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[quote=Anonymous]The reason I am obsessed with this story is that something kind of similar happened to me (different kind of community, different art form, and I have never done anything as amazing as donating a kidney to a total stranger, so not exactly the same, but similar) and in the end I had to let it go for the sake of my own mental health. I just walked away, shut down my Facebook account, and stopped talking to or interacting it with anyone involved in that community. It was hard but I had the support of a decent therapist and my husband and other friends, and in the end I think it saved me because like Dorland I had also started self harming. Plus being gaslit to that degree doesn't just make you feel crazy. When people you trust gaslight you long enough and seriously enough, I think it actually does make you lose your grasp on reality a bit. I reached a point where I just felt incapable of evaluating if someone was being genuine, if they actually liked me, or if I could trust them. I did not feel I could trust my instincts because for years these people had smiled at me and acted supportive and kind when they were anything but, and I had lost my touchstones for what a genuine person looked like, or what a real friendship felt like.

I am much better now but I lost my relationship to a artistic endeavor in which I had invested years of my life and considerable amounts of training (including both time and money). It was very costly. I also don't feel like I'll ever be 100% over what happened. I still struggle to trust people and keep everyone, including my spouse, my friends, and my therapist, at arms length. I have this protective shell now that no one can crack because I am afraid of what would happen if I did. There are other psychological issues as well. My experience, like Dawn's, involved an incident of sexual harassment that still impacts my ability to enjoy sex, for instance. I sometimes hit an unexpected trigger (like, I don't know, a 5000 word story in the NYT Mag about a remarkable similar story) that really shakes me and makes it hard to work or function as a mom or in my social life. I am incredibly tough and have ways to cope with all of this but I will never forgive those people for doing this, for forcing me to have to be this tough.

Also, it's really hard to make art when you have your trust and vulnerability exploited this way. Being an artist requires vulnerability. Losing that is brutal.

So I'm obsessed because I've been through this, but also because I admire that Dawn has not given up. And I hope she doesn't. I hope her book comes out, but more than that, I hope she finds a way to make something out of this specific experience. I am rooting for her because doing so is a way of also rooting for myself.

Also, people on this website are often really dismissive of the idea that adults can behave this way (the "mean girl" behavior as some describe it), and it is a relief to have a very clear example that yes, of course they do! People can be unbelievably cruel in the weirdest, smallest, pettiest ways. Even people you admire, even people who seem nice otherwise. I feel like this story demonstrates the degree to which those of us who have had experiences like this have been gaslit for years, not just by the people who harmed us but by others who simply didn't believe that kind of harm was possible.[/quote]

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