#self-gaslighting

Also on AO3 [600 words] @whumptober - day 18: “I tend to deflect when I’m feeling threatened.”, day 30: "not much longer…" @clonefandomevents - Coruscant Guard Bingo: masquerade

The Coruscant Guard works on a need-to-know basis, and all too often, Commander Fox needs to not-know. or Five times Commander Fox carefully doesn’t see, and one time he reports what he sees.

1.

There’s something suspicious going on in the Guard. No there isn’t, there can’t be.

Troopers are whispering in corners, officers are meeting behind closed doors, both groups falling silent as soon as he approaches. If he needs to know, they’d tell him. He knows why they don’t. But he’s a Marshal Commander, he doesn’t have time to keep up with whatever petty shenanigans his Guards are scheming. As long as it doesn’t affect their performance outside the barracks he’ll leave it to his deputies to manage the fallout, that’s what they’re for. Keeping track of the Senators is bad enough.

“Why the fuck do you care so much?” Whumpee screams from the cupboard they often hide in. At least the four boards around them help. Nobody can look in and catch them in this mortifying state.

Whumpee can hear Caretaker closing the room’s door behind him. They don’t have to see Caretaker’s face, but hearing his footsteps come close, his soothing voice… it was just—

“I lied,” they spit. “I lied.”

A few thumps as Caretaker sits down on the other side. “What do you mean?”

Whumpee buries their head into their arms, folding in on themselves. Shame makes them shudder. It must be what, their second tantrum this week? Whumpee really was incapable of keeping it together. Because they’re spoiled. And take things for granted.

“Whumper didn’t…” Whumpee sniffs. “Whumper didn’t do those horrible things to me. He didn’t go that far. Only— only a little,” they aren’t sure if they’re making any fucking sense.

But does it even matter?

Caretaker would realize how Whumpee was exploiting his kindness all this time. They don’t need blankets and hugs. They’ve lived without it before Whumper abducted them. Whumpee was just here to wring everything out of Caretaker’s bleeding heart.

“I lied.” Whumpee’s voice catches, sound so thin Caretaker must have strained to catch it.

A few moments pass. Whumpee tries their best not to start crying. The block in their heart doesn’t matter. They’re not the fucking victim.

“Whumpee,” Caretaker says. An exhale. “If you felt the need to lie to be comforted, then are you actually okay?”

So this is something that's been haunting me, but when I was a kid, I had the pleasure(?) of going out to the Cactus Club restaurant while visiting my cousin in Edmonton. I remember it being kind of ostentatious and wacky or whatever, but the thing that always fascinated me was that people were shucking peanuts and throwing their shells on the floor, like, everywhere. You'd shuffle through the peanut shells on your way to the bathroom and try to avoid slipping on the oily floors.

Now I have the worst memory of anyone I know, so over time this has just become one of those memories where you're not sure if it was real or if it was just a confabulation, because a couple of years ago I went to the Cactus Club again... but it was post-makeover/rebranding, as it had a sleek and sexy and super forgettable atmosphere; a cocktail bar with no defining features. It was like no trace of its former glory(?) remained.

It felt kind of weird to say it, but I had to acknowledge the peanuts somehow right?

The look on my friend's face said everything when I tried to explain that this place used to have hundreds of peanut shells just littering the floor and piling up in corners.

"You know that people are allergic to peanuts right?" She said, a little concerned and kind of weirded out.

It was a very good point, and I couldn't argue that it would generally be a bad idea to open a restaurant on the novelty of salty bar food that can almost certainly cause sudden death in a pretty significant portion of the population. Even my brother is deathly allergic to peanuts.

I kind of laughed it off while still feeling like I COULDN'T have imagined the peanuts, after all, how could my brain have conjured up something that seems so strange to me?

There was something about that look she gave me though, like I had said something so absurd that it couldn't have been rooted in reality, that I just closed the book on the concept, let it go and have regarded it as something that just makes me mildly uncomfortable to think about ever since...

...Until tonight.

I dont know why it took me so many years of discomfort and self-gaslighting to get up the will to Google it, but I guess it's totally a thing.

Like, not even uncommon in some areas. This idea that had mystified me for years was just common bar practice, especially in the 90s, until a bunch of slipping lawsuits started cropping up and people didn't feel like basking in garbage as much anymore.

Specifically why it is still so devestatingly effective, even though I have been aware of and identifying it for years now. The self-gaslighting beliefs are all things I have believed in the past, especially as a child. So any time I have a memory from a time I held this belief, it's (land)mined with all these little invalidating self-beliefs just waiting to trigger an emotional flashback.