They leave the "gaslight" on.

My mind is my conundrum, a maze which perhaps will never have an exit. It has different levels of chaos, as you get higher, everything else seems to matter less. As the levels get heightened, so do my thoughts. These thoughts do not work alone. Anxiety, stress and just havoc contribute as a team I have not forged. These things can make you believe things about yourself that aren't remotely true. It can cloud your judgement, but so can people. Drugs or aggressive movies are said to influence the mind the most. I think people do, people are lethal. Sucks we all don't come with a thirty second trailer, and that's probably the enigma; finding out. Deception, betrayal, hurt. They all dim the light of our brains, it's us who need to rekindle it. But most of all, gaslighting. What you know to be true; your morals; your beliefs; who you are all gets questioned by a few words. Saying things like "you're overreacting" or making someone believe they're delusional and altering their reality is gaslighting. Questioning your own reality is mundane, most days I believe everything is a simulation and everything is imagined, and if it is, this life is the greatest thing I could've imagine. But making someone question their own reality really just questions who you are. Undermining a persons emotions and feelings is a way to deny their reality, continuous denial of how a person feels about a situation is just as effective as saying their perceptions are wrong. It questions their sanity, driving them at the brink of insanity. Nothing is ever irreparably broken. The brink is slippery, not shattered. If you are being gaslighted, firstly, be compassionate to yourself. You are living history, these are your stories, no one can tell you otherwise. Secondly, sort out truth from distortion. Look for signs of repeated denial, set your truth free and the truth will set you free. And lastly, give yourself the okay to give something up, part of what makes it so mortifyingly painful to leave a gaslight relationship is that the gaslighter may be the one person you have committed to above everyone else. Forgive yourself, you were naive. Your past is a place that isn't shunned, but also not often visited, and if you visit it, visit it with hope and kindness. Visit it with gratitude. You will never be as naive as you were, and for that, you can thank yourself.