Not This Time, Dad
When Gaslighting and Psychological Warfare Is Personal
Narrated by Demian
He’s holding my hand.
We’re walking in the wooded area down the street from our house. He says, “If I had a bolt of cloth and I could create my dream girlfriend, I’d make her just like you.”
I’m thirteen.
Turning his gaze from looking out for branches overhanging the narrow path, my father’s looking at me now. He smiles when my upturned eyes meet his.
He expects me to be… flattered? To not see how wrong his words are?
But all I see is a daddy who loves his little girl so much. Not a monster, the demon who chases me in reoccurring dreams, the one that looks like my father, except for his eyes.
This man’s eyes are soft and kind. His smile is something all us kids, and my mom, compete for. Here in the woods, he is giving his smile to me.
I smile back.
He’s nothing like the demon.
I love him.
This is the world I grew up in.
By thirteen, I had already been trained and groomed in the smoke and mirrors of gaslighting to see this inappropriate exchange as normal. It was my normal.
I know some people recoil at the word, “gaslighting”. They say it’s overused. Maybe it is, but it is a word for a pattern of behavior that is not diminished in its impact on others by its overuse.
If “gaslighting” has become a diluted word for you, then how about psychological warfare?
Psychological warfare refers to a government’s tactics of mental and emotional manipulation on its citizens or enemies (which, according to our current president in America, is one and the same).
But if the tactics of psychological warfare are to create self-doubt, intimidation, and confusion through manipulating or denying facts, twisting the meaning of words, manipulating your emotions and overwhelming you psychologically, then gaslighting is the smaller personal-size version of psychological warfare.
While the end goal may differ in scale, the dynamic and the malintent to undermine you as an individual, a group of people, or an entire nation, are chillingly similar.
My father
He had godlike powers.
He could make up a reality, say it was good, and it was so.
And he could make reality not a reality simply by not acknowledging it.
He did that a lot.
In his lead, so did I.
I’m only now beginning to unravel it.
My father controlled the overall narrative of our family.
My mother, also, had her part. As an Asian woman, she was all about “saving face”, family honor, and portraying a healthy, happy front regardless the truth.
My father needed a good image for more nefarious reasons. He needed his image to cover his tracks, to create a perception in other people’s minds that there was no way who they thought they saw could do what he actually did.
To that end, he had to have control over every person living within the walls of our home.
Considering three of us were children, and the only other adult, my mother, was mentally and emotionally unstable, isolated, and out of her element in a foreign land, he did just that.
My mother needed an advocate and a mother figure. At age eight, I became both.
But while I did speak on her behalf, even to my father, (and as time went on for my older brother) there were some lines I never crossed.
I could never advocate for me.
Girlfriends stand by their man.
So, what does my personal story have to do with politics?
As a survivor, there’s no way I can tell my story and exclude the gaslighting that was a big part of it. Nor can I pretend I don’t see it when and where I see it, from the racist down the street to the occupant in the Oval Office.
I don’t live on a deserted island. What affects the world at large, affects my country, affects my community, affects my circle of intimates and friends whom I cherish. Affects me.
Politics is personal.
Americans are under assault of full out psychological warfare from our own government.
If I recognize the dynamics, I’m going to point them out.
From an older piece of writing:
“My father could say the sky was blue and the sun was shining through the trees, while snow fell all around us. And everyone in our family would agree until we were totally buried from sight.
And even then, we’d get out the sunscreen.”
Not this time, Dad.
I see the snow.
I no longer grab the sunscreen but my coat and scarf and run outside to greet it. I turn my face up to the sky so I can feel it light upon my face. Little kisses of reality. Gratitude floods my heart.
You gaslighted the narrative of the things you did out of my story, but not out of my body or the deep recesses of my mind. I bear its scars.
I, also, bear the strength I had as a child to survive and the empowerment I grew into as I made my way through each flashback, each wail of grief, each checking-out moment in an attempt to escape. Step by step, coming back home to me, reclaiming the pieces of my story.
I once believed you. Not anymore.
You are gone.
But not the sickness that infested you. I can see it spreading in our country. Not just marching down streets, carrying torches, spitting out slogans, terrorizing with hate but also perched in the highest offices like impatient vultures, actively eviscerating democracy so it can feast on its carcass.
And to you, my dearest reader, perhaps fellow traveler, I want to say, hey, they don’t just rewrite the reality that is around you or your experience of it.
They rewrite the reality of you.
They erase and redefine you, the things that make you smile, that bring you joy—your curiosity, your spontaneity, your creativity, your silliness and seriousness, your compassionate, wonky, empathic, spontaneous, creative, wonder-filled self.
They reframe that. Repurpose that for their own use or subdue and wreck it altogether.
But not anymore. Because we know what we’re dealing with, and that self-awareness can blow away the smoke and shatter those mirrors.
And we can do this together.
From my heart to yours,
Demian ~ Silent No More
Question: Have you experienced gaslighting in your personal life? In what way does the gaslighting you see in your world, as propaganda or political talking points, affect you?
I’m a survivor and artist activist reclaiming the stories of the past and creating new ones for the future through the written, and spoken word, and song.
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Thank you 🎶
A more personal poetic piece I wrote about the devastation of rewriting reality and the deep love involved in healing. ❤️
fantastic piece. All abusers work from the same playbook.
We need all the mutual support we can get to see reality.