In the past, I’ve talked about this “friend” who’s been super toxic and bad for my mental health. I eventually had enough of that and didn’t want to do anything with anymore. I eventually made the mistake of getting in touch with him again and, well, it’s just like with how it goes when you touch the hot plate: You get burned. Why did you touch it again? Didn’t you learn the first time when you burned yourself? Alas, I didn’t want to let him get close to me again and I didn’t want him to make me feel bad again. The constant gaslighting, manipulation, and frankly, the uncertainty that I got from his side was just too much for me to handle and “taking a break” from talking to him and hanging out wasn’t good. I had to make a clear cut. For good this time. And well, here’s a bit more on that I guess.
Trigger/Content Warning: Abuse, Toxicity, Bigotry, Language, Mental Health stuff.
If you don’t want to deal with that (I kinda left out a lot btw to make it less bad but… y’know…), you can also skip to the end. I put up separators around the sensitive stuff, so you can rest assured once you scrolled past the second one. I have a goal in mind with this post, so that’s why there’s a part past the separator.
Alas, I wrote everything down, I wanted to tell him. I wrote it down in a word document and sent it to him so that he could read my “letter”. After all, the discord-message-letter-limit doesn’t allow you to express your feelings without a ten-minute gap between messages. I wanted to tell him what I’ve been thinking for ages now. I wanted him to know how he made me and others feel and how’s toxic to the core and how he really needs to think about that stuff before he ends up hurting more people… and I wanted to send it to him but then he blocked me because I left a lobby in a game. He removed me and extracted me out of his life, just like that. It really tells a lot about your bond and what you meant to that person when they’re able to just delete your existence like that out of their life without second-guessing it. I guess, I always knew that I don’t matter anything to him or that nobody really does.
I, alas, wrote that into the letter as well and it reminded me of previous things and how he just throws away people, projects his problems onto them and then gaslights them into thinking that they’re at fault. It reminded me of how he believed someone he knew for three months more than he believed me – despite us knowing each other for more than eight years at that point. He cut me out of his life and told me that I’d have to work for the friendship and that I was at fault for breaking his trust… He told me that I’m the one who messed this up and, I believed it. I knew that he was wrong but I played along until I was second-guessing what really happened. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he is right? Maybe I’m the one in the wrong? Yeah, Gaslighting 101.
Thus, I rewrote the letter as just listing his mistakes wouldn’t do it any justice. This is my last letter to him after all. My last message, in a way.
Hence, I thanked him. “Yo, Ray”, I wrote, “we’ve known each other for about eight years now and in that time, I learned a lot which is why I wanted to thank you.” I continued how I’m thankful that I learned from him how important it is to care about yourself sometimes and how important it is for me to think about my own needs at times. “You’re pretty much the most toxic human I’ve ever gotten to know and I don’t mean the way you just casually throw around slurs like ‘faggot’ or ‘slut’ as if it’s your middle name, despite me and one of your best friends being into men and despite us getting offended by it. I don’t mean the way you use ‘special in a different way’ to insult people you don’t know and how you use ‘autist’ as an insult, even in my presence as someone in the spectrum. I don’t mean the countless times that you’ve made everything about yourself and that you controlled people into playing games of League of Legends around you despite you being the weakest link. I don’t mean the countless times where you insulted other people as ‘lower elo trash’ despite you never reaching Gold, Platinum, or anything higher than that without a friend boosting you. […]” – And then I continued with how he abuses people around him, how he’s constantly horny, how’s always trying to make others look bad when there’s a female around him, and how he’s always trying to make him look like the best guy around to get his chances up. I also mentioned how he never visited me and always demanded that I came around and how I didn’t get to perform live on stage in front of my close friends because he promised to pick them up and then just decided not to do that at all. Like, I didn’t care about him not coming but it hurt me how he also stopped our common friends from coming to my performances and my parties. It made me mad how he went off to smoke weed at a friend’s place for two hours while I was waiting at his flat because he told me he’d “be right back”.
So, I thanked him for teaching me a less so that I’d know that there are people that aren’t worth caring about and that it was a good choice to move on. And I warned him that he’s going to end up alone if he continues like that since more and more of our friends are alienating themselves from him and since more and more of our friends are stopping to care about him. While he used to charm women all the time a year or two ago, they get disgusted by him now and leave after only a few hours, for good. It’s horrifying how someone can be that oblivious to his faults and how someone can be that horny to the point where he’s being flirty with someone in presence of their partner.
And I also mentioned the part of him not even knowing anything about me because he never asked or listened and also the part about him constantly lying about his life to not let anyone get close or whatever… and how he’s just a bad influence for everyone.
I wrote all of that down and felt utterly bad about it. I was at the brink of deleting everything because I felt like it was unnecessary but once it was all written down, I actually felt great. I finally got to vent out about it all and how it made me feel. I asked a friend to send it to him and apparently, Ray received it. Ray didn’t read it but honestly, I don’t care. I just know that I’ll never have to bother with that again. Our common friend was told by Ray that I apparently have “just a phase” again or whatever and that I’ll come back eventually… yeah, sure. That’s why he always leaves the lobby when I’m already in there and that’s why he’s not reading the letter because he knows that this is for good.
Writing all of that down helped me immensely. And you may wonder why I wrote a whole blog post about it now and why I’d share that stuff… and well, I guess I just thought I’d share my story there. I wanted others to know that someone like that exists and how I dealt with it and that I felt quite good after I got this load off my chest and out of my mind. Maybe it helps other people to write it down or to think about stuff. Talking about it is also a great way to get rid of all of that negative energy and to process it, so I can’t recommend therapy enough… and once the hard lockdown is over, I’m looking forward to meeting up with my therapist again as well.
Hope you liked this post and hope it may have helped you. I tried leaving out the more extreme stuff and the more triggering experiences as well as the other stuff that may be sensitive to people and basically just kinda skim over all the stuff I wrote to him and that happened between us. Really, there’s a lot to unpack here and I didn’t want to just talk about all the negative stuff and basically just get to this section here where I talk about the positive stuff, aka writing stuff down and getting it off of your chest. I’d imagine that shouting it out in a forest would also be helpful or maybe venting to friends.
Do you wanna share any stories or experiences? If so, you can mail me at dan.indiecator@gmail.com or just DM me at MagiWasTaken#4357 on Discord or on Twitter or just comment on here if that’s alright with you as well. I’m here if you need someone. These are rough times and we need to stay strong and stay together, I guess. I’m sure you got this but there’s no shame in seeking help!
Cheers!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
Indiecator 
That stuff needs to come out or it festers. Takes some courage to yell it out, so grats on that big step. Good on you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am so sorry you had to go through this. Unfortunately, people like this are becoming more and more common. I’ve lost count of people I’ve spoken to who have been the victims of gaslighting in some form. I also wanted to say thank you for sharing your experience because it’s important that we do talk about it, not just for ourselves (you’re right on the money there with getting the negativity out), but also as you said, so more people become aware of this sort of toxic behaviour.
If you ever need someone to talk to, someone who’s been there, I’m always available :)
LikeLiked by 1 person