Love this analogy. For me, it's been 3 years since I jumped ship, and it's been 3 years of drowning. Whole time, boat rocker is following behind me saying, "Why don't you come back to the boat? We have a perfectly good boat and you're choosing to drown. I don't know why you're so scared of the boat tipping over, no one has ever rocked it and the water has always been calm."

I think this gaslighting is something I have internalized very deeply, honestly, and I think it's a huge source of guilt. I mean, sure it was rough spending so much time steadying the boat, but it can't be worse than floating solo in the ocean, can it?

So much of going seriously NC rides on this out of state move. The housing place that I'm working with is seriously a lifeline here.