only You

I am haunted by the twenty year old pictures. I’m smiling of all things. The sun setting behind makes artwork of the sky. Climbing harnesses say we topped out after three pitches at Table Rock. Oh, how times were different.

I ache in looking.

These pictures somehow tear my chest from my heart. I do not know how to hold the two emotions together in one space. Love. Confusion. Pure giving altruistic love, for you, the narcissist. And yet, your love was absent. Faked, perhaps. 

I do not know what to do with that, now. 

Was it always absent? Always faked, or did it somehow morph into this absenteeism--this wretchedness? 

How can my love, not have changed or influenced you, even ever so slightly? How can it be that you find it so easy to hate me? How can it not be difficult to hate? How can you not care, at all, after so much time of me trying to give to you?

No, I wasn’t perfect.

Nobody ever is.

But surely, the something—the all of myself that I gave, must have meant something? Surely it must have changed something, maybe just one thing for you? Surely, you must be ever so slightly different, for having known me for so many years?

But no, I was invisible. I didn’t exist. I guess that would mean, I didn’t influence you, at all. Cause it was always just you. Only you. 

Exhaustion

Dealing, breathing, living in proximity to a narcissist is tiring. Exhaustion sets in when leaving the extensive web. Today, I ground and bless myself with these words by John O'Donohue. May they bless you, as well, dear reader...

For One Who is Exhausted

When the Rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued before has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw along the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

-John O'Donohue