Real Talk: The Quiet Cost of Being Ghosted, Gaslit & Bullied

Because sometimes the hardest part isn’t what was done – it’s how long you stayed quiet about it.

There’s a certain kind of silence that settles in when you’ve been ghosted, gaslit or bullied long enough. It’s not peace. It’s survival.

You start second-guessing everything – your memory, your tone, your right to take up space. When someone constantly reworks reality to suit themselves and leaves you standing there with your truth unraveling in your hands like a dropped stitch, it does something to your nervous system. It teaches you to apologize for things you didn’t do, explain things no one’s even asked about and smile while quietly shrinking.

Being ghosted isn’t just being ignored, it’s being erased. It’s the silent treatment dressed up as ‘boundaries’ when in truth, it’s control. It’s them deciding they don’t have to deal with the consequences of how they treated you, so they vanish – leaving you tangled up in the debris.

Being gaslit isn’t just manipulation, it’s mental burglary. They steal your version of events and sell it back to you warped. ‘That never happened’. ‘You’re too sensitive’. ‘You’re imagining things’.

It’s abuse with a side of charm and a patronizing smirk.

And bullying? That one starts in school but follows you into adulthood, wearing better shoes and a fake smile. It hides behind inheritance disputes, group chats and family events. It sounds like ‘I was only joking’ or ‘you’re overreacting’ or ‘that’s just how they are’.

But here’s the thing: every time I write it down, every time I speak it out loud, that fog clears a little more.

Because you are not crazy and you were never the problem.

The real problem is the culture that lets charm override cruelty. That lets ‘keeping the peace’ come at the cost of your peace. That praises people for being ‘nice’ while ignoring the wreckage they leave behind in private.

So this one’s for anyone who’s been made to feel like they’re too much, too loud, too emotional, too difficult – when all they were trying to do was hold the line on their own worth.

Write it down. Speak it out. Don’t let the ghostwriters of your life have the final say.

Lesson of the Day:

Silence isn’t always peace – sometimes it’s the bruise left by someone else’s power play. Trust the voice that’s trying to come back to life inside you.