I was just on the receiving end of the most surprising gaslighting I’ve experienced in my life. In part because of what I wrote yesterday, I was accused of turning everyone into demons, and the concerns I’ve articulated about various experiences I’ve had in poetry were described as my finding new demons every month.

That’s a particularly painful accusation because it not only discounts my experiences in poetry, up to and including sexual assault, it’s also sanist in that the implication is that I don’t have clear seeing or clear perceiving. That I am not sane.

When I was delusional in 2023, I literally thought I was evil or even the devil, something I’ve written about here and in numerous poems. The poet making his accusation today knows about that delusion and how terrifying it was. To call up the word demon the way he did, to resort to making me afraid I can’t trust my own perceptions—well, it doesn’t surprise me. I thought someone would have that reaction to my writing. I just didn’t think it would be this person, this poet, who I considered a dear friend.

I am as unsettled as I’ve been in a long time. I am so tired of folks doing the greatest amount of harm possible when they disagree with someone else. It happens all the time on social media, but this is different because it’s not an interaction with a stranger on a comment thread. The call came from inside the house. And it wasn’t a calling in or a clarifying. It was needless, pinpointed weaponization of communication to do the most harm possible.

This is a story I’ve known since childhood. Long before I had lived experience with mental health, I was called crazy anytime I talked about what I saw and what I experienced. Abuse. Assault. Bullying. CSA. Trafficking. The R word.

I don’t see demons. I don’t have to. I see humans under their gloss, their resumes, their titles, their connections, their reputations. I’m going to keep talking about what matters because it matters and because I learned decades ago that silence never helps me or anyone else. Not ever.