The Art of Finding Love

Chapter One

GAS-LIGHTING:  to manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity. -definition provided my Merriam-Webster

Welcome Guys! Glad you took the time to check this one out!

Disclaimer: There could be potential trigger warnings for those who have undergone psychologic stress and manipulation by another person. 

Gaslighting is a serious problem and the amount of emotional and mental turmoil the victim endures can effect someone's life in more ways than one. It is also considered a form of domestic abuse. 

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Get help, work through it, and realize that you will once again feel like yourself someday. All things take time. 

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Aspen swiped left quicker than she could even blink. The app she frequented was slow to respond to her quick touch. Not one guy in the Portland, Oregon area seemed to fit her long list of criteria.  Aspen's friends said she was too picky, some said she wasn't picky enough. At nineteen years old, and already moving up in her early started field-she felt she had a right to  be picky when choosing someone who would fill the void in her heart. 

Aspen had never felt love. 

That wasn't exactly true-though. She had many people in her life that loved her and told her regularly. Those she held close to her heart were there for her through thick and thin. But what Aspen was craving, so wholly in her chest that it was nearly impossible to breathe- was romantic love.

She wanted to go to sleep at night held by someone who loved her every bit as much as she loved them. Aspen was good at loving people-so good; she felt she had more to give. Every day she would daydream about what it was like to have someone to talk to at the end of the day. She wondered what it would be like to go home to them and receive the affection she so desperately wanted. What she wanted, was a soul mate. Sadly, aside from a couple men she went out with regularly, she was lacking in the soul mate department.

"What'cha doing?" Brittany, her coworker, leaned over the divider between their desks. Brittany had been the one to suggest Aspen try out the app in the first place. 

She wondered if she should blame Brittany for her lack of potential fish in the big blue ocean that was the Pacific Northwest. 'It's not her fault' she thought, 'She's not a man, after all'.

"The same thing I was doing when you asked me ten minutes ago. I'm almost out of swipes." Aspen frowned at her smartphone. Could she blame technology? Maybe not. 

Brittany sighed and set down her own phone. Brittany and Aspen worked at a Credit Union as tellers in an upscale town, called Lake Oswego. It was small, and the average salary exceeded Aspen's measly thirteen-fifty an hour. The plus side, was that during the day- hardly anyone ever came in. They frequently opted for the drive-up window, or wished to avoid going inside the bank at all; by visiting the automated teller machine. 

Aspen suspected that if Skynet was real; the smartest thing to do was show itself in the form of ATMs. The theory was brilliant, actually, or so she thought. 

During the slow hours, the team and herself would do tasks around the branch. When those tasks were done, there was little to do except for help customers who wandered in-or play on their phones. 

"Julio messaged me back, he said I was beautiful and wants to go out this weekend. I'm still kind of hung up on Jake though." Brittany was- in fact- very beautiful. She had brilliant baby blue eyes and jet black hair, she was also very tan-yet her ethnicity was Caucasian. She was small; around five-one, and had a very voluptuous-yet thin figure. Guys tended to drool over her, and Aspen really could hardly blame them.