Gas Lighting

Gas lighting is a slow systematic process of crushing the very essence of a person to the extent that he starts believing that he is useless and starts questioning his self -worth and intelligence at every step he takes. In a relationship it always happens under the garb of 'trying to be helpful'. The dominating partner begins by finding faults, very trivial in the beginning and as years progress this fault finding spree takes on seismic proportions. One day, you can't take it any more. It's you or the door. Because imprisonment doesn't necessarily mean iron bars. It could be the prison of your mind and you can only be free when you decide to be free. So I am a 'shallow' person with no depth. I don't have any inclination to be a part of the family. I am selfish, self-centred, narcissistic....When you've been gas lit, these words play in your head. A person who cannot even appreciate that all your life you've been a homebody, keeping things in order and pursuing things that are close to your heart- poetry or painting for instance, will never understand who you are. Creative people have creative minds. Their attention span is as strong as the next thing that catches the beauty of their inner eye. It is at this time that they need to pick up their pen or their paintbrush. The world can wait. Non-creative people who live their lives with a mechanical mind and mathematical precision can never understand the cataclysmic effect of curbing an artist's creativity. It is equivalent to cold blooded murder! The day an artist is prevented from doing what his heart desires, he begins to wither and dies a slow death inside. The light of this world is love, music, color, poetry, literature and all kinds of beautiful things that a human heart has the power to create. Rest all is fluff. 
Are you choking? Are you suffocating? Are you finding it difficult to breathe? You have been gas lit, slowly, certainly. Let no amount of gas lighting set your heart on fire.  Your heart is a precious flower, not an ember simmering with rage. Be free. Write your poetry.
~Jaspreet Mann, Gas Lighting
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