** The first two books in my six part dystopian series have officially made their way out into the world! Check them out!
For the sake of blogging and self-exploration and contemplation, I’ve been slowly making my way through answering questions from this list.
Today’s question : What are three moral rules you will never break?
1. If someone trusts you with something vulnerable and personal about themselves, NEVER use that against them no matter what happens between the two of you. Don’t exploit the details of their personal life, don’t run to their “enemies” with the “juicy details”, and don’t ever hold those things over someone’s head. That is one of the sickest forms of betrayal no matter what your relationship is or was with someone.
2. NEVER GASLIGHT SOMEONE. People are going to but heads, not get along, and not always like one another for countless reasons, that’s how life is. But what I can’t STAND is when people decide they don’t like someone, so they either twist someone’s words or behavior to try to justify their dislike or mistreatment of someone, OR they bait them into reacting, and then point at their reaction and again, use that to justify their dislike. Gaslighting is frankly just a sign that you an asshole. If you dislike someone and you have a valid reason, you wouldn’t need to gaslight in the first place. Sometimes we don’t even know why we dislike someone, they just rub us the wrong way. Your like or dislike of someone doesn’t give you the right to treat them poorly. Avoid them, ignore them, but I will never gaslight. I’ve been a victim of it, and it’s really an awful form of manipulation because not only are you treating them poorly, but you’re intentionally rallying others to do the same. Pretty disgusting.
3. “When they go low, you go high.” Michelle Obama; classy, role model, tells it like it is. It’s not an easy thing to do, and I admit in the past I’ve let people bait me into reacting (so I guess I can’t say I’ve never done it, per the question asked) but I can say that there are levels in which people have treated me with a shocking amount of cruelty and disrespect that I have never been willing to stoop to in response.
Last night I was going through documents on my home computer, organizing and deleting, and I came across an informal C and D I had to write to someone after they spent literally years gas lighting me, attacking me, sabotaging me, and it went so far that this person even tried to screw with my family. The level of disgust and infuriation I felt was great, but I waited until I was calmer to write the letter because I wanted to be clear, precise, and put an honest end to that absurd crap once and for all. I read it over again, and looking back on it two years later, I felt very proud of myself for how I handled that situation, and it actually did shut her up for good. (As far as I know, at least.) I never lowered myself to her level, and I came out the bigger, and better person with a clean morale conscience. Ever since then, I’ve handled other situations the same way and it’s proven to be a good thing. I am by no means a perfect person, but I won’t treat people as low as they’ve treated me. At the end of the day, that’s really what all of this ads up to. If you’re going to treat me poorly, the karmic consequences are all on you.
Kell Frillman - Author 