Perception Glasses

By Anonymous

Content Notice: This story contains references to Domestic Abuse and Stalking.

Escaping an abusive relationship with someone who she thought was her soulmate, she was left with crippling fears and low self-esteem. Through years of therapy, and rebuilding herself, she has learned her worth.

I was looking for a soulmate

Throughout college, I could not appreciate or empathize with people who were different from me. Anyone who didn’t exist on the same terms as I did was far beneath me, I thought. I didn’t know that this attitude of mine would soon carry me straight into a web of manipulation, death threats, and utter destruction of my personhood.

I satiated my desire for mutual comprehension and connection when I encountered the one who I was convinced would be my lover, my friend, my one and only soulmate—my twin flame. I finally felt wholly in tune with somebody. I was ready to leave the entire world behind to find everlasting comfort in one body and one mind, and that is exactly what I did.

The only problem was that I had no idea that the comfort I perceived was utterly toxic, harmful, and dangerous. This perceived comfort was a sweet poison—and worst of all, it was a deliberate, manipulative scheme that I had been ensnared in by my would-be life partner.

This manipulative narcissistic being struck me to my core. They abused me psychologically, they abused me emotionally, and they drew me further and further away from myself and the independent person I used to be. Their vanity and egocentrism created the perfect storm for my hyper-empathic personality—this person sucked every ounce of energy from me. I was left devoid of my willpower and exhausted. I was increasingly invaded by crippling self-doubt. I couldn’t tell right from wrong. I developed an intense distrust of the world around me, including those dear friends who had been closest to me.

It was like I had put on these deception glasses that wouldn’t allow me to operate as a grounded and aware individual. My bones wore a different skin, my eyes observed a gnarled, cruel, and distorted scene, my soul was ever-swallowing this toxicity.

Every day I was scolded, I was threatened, I was mocked and humiliated. It seemed I would never awaken from this toxic trance.

People around me warned me that this person I labeled as “the only one who will ever understand me”—was spinning a harmful, deadly web to completely manipulate and control me. It took thousands of tangled and targeted words, countless disrespectful actions, and numerous violent threats until one evening when the topic came up between me and my cousin, I outright fainted, and fell to the kitchen floor.

Only then did I begin to see a faint, hazy hint of clarity through this murk of manipulation. I slowly started to question the words, the attitude, and the actions of that person who I had thought to be my greatest ally. I began to break down and revise the very set of values and principles that defined and guided me as a person. I asked myself:

“Am I being respected and loved as a person and woman?”

“Is it true that love implies suffering?”

“Do I love myself?”

“Am I respecting myself while being in this relationship?”

As the liberation phase began in my mind, I also tried to take physical steps to fully distance myself—to disconnect myself—from that experience:

I changed my phone number.

I changed my email address.

I deleted photos, and I hurled belongings into the trash.

But it wasn’t that simple. This toxic creature—my anti-soulmate—began a campaign of mercilessly stalking and intimidating me. They sent me grotesque and disturbing packages, they persistently harassed me by messaging me from countless fake Facebook accounts, they even showed up unannounced at the gate of my house.

All of this put me in a constant state of terror. I could never let my guard down. I was always paranoid and on edge. I wanted to stay indoors forever—or better yet, just run away, escape, never to be seen again anywhere within a thousand miles of that person.

When we think of a liberation phase, we often imagine it as a sudden break, a crack, a snap. But mine was far from this. My liberation phase started long ago, and it is still evolving. It has been made of so many different emotions and so many mindsets. From that day I fainted and first allowed myself to think that maybe there might be something seriously wrong to this very second that I sit here typing, I have gone through different stages of this liberation phase.

At first, I used to feel very confused. I didn’t know how to answer some simple questions: “who am I? What do I like and hate?” I had lost myself. I couldn’t see the footsteps of the person I was. That’s when I decided to go through psychotherapy.

It took me two years of therapy to really understand what happened. When I met my therapist for the first time, she asked me some easy get-to-know-you questions just to break the ice, but all I could manage to blurt out was “I don’t know.” Eventually, with much patience and time, she helped me realize what happened, and that it was time to do the hard but needed work of rebuilding myself. Most importantly, we worked heavily on emotions. I was asked to draw joy, anger, and sadness on paper. Drawing was a way to recognize these emotions, and, to manage them. I needed to learn how to isolate emotions and keep them in their right containers, instead of letting them flow wildly all around. I needed to draw a line between my emotions and other people’s. My urgency was to reconstruct myself and become a solid person again.

I needed to recognize what I had been forced to disown: my sense of self and independence, my own thoughts, my own emotions. I was asked to slowly tie back together with the scattered strands of myself. I was asked to disown that set of deception glasses that had been slyly slipped over my eyes.

As I was going through this process, I reached a different stage of my liberation: anger and regret.

As soon as I gained clarity, it seemed right to blame myself for not being able to perceive and intercept the danger. I became convinced that I was too foolish, too impetuous, too careless. I developed this conviction and suffocated sense of guilt that paired devastatingly well with my fears. I was not only afraid of falling again into the same trap, but also of being all the more likely to be easily violated, fooled, and tricked again because of my own personal shortcomings and weaknesses.

Even the simplest actions became crippling. I couldn’t enjoy walking down the streets by myself. I found parties and any sort of social event to be a terrible source of anxiety. I wasn’t able to reconnect with men. I wasn’t comfortable with myself at all. Fears have been my unrequested, unwanted friends for a long time. And even today, they are still standing far too close to me.

My reconstruction phase was boosted significantly by my journey to India. I worked there as a volunteer English teacher in an NGO school. I traveled, met people from different backgrounds and cultures, and I had the chance to see myself in action again. In India, there were people who needed me, so I was forced to put my fears aside in order to give my best contribution to them.

I was alone in a diverse and unfamiliar environment that could possibly hit me again in many different ways. Yet, it has been this specific situation that has forced me to think of myself as a capable and valuable person. I grew stronger and much more aware of my potential.

I was rising like a phoenix from the ashes. I could perceive things differently. I acquired the ability to accept the past and forgive myself. More importantly, I could feel myself in tune with the world.

As I returned back home, I had only one task: try and start over. My intention was to keep that motivation alive in myself. Every day, I made a conscious effort to nurture myself.

And, no, the stalker didn’t stop attacking me. But, they found me much more prepared! In fact, at that time I came to a very eye-opening realization: the best way to get rid of narcissists was to show indifference. One day, I opened my Facebook and I saw another message from a fake account. Instead of giving them the reaction I knew they wanted, I replied: “Excuse me, who are you?”

I knew it was time to stop playing into their game.

I can’t restart from scratch. I can’t scrape away and remove that layer of my life. But I can—and I am—building some new layers on top of it. I’m much more self-aware, and I know I have to find a home within myself. I recognize love, and I am able to step back from manipulative people.

Sometimes I do wonder: Who would I be if I didn’t go through that experience? All I know for sure is that I gained this promising new pair of perception glasses.