- What do you think I am hesitant to tell you?
- Let me just process that.
Hesitant to tell me that...
as your feelings ascended for Nate
that you might have loved me a little bit less
in a romantic context, and you know,
we have time together.
But it's asking yourself the question,
"Where are we now?", not, "Where have we been?"
Almost like what are you providing for me now?
What makes our relationship special now?
And, I feel like, as this, sort of,
relationship sort of got foggy,
it was hard to come up with answers to that question.
And, for someone that you love in a romantic context
for as long as we were together,
I feel like that's something that's not the easiest thing
to be just be forthcoming and say that.
Be like, oh yeah, we just stopped growing,
where we're not taking those leaps anymore
to surprise, excite, and doing the little things
to kinda like, which led us to this spark,
this relationship, in the first place.
I felt stagnant and a little bit complacent.
I think on my end anyway.
What about you?
- What do I think you were hesitant to tell me?
I think everyone is hesitant to tell me how mean I am,
because I'm mean, or I can be mean.
And so, if somebody's mean,
or someone doesn't receive feedback well,
you're not gonna give them feedback.
So I think that's something that you were hesitant
to tell me about.
Thinking about, and also, you know,
I also tend to overanaly--overemphasize
how negative I can be, so I often think my relationships
are in more negative space than they could exist in.
But I feel like you didn't often tell me
when you were unhappy.
Yeah.
And so, I was either like, it's either you're lying
'cause there's no way that you're not unhappy at all,
or, but that's my rationale.
- I think we talked about this, it just it felt like,
limited amounts of space 'cause you had so much going on,
and I think a lot of the focus sometimes
was just making sure that you were okay.
That, I didn't really feel like I had room.
Makes me like, you used to raise your voice,
and I'd be like, "Oh my God, I don't even wanna talk."
Because like conversation to conversation,
I feel like there's full capabilities
for people that have conversation and disagreements
and stay at a certain tone level.
You start yelling, then it's like,
I almost felt like one of those little kids
that was in trouble.
Even though we were tryin' to have a conversation,
you start yellin' and I'm like, I'm done.
Or, I don't want to talk about it
because this is bringin' in all these different feelin's,
and I just wanted conversation to be like this.
So...
What's something I don't realize
about how the dissolution of our relationship affected you?
So, what's something I don't realize
about how the dissolution of our relationship affected you?
- I think we probably got a taste of it,
I'm probably gonna cry again.
I think, I don't know if you realize
how much that affected my self-image,
'cause obviously, post-graduation I moved to Miami, right.
I'm living with my best friend, I'm dating the person
that I was like dating on the side,
that is now my more primary partner.
It's like oh she's living her best life.
I dyed my hair blonde, I got a tongue ring,
and like, it was cute.
But, that's like, right.
It was cute on the, right.
It was cute for the outside,
but how I was feeling on the inside,
I felt treacherous for a long time.
I felt like, it was weird to start to figure out
who I was without you, after the fact.
But also to realize, oh wait, I'm a pretty--
- -I don't want to say disgusting 'cause that's very judgey,
like savage person, I can low-key be pretty savage.
And, I feel like that's something that I've always known
that I'm very direct, I'm very blunt.
And I feel like I've told you before I've debated
if I was evil or not, this is something that you know.
But I felt like in those moments,
I've really had to--it really affected me a lot,
and how evil I felt that I was.
Or like, my ability to hurt people felt at a all-time high.
Because I had hurt you so much,
but then the thing what got me messed up was thinking,
"Do I like to hurt people?
"Do I want to hurt people?"
Because it seems like I'm really good at it.
Thinking about how our relationship dissolved,
it entirely changed the way the entire relationship
was remembered to me.
It changed how I thought you remembered things.
It changed how I thought you remembered me.
It slowly altered our memories, or my memories of us.
It made me feel that I wasn't allowed to remember us,
so I wasn't allowed to reach out to your friends or family.
I wasn't really even sure what our friends thought of us,
our mutual friends, like even ____ & ____ who were even my friends.
But I wasn't sure if they liked me.
I withdrew a lot and I lost a lot
of my friends through that.
So, it was a self choice because people were still there,
I still talked to ____ & ____ I don't think that anybody actually
ever judged me about it.
But everybody has a judgment about it.
They have what they think happened,
or just a judgment is simply an opinion
and everybody has an opinion about something.
So, yeah I think I had to not care,
I had to push myself to not care about people's opinion
so that I could get through it.
So it's interesting 'cause I think the dissolution
of our relationship was both something
that was so detrimental to my self-confidence
that I was starting to build,
but it's also exactly why I am where I am right now.
I think, I think that's the other more beautiful part of it.
It helped me a lot to just, like,
as long as I'm clear with my partner,
and as long as we have our solid communication
and our friendship, things are okay.
So, it's like a double-sided realization
- What I want you to never forget
is the amount of light that you have amidst the darkness
that you've been through.
And I think it's taking ownership of that past
and being like, I'm not gonna allow this to defeat me.
Imma allow it to,
bring me on a platform to share my story,
share my narrative, because there's somebody out there
that, not the exact story, but they need you.
And, I think it's an important cleansing for yourself,
and healing for yourself, to be able to, sort of,
help and inspire others.
And you do that sometimes in which you low-key sleep
on yourself.
But I've seen so much growth from you,
in terms of just finding the light within yourself,
holding yourself accountable, and being like,
I can do this.
'Cause you are a gifted one.
You found the discipline and the way,
as hard as that was, to make it through.
And it's like the hardest thing
that you've ever been through in your life.
You find a way to still be here today.
The sexual assault, the things like that,
that you've endured,
you're still here smiling, and now hopeful
for your own future, but for the world as a whole.
And, you changed my life, so much.
People are like, "As a man, how do you talk
"about your feelings like that?"
I'm like, "Gari, fucking Gari".
And I felt like interrogation table time,
but I've never had somebody
who was ever gonna talk about this,
the way that you did it though.
At times I would suggest that you bring a lighter approach
to it, but you brought out the desired results
as hard as the process of going about it was.
So, yeah.
- Thank you.
- And I love you Gari.
- I love you.
- Hey guys, this is Ashaka from The Skin Deep,
we're constantly releasing new conversations
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Thank you.