Flooded Kindness

I'm not sure why I'm so sensitive to certain things. In particular, lately, my eyes have turned into water faucets. As in, lately, I cry a lot. I suppose that is not surprising. And to be expected. What's strange about it is what turns the water faucet on. I often find myself crying at kindness. Or real compassion. Or empathy.

Yesterday, was overwhelming. One of those days when I felt so raw and precarious and exhausted and worn down to the nub, like a pile of pick-up sticks. One of those days where I had to pull a Kimmy Schmidt and break time into ten second increments--arguing with myself that I could, in fact, manage ten seconds, then ten more, and ten more, over and over. The I'm-going-to-have-a-breakdown-right-here edge stood beside me all day.

I went to the gym to cope. The majority of my energy was diverted from Back & Bi to the landscape of my head in self talk. Just don't burst into tears, here. They won't understand. 

The whole time the tears threatened and I tried to imagine that I was just sweating a lot out of my eyes.

It seemed like the bros were staring more than usual. Do they see my tears?

And then one of the regulars, whose name I don't even know, went out of his way to ask me if I needed to work in and use the chin-up bar. He was just being kind. But, it felt like it violently struck some sort of resonance nearly dropping my bridge into the water. I choked out a yes, then practically ran across the gym to escape observation and to grab my usual 25 lb dumbbell step-stool, as anything less is too tipsy. Its just sweat! I wanted to scream. A lot of sweat is just dripping down my face. 

When I left the gym, a bro stood an extra five to hold the door for me. Uh. Kindness. Another choked word. Thanks. My eyes added more water to the already puddled parking lot. At least, there was nobody around to see. I cried all the way home. Reminding myself that I'd never see the people in the car next to me at the stop light and it really doesn't matter if they see me balling.

At the grocery store, a man motioned for me to go ahead of him in line, as I just had a piece of poster board for one of my little people. Again. Hot tears fought so hard to escape my eyes, they burned.

Kind words in an email involving everyday details from an office manager in Canada. Again, tears.

A season two Christmas episode of Glee. In the story line, Coach secretly buys, Artie, a pair of legs. The unseen act of compassion and kindness. I crumpled into an uncontrollable hot mess on the sofa and my little she dog licked my salty tears.

Somehow, I know this all has something to do with recovering from the narcissist, but I can't for the life of me, sort it out, yet.    

the Liar's Web

A book I’m reading states that the root of almost all human evil begins and ends in the lie.  Lying is one thing. But lying to ourselves, quite another. This is the line drawn in the sand and in my opinion, one of the pieces that distinguishes the malignant, covert, narcissist from the more "benign" narcissist. The malignant, covert narcissist swallows his own delusions. His narcissism is hidden from himself, which effectively (especially over time) hides it from others. Otherwise, how could he convince others? You see, the lies of the malignant effectively, more and more, wall the MC narcissist off from self-awareness, insulating him from outside (and inside) influence.

I don't need this other person's opinion--clearly, it doesn't have merit or is inferior to mine.

I suspect this is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. Indeed, for the malignant narcissist this self lying obstacle is insurmountable.

I suppose the true story of the MC Narc is a story about the murder of Self Awareness. Slaughtered. Hacked up and strewn all over some creepy, cornfield in mid-western America--never to be seen again.

There is no coming back from such a place--apologies to John Walsh. It is the crime that will never be solved.

You see, the Master of deceit becomes a Master by practicing deception on himself, first and foremost. And this is why you cannot appeal to anything or anyone to change him. This is why he will never change.

He has placed himself beyond the reach of influence.

I suppose this is worth remembering. After all, the personal pain of being deceived--being lied to--being duped for so many years stabs down deep. How could I go along with his deception for so long?

The truth of the matter is, I was his confirmation ticket that helped make the story more believable. I made the lies true by being that something outside him that his delusions could bounce off and rebound back onto him--helping him further his own delusions. My own delusions of the world, couldn't accept the circumstances of his childhood--dead mothers, and bodies in rivers, and massive conspiracy theories. I needed for the fairy tale ending to actually exist. For things to work out in the end and the story to be one of good overcoming bad. I didn't want the Americanized, Stanley Kubrick ending of A Clockwork Orange, I wanted the original Anthony Burgess ending where the dystopia ends with a little hope.

A therapist I worked with told me that I need to seal off my porous ego boundaries, as he referred to my being-too-easily-influenced-by-my-MC-Narcs lies. Perhaps, therapist was right in that I must shut out my MC Narc's lies in order to move forward.

But, at the same time, carefully. I must allow some pores on my ego boundaries, particularly as regards safe, healthy people. I need to be open to some people calling me on my own shit. Otherwise, how shall I ever maintain some sort of checks and balances system on my own self delusions? How shall I ever keep myself from becoming just like him--walled off forever from the influence of others, self awareness strewn around some creepy cornfield? Truth of the matter is that he is not likely to ever get out of his own web. He is not likely to ever see the falsehood in the truth he tells.

Caught in his own liar's web, he is.

just walk

If pilgrimage has taught me anything it is this... some days are just about walking. You just keep walking. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other in some sort of ritual.

Some days that is all you can do. And that is ok.

Revenge

How to Exact Revenge on The Narcissist, or something to that effect was the name of a VLOG I recently stumbled upon on YouTube. I watched some of the video. To watch some is better than none, I thought, since most of me outright disagrees with the philosophy of taking revenge upon the narcissist.

But, I have always been the sort of person who tries to listen to other people’s ideas in pursuit of growth. And I find that I most often need some sort of stop-gap on low self-awareness when I vehemently disagree with someone’s ideas. So I had a listen.

And not being one for commenting on YouTube, I’ll respond here.  

While my own experience has demonstrated that healing from narcissistic abuse involves liberal amounts of "space allowing" for difficult emotions, including the desire for revenge, I think a distinction needs to be made between allowing space and allowing too much space. I believe that the pursuit of revenge creates too much space, lending itself toward a particular sort of imbalance, ultimately stunting the healing process in one’s self--forget the narcissist as reference point altogether.

By itself, the emotion of revenge is nothing more than intense anger coupled with a strong desire for justice. Typically, the desire for revenge surfaces when we perceive that we have been the recipient of intolerable injustice.  

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that.

But, in order to pursue said revenge strategy, we often have to go much further. We often have to foster, even conjure a deliberate imbalance in ourselves—in our own emotional alchemy, often by cutting off other emotions that might get in the way of executing said strategy such as kindness, empathy, and compassion. I suspect the reason behind this fostering is due to the fact that intense strategies like revenge demand Herculean amounts of energy to drive them to completion. Therefore, the energy we might have for other emotions gets requisitioned to our ORS--Omnipotent Revenge Strategy. Our potential energy that we damn up behind Hoover in order to exact our revenge strategy ends up finding its own way. It's worth remembering that once water is released below the damn, it has no agenda--as mere kinetic energy it just flows onto whomever and whatever is caught in its path. Such massive flowing energy might just land on us as we fall casualty to our revenge's course--just as un-damned water knows only to flow into empty space.

Furthermore, ironically enough, with revenge we often have a misguided notion that we are "taking back control." In all actuality, we are surrendering control as we knot and tether and tie ourselves back up to the narcissist. We reattach ourselves by making our well-being dependent upon his painful experience just as it was before! We want him to hurt, to suffer, only now we think seeing him wounded will somehow help us heal. This is akin to suffering a gunshot wound and thinking that shooting the perpetrator rather than going to the hospital will make the wound stop hemorrhaging. In so doing we push our healing locus of control outside ourselves and give it back to the narcissist who gladly takes it once again from us. We make our healing journey about him, which is furthering his narcissistic supply line. Why the hell would we want to feed that beast again? 

Put simply, this is not the path to healing our wound. In fact, this is likely the path to turning our wound gangrenous.  

narcissism

Here is a helpful definition of narcissism that I came across recently.

"The uncanny game of hide and seek in the obscurity of the soul, in which it, the single human soul, evades itself, avoids itself, and hides from itself."

--Buber