My best efforts to try to overcome the experiences I’ve had with my family, many times through the years, left me perpetually disappointed. Part of the difficulty in resisting gaslighting abuse is conveying that it is occurring, to others. My family had effectively, by the time that I was seven or eight years old, undermined nearly all possible avenues for me to establish social relationships with other children, and were simultaneously threatening me into silence about what was happening to me in my own home. They were neglectful, abusive, and uncompromising in the demands that they were making of me, and upon my future. I knew that it would take extreme courage to someday be able to overcome what happened to me, that forever altered the course of my life.

But, I still had no idea exactly what it was that I was trying to overcome, and that is why I realized in late 2017 that gaslighting abuse is what I have been experiencing, in different forms, from my family for decades. I never had a name for it prior to that point in time, despite having a thorough understanding of it. I had already taken many steps through the years though, especially in recent years, to find the courage necessary to successfully overcome the decades of psychological torture that my parents had inflicted upon me. The one constant for me, all through the years, has been that I am keenly aware of many things, most of which are not obvious to most people. It was that which allowed me to never give up hope, because despite lacking a name for what I have been experiencing for most of my life, I always understood myself, and my family, correctly. Of that, I have always been certain.

I knew that I would need to find the courage within myself to stand against what my parents continued to inflict upon me into my adulthood. By the time that I eventually moved out of their home, what had begun as child abuse and neglect years earlier had become a bizarre series of events that my parents seemingly were both aware of, and intentionally perpetrating, to undermine my future. To them, it all seemed perfectly normal, and even recently, after my father passed away in 2017, my mother has continued to maintain that what she and my father had done to me was necessary. I’m only now more aware that they have believed all along, that they were acting in my best interest, despite the horror that they both inflicted upon me. I now better understand that both my parents had effectively been brainwashed, for a lack of a better term, into what they did to me, by my paternal grandmother mostly, along with two of my father’s siblings. Trying to help my mother to recognize what happened to her, however, now that my father is no longer with us, and now that I understand what happened to my entire family, has remained a daunting task though. She’s had some moments of clarity, since he passed away, but they have been fleeting.

I am still left to deal with many consequences of what my parents had initiated many decades ago, however. By the time I was seven years old, they had become so convinced that there was something abnormal about me that constituted a severe mental disability of some kind, that they began routinely calling my mental state into question. From my perspective, it was maddening to keep struggling to do what I knew was right, while having every effort I made to do so undermined in some way. By the time I graduated from high school, they had already successfully impacted my future. While other students were beginning their adult lives, I was trapped in the same patterns of abuse that I had been experiencing for many years already, and was being left more dependent upon my family, as I wanted to embark on my own life.

But trying to convince me that I had been somehow born with a debilitating mental condition wasn’t the extent of the damage that they were inflicting upon me, as they were also successfully convincing other people, outside the family, that I was causing problems for the family. My successful resistance to the gaslighting abuse that I was still experiencing with my parents, to others who were not aware of what was really occurring within my home, apparently seemed like signs and indicators that something indeed was seriously wrong with me. That only strengthened the resolve of my parents, to undermine my entire life, and by the time that I graduated high school, they were openly honest about their intentions toward me, at least until they began to deny that, as well, to others.

I had a choice to make, as I became older, and entered adulthood. I could either give in to what they demanded of me for my life, and give up on my own future, or I would face even more consequences. For me, the choice was easy to make. But I knew that I would need to find the strength and courage to overcome not only what my family had inflicted upon me directly, but also, to overcome what so many other people had been convinced of by my family through the years. My many efforts to escape the cycle of their continually denying the abuse, neglect, extreme psychological torture, and eventually, repeated physical assaults, that they have been inflicting upon me for decades - to try to successfully resist the gaslighting abuse – has only led others to mistakenly believe that I was indeed born with some type of mental disorder, when that was not the case at all.

Mentally WILLED is the true story of heartbreak, hope, and courage that has led me to this point in my life. For all that my family initiated that forever altered the course of my life, and despite all that has been inflicted upon me through the years, I have never lost sight of what I know to be true about myself, that fortunately, at least some others were able to see in me, along the way. But it is also a story that tells us about ourselves, of things such as overcoming adversity in all its forms, and of the possibilities we all share, for sustaining our collective hope for a better future. Because, when we are Mentally WILLED, there is a way …