Gas-Lit

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? he asked.

The J train rumbled overhead as the light switched to green. I’d offered to drive him home from our first date since it was raining.

My family hosts a group of 10 or so every year I said. They’re like family, it’s wonderful. Everyone’s been coming for years.

I focused on the road, careful not to roll over the curb as I made a right down his narrow block.

Oh too bad he said. It would have been nice to celebrate together. I love to cook Thanksgiving dinner for people.

His suggestion irked me. Yes, we’d just had an amazing six-hour first date and felt our connection was “different,” but we were nowhere near ringing in turkey day together. I kept my thoughts to myself, though, as he scurried out of the car in the rain, kissed me through the window, and shouted back “See you this Friday!”

One week, barely a month later, he ended things via text. His ex-girlfriend had reached out and he needed space to sort through his feelings. My heart sunk. With a passive-aggressive undertone, I referenced the Thanksgiving comment. I told him how awful it felt for him to say such suggestive, future-thinking things, to then turn around merely weeks later — on the heels of my birthday no less — and go back to his ex.

He admonished me for it, claiming I was behaving immaturely and that “hopeful flirting was healthy and cute.” Hopeful.flirting. Did I not know about the category of hopeful flirting?

A lump formed in my throat as my eyes went back and forth over his paragraph of a message. I felt foolish and embarrassed. Had I misinterpreted the Thanksgiving comment? Was it a holiday about friends? Did everyone else but me see it that way?

I apologized, as I always did. I apologized for taking things too seriously, making more of something than it was. I agreed to give him space. I swallowed all my pain and hurt and backed it into a car parked across the street from my driveway, on my way to run an errand moments after he sent the last text.

Three months later, he reached out again, this time to tell me he’d been thinking of me. He’d been thinking of me and wanted to know how I was doing.

This wasn’t the first time someone who’d dropped me digitally on a whim returned wanting to “know how I was doing.”

Initially, I wasn’t going to respond. I wanted him to sit in the agony of mystery, counting the minutes and hours since he’d sent his text, wondering whether I’d say something back. Twelve hours later I decided to not be a child about it (that and I knew he wasn’t suffering far as much as I envisioned he was) and texted the following:

Hey there—after we ended things I reflected on everything and ultimately decided it wasn’t the right fit for me, so I think it’s best if we’re not in touch. Take care.

Two hours later, he wrote:

Totally cool. And to be clear this wasn’t from a romantic interest but rather a kind human touchpoint. No problem not being in touch.

A kind human touchpoint? What the fuck was a God damn human touchpoint? Rage flooded my veins. I wanted to hurl my phone so hard against the wall it sent shards of glass and plastic flying upon contact.

And then, the lump. Had I misinterpreted things? Was there something in his original hey-how-are-you bullshit text that I’d gotten wrong? Was I insane to assume he’d still be romantically interested in me?

I reread his previous text, searching for clues that his message had been platonic in nature.

Horse shit. He didn’t need more friends. No single man needed more female friends at the age of 42.

I blocked his number.

I blocked him on Instagram.

I flushed the edible he’d gifted me still lingering in my vanity down the toilet.

It didn’t feel like enough.

Two years prior, on the heels of a different breakup, my friend Anna said to me “That’s gas-lighting.” She was referring to the things my then-boyfriend had said in the midst of our cataclysmic breakup that amounted to a defiant: You’re wrong. This is about you. Your behavior is still the core issue.

The issue was still with me even though he’d been caught in a lie. Even though his ex-wife had confronted me in person to expose such a lie. Even though every alarm bell in my body was clanging, screaming “Get out. Get away. You are not safe with this person.”

I’ve only ever known I was being gas-lit on the other side. After I’d slogged through the wreckage and my brain had returned to a less foggy, less trauma-numbed state to realize I’d been manipulated. To realize everything I’d felt was valid and my overly-empathic tendencies were being used against me.

I found myself saying to a client around the same time (who was questioning the legitimacy of a boundary she wanted to set with her new boyfriend):

What if you came forth honestly with everything you were feeling?

I silently posed the same question to myself.

What if in the car that first day I’d said Oh, wow, Thanksgiving…not sure I’m ready for that yet. What would have happened? What would he have said? Maybe his response would have given me some clue (sooner rather than later) to his emotional unavailability. To his tendency to throw out bold offers only to relinquish them weeks later and peg me as getting ahead of myself.

I thought back to our first few weeks of dating, during which we’d taken a small dose of mushrooms together. It was my first time but not his. As the drugs began to work their way through my system, I curled up in his lap like a small dog. He guided me through the process, cradling me like a baby, as my body turned to putty. It felt sweet at the time but in retrospect made me feel nauseous. Someone who trusted her own emotions and thoughts didn’t need to be cradled. Held, yes. Cradled, though? That was something else entirely.

Before heading to bed the night of his check-in text, I pulled up the screenshot I’d taken prior to deleting the thread. I reread his words and mine. The anger had subsided. Any shred of embarrassment gone. Instead, I just saw two people, hungry for love, hoping for love, striving for connection. I thought of him, likely in his own bed, maybe already passed out. Maybe playing video games with friends. He felt so benign in nature.

And then I deleted the image, dropped my phone back in its charger, and tucked myself in.