from a different CapAwk column

[honoria]

"[commenter talks about eventually ending a relationship with a gaslighter] I didn’t even realize it had happened until after the relationship was long over and I realized I had somewhere developed all these new insecurities that I didn’t have 4 or 5 years ago."                                                                    HOLY SHIT OMG: the toy store. I have realized how over the last few years I have lost my spine, my confidence, my self-image...I deal with everything from a place of such fear and shame and loneliness. Sounds ridiculous when I write it out here, but I was there for 8 years, and I came out very different in certain ways than how I came in. It sounds silly; it was just a job, right? But i embraced and identified with it, and when it was going well for the first few years (how many of those years were actually good, I wonder now, but I can't tell), it gave me confidence in myself and my abilities, and sometimes it was the one thing I could point to that I was good at, was doing right, was doing AT ALL sometimes. It was one of the only outside-world safe places for me.                                                                And then it changed, in fits and starts, and ground me down, and as I said to a good, good friend there, I had to leave while I still had any of my self left.                                                                                    Okay, I think I need to get up and go outside now.