It’s been said before, but I really despise how “gaslighting” has changed from referring to a specific domestic abuse tactic to meaning “lying but more sensationally”
it’s also not “this person disagrees with me”
Friendly reminder that gaslighting isn’t just lying or telling a big
lie. It is purposely lying or misconstruing events to make the other
person doubt their own judgement, perception or sanity like what
happened in the play Gas Light, where the term came from.
It
is when your confidence in your mind starts to go from ‘I have a good
memory/idea of what I know’ to ‘Did that happen? Am I making things up? I
don’t remember doing that but what if I did?’ It is the feeling that
you MUST have a bad memory/be making things up/forgetting things/really
be the villain when someone tells you something, even when you remember
things distinctly differently.
People can tell small lies like ‘I
don’t remember’ and big lies like ‘I paid the bills’ and ridiculous lies
like ‘One time I met Taylor Swift in a bar and she told me I had the
face of an angel and the next day I was offered a modeling gig, THE NEXT
DAY’ without it being gaslighting because they’re not trying to change
your perception of yourself or what you remember or make you doubt
yourself.
Anyone who spends decent amount of time in Appalachia knows the Not Deer. If you’ve gone on the Blue Ridge Parkway at night, you’ve probably seen him.
Now: keep in mind if you don’t live in an area with a lot of deer, deer are freaky bastards on their own. They’re really big, extremely agile, move surprisingly quietly, and are extremely durable. It’s not unheard of for someone to hit a deer and total their car. Once I heard a story of a man who hit a deer on accident and decided to take it home and least get some good meat out of a bad situation. On the drive home the deer woke up and absolutely shredded the inside of this man’s trunk. They’re very cute but you definitely don’t want to mess with one. Just keep that relationship in the back of your mind.
Anyway, the Not Deer is more or less what I’d call a folk cryptid. Everybody has their story about it. They’re all somewhat similar. You’re in a car at night, in a rural, heavily wooded area, and probably a bit lost. It’s not wildly uncommon to see a opossum crossing the road, see blips of little animals with your headlights. You see a deer. So you/your friends go “Oh! Deer!” and slow down in case it leaps in front of you.
Then you see it more clearly. There’s just something wrong about it. There’s something about its eyes. You feel your stomach get heavy like a rock, the hair on your neck raise. You sense intelligence that you shouldn’t. It doesn’t move like a deer, it moves like a… oh god, what is that thing? Whatever that thing is, it’s not a deer and we need to leave. You hit the gas and get the hell out of there.
A group of my friends got lost on the Parkway once and reemerged with a chilling story. They aren’t the kind of folks to lie or over exaggerate. Among other freaky stuff that happened, the driver claimed she saw a deer in the road. Then she noticed the deer was on two legs.
wow so i think it’s been like two years (????) since i’ve been on here, just giving a heads up in case i start posting again that i was misdiagnosed w/bpd, i’m actually autistic, i have ehlers danlos syndrome instead of fibro and i currently stan the mcelboys and gong yoo. i’m tired of the soul-crushing zucc and want to mindlessly scroll through things i actually like again before i start my master’s in a month
