entered a long-distance relationship with K (that didn’t work out in the end). I felt stupid and that perhaps I was a bigot and that Brenda must be right in every negative thing she assumed of me. This was a pivotal moment that later led to me seeking safety and comfort in radical feminist spaces. At some point, Brenda decided to not just talk about my mental health behind my back, but talk about my mental health with her sister as well as Spike, and that maybe I might have borderline personality disorder (BPD) despite neither being mental health professionals. Rather than the “hurtful” idea that Brenda might just be lacking the emotional intelligence needed to understand me, let alone most people, I suppose that this was easier for Brenda to cling to. On the up side, it led me to seek an evaluation for BPD, but it turns out that my prior diagnosis of CPTSD (a result of my mother’s untimely death) was likely compounded because of Brenda and Adam’s behavior.

Guilting me over an event she had previously forgiven me for, and going on the defensive, seemed to be a concerted effort to get me to be quiet about what Adam had done to me. I didn’t go to the police as I didn’t want to upset Brenda since she said she would “fix” his behavior. She got him to write me a new apology, coaching him but not telling him exactly what to write. Despite that, it ended up being more of the same material as the last apology, with the focus on himself and why he’s been crying himself to sleep. On the 8th of September, Brenda held a birthday celebration for me at her house. To me, it seemed like an effort to make up for what Adam did. I argued with Brenda around midnight on my actual birthday a few days later, when she came to me for comfort even though I was currently in turmoil. She admitted that it was wrong of her to do so, but she did so nonetheless. I had just gotten back from her place where Rose had spent time holding me and comforting me over everything that happened, something Brenda point-blank refused to do because she stated she was “seething” and that her anger had “no causal relationship to what Adam did”. Brenda messaged me and I did the best I could to comfort her but I became annoyed when she ended the conversation without asking how I was handling things or feeling, and we had a horrible argument before I spent the rest of the day crying, leaving my family at a loss for how to help as they didn’t know what was wrong and I was an emotional mess. I will never forget the way she made me feel when I was in my most vulnerable state. She put not only me, but my family, through a lot of pain and suffering while we have tried so hard to stay together and build a supportive web since the death of my mother years ago. 

I’ll have the pictures my brother took of me, disheveled, with my dad and a cake, to remind me of that day and my mental state for the rest of my life. Brenda and I stopped talking after that incident and I said that I wanted to cut contact with her. She said she needed at least a month before she would be ready to talk, if at all. I tried reaching out a month later, but she sent me letter after letter full of hostility where she blamed me and painted me as a horrible person until I sent her a letter of apology, finally guilted into thinking I really was an awful human being. One of the letters she sent me contained a veiled threat along the lines of “if I ever do become uncivil it will be extremely obvious and done up properly.” All she did was seem to support Adam and supposedly “protect him from me”.

Read More: https://skwid.ink/the-breaking-point-my-suicidal-turmoil/