The table turned.

I believe that everybody has this moment, at least once, when you care so much about the people whom you highly cherished and that you are willing to change to accommodate to them. It has always been my habit to ensure people around me are doing well and would try my best to help them to the best of my ability.

However, the table turned when the constant negativity have impacted me so much that it changed me to someone else. I began to quarrel with someone who was so closed to me over trivial matters and eventually I lost this someone whom I called a true friend. I continued to stay on with the negative influence for a period of time when I started realising that I became a victim of gaslighter.

It was a mental torture when things I had done were not appreciated, the thoughts and care I gave were not reciprocal and that I was taken granted for. Maybe, we were just not good at expressing ourselves? I begun to blame myself for the things that went wrong and acted upon my self-denial to change to be better to my gaslighter. It was self-abuse at that moment since you have no one else to confide to as the people around at that point could not entirely empathize the problem and neither could you.

When I decided to escape from everything, I had changed. I gave up caring and kept to myself for fear that I would get hurt once again. Eventually, we become drifted apart and I am no longer trapped in the misery of mental abuse, though sometimes the memory still haunts me at night. The independence it taught me was the best take-home lesson. It is good to be willing to change to accommodate to the people around you as I begin to accept that it is in my core and that is something that made me different.

Ultimately, I still believe in “changing for the better to help you grow as a person” but don’t ever change for the wrong reasons. I may have lost a true friend, but I am determined to make up to get that friend back.

People say: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I’d say: "If you want to have fun, go as a team. But if you want to go further, acceptance and positivity is the key.”