Episode 9 : Overcoming the Cycle of Abuse

The host, Femi the Divine, discusses how to identify and overcome abuse in relationships as well as tips to move onwards and upwards. 

Topics Discussed - inner healing, healing work, therapy, psychotherapy, setting healthy boundaries, trying new things, loneliness, moving on, starting over, choosing yourself, self love, self worth, doing the work, personal transformation, self development, self improvement, self help, personal development, abuse, abusive relationships, overcoming abuse, toxic relationships, gaslighting, narcissists, narcissism, domestic violence, stalking, bullying, cyberbullying, surviving, narcissistic personality disorder, etc. 

Contact info - Femi the Divine

IG @divinehealingpodcast
www.thedivinehealingpodcast.com
femithedivine@gmail.com

Contact info - Femi the Divine

 IG @divinehealingpodcast

 www.thedivinehealingpodcast.com

 femithedivine@gmail.com

Transcript

0:31

Welcome to the divine healing podcast. I am your host, Femi, the divine and welcome. Welcome. Welcome back to the show. So we are now on episode number nine. Today's topic is kinda heavy. I'll be honest with you. It's something that was on my list of things to talk about. When I decided to start this podcast, I had a whole list of things that I wrote down, but. I didn't necessarily have an order in which I wanted to talk about things. And some weeks I may feel like, okay, I want to talk about this, experiments me to talk about something else. This week's topic is going to be abuse, how to end the cycle, how to move on, how to heal, how to move onwards and upwards. But before we get into that, I want to just say again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has been listening everywhere, who has reached out to me with feedback, you are much appreciated, and where's my heart to know that people are listening and they are finding the information that I'm sharing helpful. Because that was really the goal here. Spirit nudge me to start this podcast. As I have explained and past episodes, this was a labor of love for me. You really need, you're sharing my experiences in the hopes that it will help someone else along their journey. Because when I started out on this path unknowingly it was difficult, you know, just trying to find my way. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback, who has listened, who has sent me a message directly saying that they're enjoying the podcast. If you have shared it online, if you have shared it with. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please leave a review on Spotify or on iTunes as that helps with visibility with the show. Also, if there's any topics that you all may want to hear about, shoot me a message and let me know. And if you have any questions, I'm going to be doing a Q and a. Episode soon. So gathering questions for that. So again, thank you. And now we can get into today's topic, which is abuse. Abuse is something taboo, something we don't really discuss openly. And I think part of that has to do with the shame surrounding it. You know, a lot of times, if you find yourself in that particular situation, you feel like, oh my God, I never thought this would happen. You know, how did I end up here? How did I let this happen? If you even recognize that that was what was happening I'm going to be speaking specifically. How about abuse as it relates to the context of a romantic situation is that was my situation. As I expressed to you all in past episodes, I was in a long-term relationship and married for an extended period of time. And that came to a halt about two years ago. But the last few years of that were very Rocky because of some other things that were happening. And I have to be honest with you, a lot of the things that I did not pick up. Things change gradually. There are certain behaviors I began to see and before I knew it, it had snowball out of control. And I didn't even realize that that was the situation that I was in until I was in therapy. And I was talking to a therapist about it, or, you know, how you explain your situation to somebody else? And they're like, oh my God. And you're like, oh, damn, I didn't realize it was that bad until you get somebody else's reaction. Abuse specifically by definition is generally. To treat a person with cruelty or violence, especially repeatedly, and to go deeper than that and attempt to use highly charged emotions to control the actions of another by undercutting their sense of self competence and mental health. I think that for most of us, when we hear that we're abuse, we think about like domestic violence. We think about somebody physically hitting or pushing or, you know, attacking someone, or we may think of verbally. As it relates to name calling and yelling and, you know, putting somebody down, but abuse can be so many more things. They just, those two things, you know, we may think about sexual assault may think about rape. But then that can be cast much wider than that. And I think that, especially those of us who are millennials, I'm a millennial on the older end of the spectrum. We are starting to discuss a lot of things that were previously considered taboo. We are going to therapy where you're speaking openly about a lot of the things that we, that are happening to us. We are not tolerating toxic situations in relationships, whether it be friends, family, romantic partners, jobs, any of those types of situations. We are. Speaking up for ourselves and we are taking care of ourselves and we are doing all of this radical self care and healing work. Along with that comes enlightenment. We're more likely to recognize some of these things as abuse and manipulation. A lot of people are talking about narcissists and narcissism. Gaslighting manipulation. All of these things they've become quite buzzwords here lately. I seen narcissist that's where pop-up all my Instagram timeline all the time. There are accounts that talk about, you know, dealing with narcissistic abuse. Well, I don't think that everybody is a narcissist every time you're in a toxic relationship, a situation with somebody there in narcissist, they could be, but just keep in mind. Narcissism is a personality disorder and there is like a formal diagnosis for that. Does that mean that everybody's in there? Maybe not, but as that means that they may have narcissistic personality traits, possibly of course they could. Same goes for gaslighting. I don't think every particular situation that we assign that Monica to is necessarily gas lighting, but I can tell you one thing, gas light makes you think you're crazy as hell. It is ice confusion. If it's that definition or not, you know, with something made you. All uncomfortable. And sometimes that's really all it takes for you to feel like, you know what? This is not right. I don't appreciate this, not tolerating this, and I'm going to move on. It took me some time to gather my thoughts about this topic. I knew it was something I wanted to talk about and the past week or so, it's just been continuously popping up on my radar. You know, where there is people sharing. Oh, I want to call it a mean, but maybe like those little infographics about. Conversations that I'm seeing on timelines or in groups. And then finally, literally dreaming and hearing myself discussing this topic on the podcast. I realized it was finally time. I was nervous about revealing myself in a certain way about certain things. So I'm not gonna go into meeting gritty detail about some of my experiences, but know that every. Then I talk about on this podcast, it's something that I have personally experienced is not me making stuff up. So like I said, this is a heavy topic. It may be triggering for some people. I'm throwing that out there. Now, if you feel like you need to turn this off and go listen to something else, feel free to do that, but we're going to talk about the different types of abuse, how to recognize. And then how to overcome and heal and move forward because that's really the most important thing, right? That's why we're here. We're doing our inner healing work so that we can move on and live the life that we want to live so that we can live our best life. Nobody deserves to be in a situation that is abusive. Nobody deserves to be abused by anybody else. They may have even told you that it's not your fault. You don't deserve. There's a thing that you did in his lifetime that could justify why somebody would do what it is that they did to you, but is up to you to take the responsibility, to heal and move on from it. You can't stay at your victim. So that really is my purpose in discussing this topic. And also so that you can take a step back and rec recognize it, because like I said, Recognize what was happening until I was in therapy talking about an hour. I was like, holy shit, like, damn, how did I, how did I get here? Like eye opening. So some of this stuff that I'm going to talk about, I'm going to bring up particular things. Some of these things you may not have even thought about. There are a wide variety of types of abuse. We've already talked about physical. You know that somebody physically attacking, hitting, harming, but also keep in mind that somebody physically abusing you can also be preventing you from doing something. Maybe it's withholding certain things from you. It could be disrupting you so bad that you can't eat our sleep. It could be, maybe you get into an altercation and they block you from receiving medical. For those who know what I do, am I 95, sometimes this comes up with domestic violence situations. Somebody may get into a situation where they've been harmed by their, their partner, and then they take the person's cell phone and they can't even call the police for help. They take the car keys, they can't leave the house. Those types of things can be considered. If they fall into the category of physical abuse, preventing you from eating or sleep. You know, they come in and they're constantly waking you up. They're picking fights. They start arguments with you. They're doing stuff that, that just does not allow you to either rest. Maybe they may not be harming you directly, but maybe they're harming your children, your family members, your pets, pets are a big one. Harming someone's pet is a big marker of domestic violence. Maybe they're driving recklessly with. Or they're putting you out the car on the side of the road somewhere. Maybe it's not safe. Maybe they're trapping you in the house. You're not allowed to go anywhere. Maybe they're blocking you from being able to take your medications or get the medical treatment that you need, outside of, being in a physical altercation with them. It's definitely something to think. As far as emotional or verbal abuse, obviously name calling criticism, talking down to somebody. Those things are things that we can immediately recognize as being abusive behaviors. But what about acting jealous and being possessive? What if they don't trust you and they're constantly reminding you of that isolating you from your friends or your family or folks that may help you monitoring your activities. They want to know where you're going, who you're going with tracking somebody's phone. Tracking internet usage, monitoring, phone calls, all of that stuff. Expecting an accounting of where you've been there. Every time you come back in the house trying to control your appearance, humiliating you in front of other people. That's a big one. Gaslighting falls into this category. I'm going to be honest with you. I dealt with gaslighting specifically and. Yes. Lighting is like a bunch of confusion. So like for instance, somebody may say or do something to you and then you come back and you bring it up. And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't say that. I didn't do that. And you're like, wait a minute. Yesterday and it almost makes you feel like you're crazy, you know? And it can go as far as somebody deliberately. Doing something with the purpose of confusing you Sometimes they will trivialize things that are a big deal to you. They may try to, dismiss your feelings and brush them under the rug. They'll refuse to listen. They'll confuse you with their words is that's what they call word salad, where it just doesn't make any sense. They're talking in circles and argument, you're having an argument about something and they're bringing up stuff that has nothing to do with anything as a distraction. It can be very draining. It can be very draining to the point where you just emotionally cannot deal with it. And a lot of times with gas lighting, it's all purpose. Like they're, you know, purposely gassing you up so that you think that you're crazy. Again, verbal, emotional abuse can be threatening. You, your children, your family, your pets, damaging your belongings. That was a big one. Having no regard for your personal items, you know, they may throw things away. They may destroy them. They may punch walls, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff like that. I'm blaming you for their abusive behavior. So, you know, because they're doing all of these things to you somehow, it's your fault. Remember it's never your fault accusing you of cheating. That's a big one, especially when they know that that's not how. Or they cheat on you and then they blame you for the fact that they're cheating, cheating intentionally to hurt your feelings or, you know, threatening to cheat, you know, because the other person is better. Putting you down, you know, telling you things that you'll never do any better. You'll never find anybody better. Just basically just berating you. All of those things are verbal. And emotional abuse and it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody yelling at you and name calling. It can be a wide variety of things. Obviously sexual abuse, most of us are familiar with what that means. You know, what sexual assault is, what rape is, what molestation is, but also understanding that just because you were in a relationship with somebody and you do have a sexual relationship, does not mean that you are not in control of your person and your body. So if you are being forced to do things that you don't. If, you're engaging in activity and you want to stop and they don't allow you to, if they are using force, if they are engaging in activities with you and you're incapacitated or trying to force you when you're tired, when you're sick, when you're otherwise incapacitated, where you've said, no, all of that is abuse. Same things apply threatening weapons, harming ignore your feelings. As it relates to sex. Consent is a big thing here. Not getting consent is abusive behavior. It's all about power and control. All of this that we're talking about abuse is about power and control. Maybe. They give you a sexually transmitted disease, refusing to wear condoms, not allowing you to take birth control, removing condoms in the middle of the act coercion. Coercion is a big one. If you've ever been in a situation where somebody back, back, back, back bags, drew so bad to the point where you give in, because you want them to leave you the hell alone. Yeah. That's abusive behavior. Pressuring you, it's a participate in making you feel guilty for not doing things, especially where you are in a situation where maybe you're ill. You are incapacitated. Maybe you're tired. You know, you're not able to do what it is that you, they want you to do. Obviously what it is that you don't want to do, all of that is abusive behavior. Financial abuse is another one. You know, maybe they control their finances. They only gave you a certain amount of money. They give you an allowance. They block you from having access to your money. Maybe the money is a posit into account that you don't have access to. Maybe you can't log in and see how much money. Maybe they're not giving you their share of the money in forcing you to pay for everything. Maybe they're not allowing you to work or limiting the hours you can work or demanding that you be home with the kids and solely rely on them. Opening the council, your name and I paying I'm refusing to contribute to the household, fusing the work. If you're going to provide money for necessary things like food, clothing, shelter, all of those. If there is any malicious intent behind any of that, those are abusive behaviors. Digital abuse, you know, we're all on social media. We use technology. Think about bullying. Think about, you know, somebody stalking you, I've seen in situations where you know, the significant other, the partner that's, the abuser has created. For the other person and they're monitoring the person's profile or they're posting as them, all kinds of crazy stuff happens posting you know, inappropriate or threatening to post inappropriate photos cyber bullying, all of that kind of stuff. Kids hit so into. Abused, especially when there is malicious intent behind it. So I'm listing all of these things out, and this is not an exhaustive list just to open your eyes, to see that a lot of these things, while they may seem like small behaviors, would they all add up it has the ability to snowball into a really gnarly situation. Many of these things, you know, if it happened, as a one-off, we may not even think twice about it, but when you add them all up, it's a look good to it. It just keep in mind that all of these things are done in an effort to control you, but the other person to have power and control over. So that they beat you down, that they kill yourself, confidence that they kill yourself worth so that they can be in control. And at the end of the day, none of this stuff really has anything to do with you. It has to do with them and their issues and their things that they're not dealing. But they're not working on that. They're not healing from, which has put them in a position where they feel like they have to be in control. Maybe they can't control anything else they got going on in their life, but they can control you. They can walk, walk all over top of you and maybe it didn't start out like that. I know in my situation, it started out like that for me, but over time things change I know for me, I was, dealing with some medical issues. I was in more chronic illness, which I talked about past episodes, that data, that was episode number three, but because I was so focused all in while what was wrong and trying to get my health in order, a lot of these things I missed. And when I realized that it was too far gone, it was too late. I just couldn't see the forest for the trees. I was just in such a bad place because my health was failing me. And part of me wonders if all of this stuff that was going on, what's causing my health to fail. I was my health failing, causing me to be blind to some of the other things that were going on in my house. I think it was a little bit of both, but I've, I, you know, I said all of this to say, if a light bulb has gone off for you or any of those things that I just. Those are abusive behaviors that was done in an attempt to exert control over you. It's a boost their self-esteem, their self-confidence to make them feel better. So now it's like, okay. I realize the situation that I'm in. Looking too good. So what do I do from here? We've talked about all the bad stuff. So now let's talk about where's it upwards. What do we do now? Often times we suffer in silence. We suffer in confusion. We may not realize what is happening. Like I said, it can be a lot of small things that snowball, you get to a point where you're like, you know what? I can't take this shit. Like some guy give, I can't live my life like this. If you are living in your house and you're walking on eggshells, I remember, avoided being in my house because I didn't want to come home and have to deal with this ticking time bomb. I didn't want to have to engage in arguments over asinine things. I didn't want to have to, be up half the night because I couldn't sleep because somebody was raised in hell, am I. Or it was the opposite. People don't think about emotional abuse in this regard. It can also be neglect. You may have somebody who, instead of being overly possessive and overly protective and overly jealous, maybe they just pull back and withdraw is that they don't pay you any attention to. They don't speak to you. They don't check on you. They don't see how you're doing. They don't help you with anything. It's like, you don't exist. They Stonewall. So that was something that happened in my house, you know, when speak to me for days, cause they were mad at me over something that one, I might not even know what it was too. I might not have had nothing to do with me. And three, it wasn't even my fault. It was something imaginary, they made up in their head today when the bee man about, you know, but somehow that was my fault too. Right. So I will be on the receiving end of basically nothing that can be a form of emotional abuse too. Sometimes we suffer in silence and cause we usually, because we feel like, you know, okay, I gotta pick my battles. I don't have the capacity to deal with another argument. I don't have the capacity to deal with. So maybe a mad at me today. I'm tired. I got other things I got to focus on. You may feel like it's not worth it, cause they're not gonna change. They're not gonna listen to you. They're not gonna hear what it is that you have to say. So you suffer in silence and you move on to something else. You focus your attention on other things. I think the first step to healing and recovery is one acknowledging what has happened. That may be really different. Especially in the confines of romantic relationships, because I think back to a lot of the things that appear as red flags to me now, 10, 12, 14 years ago did it. I was young. I was naive. I maybe didn't understand what was going on or. I was too busy listening to what other people were telling me, especially as it relates to being in a romantic relationship with somebody being married, you know, people tell you things like, oh, well you have to make sure that. If you want to keep your man, you have to do this and this and this. You want to keep your husband happy, you know, all this kind of stuff. And when you really think about it, a lot of that comes from situations where maybe all four mothers had to deal with it, put up with stuff because they didn't have any, maybe they feel like they didn't have any other options at the turn. You know, resources were limited for women. Maybe you stayed in this situation cause you want to make sure your kids were taken care of, or you didn't know where he was going to go with all them kids or, you know, I think women were just at a disadvantage in a lot of situations because of where we were in society at that time, and that doesn't apply to everybody. Cause some, some women still, you know, branched out and went on about their way because they weren't willing to tolerate any crap everybody's situation is different. But I think that if we're still holding on to a lot of those outdated ideals and that we have to be reliant on a man, the stability for security, for safety. We want our family to be together. For the sake of our children, you don't realize that that now we have other options. There's always another option. We have to let go of those outdated ideas. You do not have to stay in a situation where your baby is treated. There's always a way. The first step is acknowledging where. Don't downplay it, see it for what it is. Okay. So now that you realize what the situation is, what you would do about it, do you want to move on? Do you want to leave? Is your safety at risk depending on the severity of the situation. And again, it may not be your physical safely. It could be your mental and emotional. Get a safety plan in place. If that means moving, maybe you need to pack up with your kids and go somewhere else, get a plan in place. You probably gonna need some money to do it. You may need a safe place to stay depending on your situation. Start putting those things in motion. The next thing you want to do is to seek support that may be therapy. You probably won't need therapy, you know, depending on the severity of the situation, sometimes people have PTSD. Anxiety, they have depression yourself worth may be compromised. Your, your self esteem, your competence, all of those things, you may feel downtrodden and trampled on after dealing with these particular situations, seek support, that may be therapy that may be focus group that may just be trusted, family and friends. That may be some sort of spiritual advisor seek support and help. For what it is that you're dealing with. You may not be able to do that until you can remove yourself from the situation, but definitely seek help. Even if it's just being able to talk to somebody you trust about what has happened. And if you're not write it down in your journal, do whatever it is that you need to do to get your feelings out. This will be ongoing thing, to clear your mind, think about how this is going to change your life. Moving forward. If you need to move forward do you need to change jobs? Do you need to change locations? Maybe if you stayed at home and you didn't work now to me, it's going back to work. What does that mean for your situation? If you share the household with somebody, well, how is that going to impact your finances? Does that now mean that you're going to be responsible for other bills? If you need more money to take care of that, does that mean that now you're branching out and you're getting written in an apartment or something, and now you're responsible for those bills, then next thing you want to do, and I'll be honest with you. These are not necessarily in any order. But setting boundaries. So if you're going to move on from a particular situation, because you need to, or you feel like you can't tolerate it anymore, or pieces at risk, your safety, physical safety is at risk. Your mental health is at risk. You need to move on set boundaries. Are you going to communicate with this person anymore? Some situations you have to go home. And some situations they may not be that easy. Maybe you have joint obligations, maybe you have children. You have to co-parent set a boundary. How were you able to communicate with that person? Are you going to communicate via telephone or you can communicate only via text message. Is somebody else going to be the go-between between the two of you all, is somebody going to be the mediator? Is there going to be a neutral meeting place? If you meet. To drive your children or make some sort of exchange set boundaries around that, because remember you're in this situation because that person has tried to exert dominance and control over you. So don't think that will you separate from Invesco stop? They're still gonna try it. So now it's up to you to set your boundaries. You've already determined that I'm not dealing with it. I'm taking control of my life. I'm moving on. So you said how the boundary or how you communicate with that person. They may not abide by that, but you have to do what you need to do to set the boundary and let them know that you're not paying. something else you really should do is shift your mindset about a lot of things. It focus on yourself. Be mindful of negative coping mechanisms. You may need to do something differently now. So if you were in relationship and you dealt with a lot of those behaviors in a particular way, Maybe you were drinking, maybe we using substances. Maybe you were avoiding. Maybe you were sleep all the time. Maybe you were already eating. Maybe you were over shopping. If there was some sort of addictive behavior that you were engaging in to try to cope with everything that was going on, you may need to reassess those things. You may need to find healthier ways to cope with your feelings around the situation. Focus on your self care. Focus on rebuilding yourself, worth yourself. Competence. I think episode number two talks about self love. There's a lot of things in that particular episode that you can do, but focus on yourself, every building, because the only place to go from here. It's over the upwards, get rid of negative. Self-talk get rid of all of the things that they told you that you were or were not that you could or could not do that. Stuff's not true. They said all of those things. And did all of those things to you in an attempt, she break. So they could be in control for their own, whatever their own sort of purposes, where again, it is never your fault. We may not have control over the things that happened to us. And at this point, this already happened. You can't turn back the clock and said that you could do. All you can do is take responsibility for how you're going to deal with it, how you're going to heal from it and how you are going to move forward. Don't allow somebody from your past to have power over you. You have the power to change your own life. Don't let them hold you back. If you were in a situation. The other person puts you down. They build little Jew, they were condescending. They tore you down physically, verbally, emotionally. It's time to build yourself up. A lot of times people do that kind of stuff because they are insecure. They feel inadequate. So the only way to feed their ego is by tearing down and attack. Somebody else. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them in their issues, their insecurities, their feelings of inadequacy. You just happened to be in close proximity, or you were, the target is natural fault. It was not fair. You did not deserve it. There was nothing you did that justifies what they did to. I understand that. The other thing is this too. Sometimes with you are a person who shines so bright, it irritates other people. It stirs up something in them because they're not happy with themselves. They're miserable so that day have to now bring you down to their level so that you can be miserable. Never shrink yourself to make somebody else feel comfortable. Never you're doing yourself a disservice by doing that. One thing I have learned through this whole experience was just that I will never, ever, ever be in a situation where I will down. Or shrink myself, my attributes, my achievements, my qualities, because they make somebody else uncomfortable. I don't have to apologize for being who I am. I have worked very hard, very long to be in the situation that I'm in to be who I am. Some of it was given by God's grace. And some of it was stuff that I worked hard. Never dim your light for anybody else. You'll ask the sun to turn down to you. Do not dim your light. That is a major warning sign. If you're in relationship with somebody else, whether it is a romantic partner, it's a friend is a family member, coworker employee. I don't care who it is. If somebody does not allow you to be your whole income. Self red flag, big red flag flag on the play. However you want to describe it because they do not have your best interest at heart. And again, it can be small, subtle things where you don't even realize it. They make subtle jabs at you. They criticize your appearance, you know, sometimes don't even worry. In a way that you almost feel like you're questioning yourself, see, that's where that gets like in karma, you know, you're questioning yourself almost like it's your idea, you know, not theirs, they planted the seed in your head, but now you thinking it's your idea. If somebody does not want you to thrive, to grow, to evolve or be your whole local pizza. That's not somebody that you want to be around or be a relationship with. Cause they don't have your best interests at heart. And maybe it's because they had their own trauma and they need to deal with babies because they haven't done their own healing, but you can't allow somebody else not doing their healing to MP yours. I know that was a mouthful. And this is a heavy topic, but like I said, the topic kept coming up and I felt the need to discuss it, without getting too much of the nitty gritty detail of what I dealt with. But lastly, remember this don't rush it. Do not rush your healing. Healing takes time. It will take time for you to process what has happened to you. It will take time for you to rebuild and retrain your brain. It'll take time for you to pick up new habits, to get rid of negative self talk to change. Maybe you need to change your coping mechanisms and skills to go to therapy. You're not going to go to one session and it has to be all. You know, it is going to take time. Don't rush it. But the most important part is the fact that you are here. You you're doing the work. You acknowledge what happened. A you are getting a plan in place to address it and move on so you can get on with your life. I'm just going to happen to anybody. It doesn't have to be this big, gnarly thing where somebody's beating you up and kicking you down and sex or calling you out of your name. It can be so much more than that. And it can be so many little things over time. And the longer that you were in that situation, the longer that you endure those things, it impacts you, it can impact your physical health. That happens to me, can impact your mental and emotional health. It can impact your performance at school at work. It can impact your relationship with other people and how you show up with them. Or if you even show up at. It can occur over an extended period of time. So if something happens to you already extended period of time, it's likely it may take you an extended period of time to heal from that. And that's okay. But the important thing is that you chose yourself and that means you're on the right. So, thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed today's show or you found some information and baby that was helpful, please feel free to leave me some feedback, share with a friend Cheryl, on social media that you listened to the podcast. However it is that you choose to. But thank you, but let's meet. And before I go as always, I'm going to leave you all with an affirmation. I affirm, I overcome all of the obstacles life throws at me. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.