I wonder at the ability of my life to reproduce the same
parallel universe over and over.
What does this mean you might ask?
This is what I struggle to answer.
Why is it that my narcissistic relationship mirrors my
experience in the rest of my life in critical ways? What is the Universe trying to teach me?
In my relationship, I was invisible. For the most part—nothing I said, mattered. I could not say, This hanging out with the 22 yr old girl matters to me and I'm hurt by it, and it be taken seriously. It was as if I was not a
reference point in my own significant relationship.
After all, what argument do you have for why I shouldn't be an engaging, cerebral influence on the 22 yr old? I am exemplifying what it means to be a fantastic teacher.
In essence, I could not appeal to what
I thought about my own relationship and it matter to my significant other—the
narcissist. Because there was always a
fact or an argument or a logical strategy that could overwrite
what I thought or felt about my own relationship or why this boundary problem was in my best interest such as--don't you want me to be a devoted faculty member that has a job?
I'm not sure why I allowed myself to be written out of my own relationship. It sounds so over the top--so preposterous that it is almost unbelievable.
No one would do that--you must be exaggerating.
As things continue to unwind, I feel like ET on some alien
planet. I spit words out. I point a long finger at the sky and garble out ET Phone Home... Mostly, no one gets the words I belch out or believes the words make sense. I utter them all the same looking for some sort of Elliot to keep me alive and away from the scientists in tents.
You mean to say that
this magnificent, heroic man is emotionally abusive? But he has done so much for you? How can what you say be true? He is so polished, so perfect, so intelligent, so giving.
I am alien. People believe the more familiar, romantic, cozy,
smoke and mirrors world of my narcissistic ex. I have been written out of the
coding of my own relationship where other people’s FaceBook opinions or my ex’s
spectacularly timed texts to my own relatives mean more. Even now, as I escape I exist on an alien planet--my own relationship a rather different species when lived upon, but far away—it is a sort of fairy tale looking place. No one else gets the nightmare unless they visit and kick up the red dirt with
their moon boots. Most cannot see through the sophisticated ploys and dancing
words of the charming, extroverted, philosopher, word-smith, and pathological
liar.
And somehow, I ended up in a profession where the alien planet phenomenon
catches me in a similar situation. I live in a world where I help people out of
situations that no one else can seemingly help them out of. I restore hope to
scenarios where hope has dried up. I help people heal that are supposedly
beyond healing. Most people don’t get it. Those I help get it and step
onto an alien planet where things are not as they seem from across the galaxy. They wonder at how outside perceptions and insider actual experiences upon this planet could swim so far away from one another--seemingly, the gap of a galaxy betwixt.
And the universe repeats. My own experience in my relationship being the opposite of what the world seems to think--what my narcissist projects. My experience in my profession being the opposite of what the world seems to think--what conventional, cultural bias projects.
I ask myself, what is the lesson? Am I here to learn to how to perpetually swim against the current? Am I here to learn to bridge the gap from the language of the alien planet into words others will understand? Or am I here to let go and just embrace being alien?
