One. I swallowed the Red pill. This hell of being awake is still better than the hell of being in the delusional narc matrix.
Two. Even if I'm alone the rest of my damn life, true aloneness is still better than false togetherness which is really just hidden aloneness.
Three. The hidden, narcopalypses that will emerge along the path like trip wires and bouncing betties, start to form patterns. Take for example this Christmas. Predictably, when I have my kids and am engaged in being present to them, my ex will do something to sabotage the time. This is absolutely predictable. There will be a letter or email or phone call or text designed to wound me in some way. Since I've gone "minimal contact" it will be embedded in a communication that has the guise of being kid related. I therefore already have a plan. No opening of anything, no matter how "urgent" until my time with my kids is over.
Four. Focus on the progress. The rattling and emotional abuse used to throw me off for months at a time. Lost in the fog, I couldn't find my path or my way. Now, I'm thrown off for a few hours or a day and then back on track. Decreasing your being rattled time is progress.
Five. I swallowed the Red pill. I chose the Red pill. While it would be much more difficult to choose the Red pill if prior to swallowing I had the horrific knowledge from these past four years of this hellish Odyssey, even still, I would choose again to wake up and get the fuck out.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Sunday, November 19, 2017
A Blessing for those Entrapped in Narcissistic Abuse
May you move with an ease that defies the web you find yourself in,
As you awaken in someone else's life and find your sticky spider feet again.
May the light of healing always find you,
As you trudge forward through the dark night of the soul.
May the love of the Ancestors, the history of the beautiful smatterings of humanity surround you and encompass you as you walk through another planet that utterly confuses you.
May the goodness of the Universe infuse your soul, binding it to all things compassionate, all things empathic, all things good, such that you taste kindness in the air around you.
May you sweat this same loving kindness that the Divine breathes on you always
such that you do not feel the flames of the hatred from one whom has no place for love.
Above all, may you find your way out of the deep, dark pain purported by an absent soulless being that has given itself up to the destruction embedded in the lie.
As you awaken in someone else's life and find your sticky spider feet again.
May the light of healing always find you,
As you trudge forward through the dark night of the soul.
May the love of the Ancestors, the history of the beautiful smatterings of humanity surround you and encompass you as you walk through another planet that utterly confuses you.
May the goodness of the Universe infuse your soul, binding it to all things compassionate, all things empathic, all things good, such that you taste kindness in the air around you.
May you sweat this same loving kindness that the Divine breathes on you always
such that you do not feel the flames of the hatred from one whom has no place for love.
Above all, may you find your way out of the deep, dark pain purported by an absent soulless being that has given itself up to the destruction embedded in the lie.
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
On Imagination
An awakened imagination enables you to inherit the riches of yourself--heart and soul. It enables you to find some of the outlines of the shape of your destiny. And it certainly is the only force of the heart that will enable you to carve from the dark slabs of fate some beautiful sculptures of possibility and healing and reconciliation.
--John O'Donohue
--John O'Donohue
Friday, November 10, 2017
Dear Woman I Never Knew
I don't know what to say to you except perhaps well, you got out. Sure you had to die to do so, but on some level I have come to see your passing as a kind of mercy, a severe one, but a mercy nonetheless. I've supposedly gotten out but alas it doesn't end. Your son, the one I was tethered to all those years, well it just doesn't matter that I moved away to escape, he continues to entangle me. And this, this is the sticking point. I've certainly thought about death, more as a means to escape than anything else. I don't necessarily want to die, its just I'm so tired of the endlessness of the emotional and psychological abuse. Hope as it turns out seems to be a terrible thing. For in spite of all the terrible things he has done to me over and over again, my brain stubbornly refuses to comprehend that someone like him can exist entirely without any compassion or empathy. He grows worse by the day. And in spite of me losing almost everything, he wants to suck more life out of me like a dementor. Why? He has already won a million fold over and over. He now has my children full time. Even still he wants to take more. He bullies. He stabs. He wishes me harm. All that to say, your murderer (your ex) whom fathered this thing that I was tethered to for so long, in so fathering spawned another alien just as his father spawned him. I wish I could say that your tragic death changed him--that he was able to rise above it and break the cycle of narcissist creating more narcissicism. But, I have no such news to write you. I fear for my children. I am hoping and praying that in spite of my not being able to be in proximity to them that they will somehow see through all these narcissistic enchantments and mirrors. I am hoping that I have somehow burdened them with overpowering tools that help them separate wheat from chaff, truth from lie. I pray that the narcissistic propaganda does not penetrate their spirits and souls. I pray that they hold onto compassion, empathy, hope, and kindness toward humanity and that they begin to recognize that there are things in proximity to them that are more alien than human. I'm so sorry that I failed you. When I first met him, I only wanted our relationship to be a source of healing from all of this shit for him. It still grieves me that he ultimately chose this path. They say that the narcissist cannot ever recover. But, alas I am cursed with microscopic hope that somehow this new mother figure in his life will somehow trigger healing in spite of the damning odds. And regardless of what happens with your son, I am hoping that the pattern ends with him.
Friday, October 27, 2017
Evil Thus I Know
Evil is the other genetic half of your lights in the world as you fight to keep their light--your babies that you pushed out of your body many years hence. Perhaps, because that other part that is mere shell doesn't understand how a mother loves, no matter what. That other part didn't have her--a mother long enough to attach, so He only gets the detachment part. Oh, what a loss.
Evil is the always lying, to keep delusions intact such that one is not causing, nor ever will cause massive pain to one's own offspring and to other peoples on the planet. Perhaps, because everyone is just a pawn on a chessboard.
Evil is a conversation on the phone designed to sabotage sanity in your ex. Where one only cares about destruction and chaos. Where one doesn't care about outcome, other than that it thwart things and people and healing. One that only cares about inducing harm.
Evil is the opposite of the first principle of medicine. First do no Harm. Evil is first and foremost, only care about destroying, causing pain, wielding a sword, even if it causes terrible things to happen to the people you think you might care about. Cause evil trumps people you care about any day.
Evil is stepping into living without meaning and kindness and healing of any sort.
Evil is knowing only the dark side of the moon. Evil is inducing in others, in people who loved you, in those who would have done anything for you the wish that somehow, you'd never, ever met. Evil is in the lie, thus I know.
Evil is the always lying, to keep delusions intact such that one is not causing, nor ever will cause massive pain to one's own offspring and to other peoples on the planet. Perhaps, because everyone is just a pawn on a chessboard.
Evil is a conversation on the phone designed to sabotage sanity in your ex. Where one only cares about destruction and chaos. Where one doesn't care about outcome, other than that it thwart things and people and healing. One that only cares about inducing harm.
Evil is the opposite of the first principle of medicine. First do no Harm. Evil is first and foremost, only care about destroying, causing pain, wielding a sword, even if it causes terrible things to happen to the people you think you might care about. Cause evil trumps people you care about any day.
Evil is stepping into living without meaning and kindness and healing of any sort.
Evil is knowing only the dark side of the moon. Evil is inducing in others, in people who loved you, in those who would have done anything for you the wish that somehow, you'd never, ever met. Evil is in the lie, thus I know.
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Narcissistic Abuse in a Nutshell Take 2
Anonymous is
one day waking up and finding yourself
missing
from your own life.
Replaced
by an alien you helped create.
Invisible
you slip toward absence.
Narcissistic Abuse in a Nutshell
The sense of being missing
gone, invisible
from your own life
permeates your being when the Alien takes over,
in time, transforming
anonymity into pure absence.
Saturday, September 30, 2017
The Story
One of my favorite books is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. An apparent, loosely related collection of short stories, with one repeated over and over where Tim kills the punchline and tells you the ending of the story over and over, as the reader, you almost reach the maddenly, irate point at the redundancy. You feel like you've got it already, as if Tim is deliberately insulting your intelligence as a reader. That arrogant writer, who clearly thinks I'm not paying attention to the Curt Lemming story? Enough, already....
And then it eventually hits you, that you've never felt the story. And this matters to the story. In fact, this means that you've never really heard the story in spite of his telling it over and over. Somehow, you didn't quite get it that Tim held back the pieces that matter. Until, you've really heard the story--which incidentally, is the uncircumcised poignancy of the story intact. And that's when you finally feel it all most acutely.
Today, in this new land of towers. I told the first layer of the story I've been hearing and telling to those that want to hear for nigh on 20 years. The backstory, really--of how my ex came to be evil. The story that birthed my ex on the path to narcissism. How the darkness of death and grief at the ripe old age of two started the cascade and transformation to being a pathological lying sort of person that feels no empathy, in spite of anything.
As I told it, it struck me in quite a different way, a rather new way, more than it has in the past. My experience of different people listening to the story shaped my sense of the story, itself. Telling it was such a different experience. It was an entirely different story. For the first time, I felt a large distance from the story. And this--this little bit of distance was good.
For the first time, I didn't feel entirely entangled up in the web of compassion and empathy for my ex narcissist. While I was in touch with the traumatic circumstances of his childhood, I could see the steps he has deliberately taken; whereby he decided to sever himself from compassion, cause it might get in the way of getting your way if you're a narcissist.
And I saw anew the power of the story. The power of telling it over and over again. The power of retelling it in a different way, to a different crowd. I saw anew the story itself transformed by the telling of it. And somehow the sense that, just like Tim O'Brien, I've never really told the story in such a way that the emotion gets understood by the listener. And that is the story that most needs to be told.
And then it eventually hits you, that you've never felt the story. And this matters to the story. In fact, this means that you've never really heard the story in spite of his telling it over and over. Somehow, you didn't quite get it that Tim held back the pieces that matter. Until, you've really heard the story--which incidentally, is the uncircumcised poignancy of the story intact. And that's when you finally feel it all most acutely.
Today, in this new land of towers. I told the first layer of the story I've been hearing and telling to those that want to hear for nigh on 20 years. The backstory, really--of how my ex came to be evil. The story that birthed my ex on the path to narcissism. How the darkness of death and grief at the ripe old age of two started the cascade and transformation to being a pathological lying sort of person that feels no empathy, in spite of anything.
As I told it, it struck me in quite a different way, a rather new way, more than it has in the past. My experience of different people listening to the story shaped my sense of the story, itself. Telling it was such a different experience. It was an entirely different story. For the first time, I felt a large distance from the story. And this--this little bit of distance was good.
For the first time, I didn't feel entirely entangled up in the web of compassion and empathy for my ex narcissist. While I was in touch with the traumatic circumstances of his childhood, I could see the steps he has deliberately taken; whereby he decided to sever himself from compassion, cause it might get in the way of getting your way if you're a narcissist.
And I saw anew the power of the story. The power of telling it over and over again. The power of retelling it in a different way, to a different crowd. I saw anew the story itself transformed by the telling of it. And somehow the sense that, just like Tim O'Brien, I've never really told the story in such a way that the emotion gets understood by the listener. And that is the story that most needs to be told.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
This is Complicated Grieving
Complication number one. He's not dead. There is no body in the ground with a stone above it. No way for outsiders to recognize that he is as good as dead. The soul went and flew itself away up to heaven or hell or where-ever souls abandon themselves to when those who own them do not take them seriously.
Complication number two. He's not even aware he is dead. Due to complication number one, perhaps because he's not physically dead. But he is very much dead on most every other level. Kind of like the walking dead. Kind of like a Bruce Willis character in the Sixth Sense. Going through the motions of living, but not really there. Hanging around. Haunting the living. Pretending.
Complication number three. His tentacles entangle little people you love--people who aren't dead. Little people who are very much trying to learn how best to live life deeply and passionately from someone who is mostly dead. And right now they have only this example of a dead man walking, ever pretending to be one of the living. And due to complication number two, the lack of awareness factor, they have to live a life amongst the dead.
So there you have it. The complicated parts. Kind of like an open wound of an unsolved murder case where they never found a body. You know you ought get on with your life except that you lack the closure you think you'd gain with the finding of a body. The closure you think you'd gain is just beyond the reach of the grave you don't have. Oh, and there's that ex zombie walking around causing trauma. And maybe this is why you sometimes wish for the closure his death would bring. This is complicated grieving.
Complication number two. He's not even aware he is dead. Due to complication number one, perhaps because he's not physically dead. But he is very much dead on most every other level. Kind of like the walking dead. Kind of like a Bruce Willis character in the Sixth Sense. Going through the motions of living, but not really there. Hanging around. Haunting the living. Pretending.
Complication number three. His tentacles entangle little people you love--people who aren't dead. Little people who are very much trying to learn how best to live life deeply and passionately from someone who is mostly dead. And right now they have only this example of a dead man walking, ever pretending to be one of the living. And due to complication number two, the lack of awareness factor, they have to live a life amongst the dead.
So there you have it. The complicated parts. Kind of like an open wound of an unsolved murder case where they never found a body. You know you ought get on with your life except that you lack the closure you think you'd gain with the finding of a body. The closure you think you'd gain is just beyond the reach of the grave you don't have. Oh, and there's that ex zombie walking around causing trauma. And maybe this is why you sometimes wish for the closure his death would bring. This is complicated grieving.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Someone Else's Life
Most days it feels as though I've woken up in someone else's life. I don't recognize my surroundings or the people I interact with. Everything and everyone is new.
The constancy of being a mother, a parent is gone, far off in the distance. I suppose this must be something like what happens when your kids leave the nest, except I am the one who has left what was left of "the nest." What family I have is a long way off.
My former colleague and friend is no one I recognize. She's not the person I thought she was.
I don't suppose I've ever felt more alone.
But, even still, I am here. Me, myself, and I. I keep on reframing this as my golden opportunity to return to being the me that I neglected when I was swept up into the narcissistic vortex of my ex. His all demanding world meant that there was no me, by default. I didn't really exist. I only mattered in so much as I was there to do what he wanted or demanded, it was never about me.
And maybe this is where I wake up in someone else's life. And that someone else's is my own. I suspect that my own life feels foreign precisely because I haven't been here so much. I haven't lived the life I'm meant to live. Somehow I must find the courage to get back to owning my own life and make my way through all this weirdness to the new day.
The constancy of being a mother, a parent is gone, far off in the distance. I suppose this must be something like what happens when your kids leave the nest, except I am the one who has left what was left of "the nest." What family I have is a long way off.
My former colleague and friend is no one I recognize. She's not the person I thought she was.
I don't suppose I've ever felt more alone.
But, even still, I am here. Me, myself, and I. I keep on reframing this as my golden opportunity to return to being the me that I neglected when I was swept up into the narcissistic vortex of my ex. His all demanding world meant that there was no me, by default. I didn't really exist. I only mattered in so much as I was there to do what he wanted or demanded, it was never about me.
And maybe this is where I wake up in someone else's life. And that someone else's is my own. I suspect that my own life feels foreign precisely because I haven't been here so much. I haven't lived the life I'm meant to live. Somehow I must find the courage to get back to owning my own life and make my way through all this weirdness to the new day.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Gaslighting
True story. Late one night recently, a couple of glasses of red wine already imbibed, I saw on that all powerful FB feed that a band I've enjoyed since college is coming to town. Small venue situation, tickets in the realm of reasonable, conditions seemed almost perfect. Even my musical friend who enjoys these sorts of venues agreed to go with me. So I clicked on the link to make an in app ticket purchase, and the deal was done row G seats 32 and 33. Or so I thought. I texted musical friend and went to bed.
About a week later I realized I'd never seen the email confirmation. Hmmm. Why not? And this is the point where the gaslighting, the it's-everything-that's-ever-been-wrong-but-it's-all-she's-ever-known crept in. You see, when your memory is always questioned, second guessed, deemed unreliable at best, for the better part of 20 years, over time you develop a mistrust of your own memory. Because you were manipulated into mistrusting your own self. So that you could more easily be controlled.
-Over the Rhine
About a week later I realized I'd never seen the email confirmation. Hmmm. Why not? And this is the point where the gaslighting, the it's-everything-that's-ever-been-wrong-but-it's-all-she's-ever-known crept in. You see, when your memory is always questioned, second guessed, deemed unreliable at best, for the better part of 20 years, over time you develop a mistrust of your own memory. Because you were manipulated into mistrusting your own self. So that you could more easily be controlled.
Did I really order those tickets? Did I only think I ordered those tickets? Where was the email confirmation? I did have a couple of glasses of wine that night... These are all things my ex would have suggested or hinted at...
My own mind conditioned as it has been by the Narc ex in the abuse for all those years started doing what he would do.
But she cuts herself on you every night.
As in, You know that never happened? You know your memory is unreliable. You didn't really order those tickets. You only imagined it. You wanted to go so badly that you emotionally got attached to the idea of going and you thought you ordered those tickets. But we know, you're not quite right in the head. It's understandable, really, you're under a lot of stress these days.
And on and on my brain stewed and swirled. And then the anxiety crept in and started growing into a mountain. My body tensed up, the adrenaline raced through my arms, the thoughts took flight, the overwhelm, the cyclic edge and the feeling of being lost in the drowning ocean of cPTSD swirled....
But, I've been doing a lot of work in healing. And eventually something snapped. And I went, wait. Do you see what you're doing? You're fucking gaslighting yourself!!! You're perpetuating his shit again! You're scared and anxious and losing your head, not because you're going crazy but rather because the PTSD got triggered and this experience took you back to the Matrix. There is another explanation for this rather than faulty memory. Take a deep breath. Figure it out.
It was only then that it occurred to me to check my bank statement. And I've never been happier to see money charged to my account! Hallelujah! That charge felt like a bona-fida certificate from the school of Narc Abuse Recovery. I grinned. I'm not crazy!!! I did order those tickets! And then it occurred to me that the email tied to my FB is a rather old email address that I never check. And the confirmation was probably emailed to that address--the app having been a FB app. I accessed the email and found further confirmation that I need to keep restoring self trust!
And this felt like progress. This felt like I can do this thing called recovery. And I don't have to be perfect at it. There will be hiccups. There will be bumps in the road where I wander off the path and get a little lost. But the further I walk down the healing path, the more certain I am that I will find my way in recovery and continue in realizing that He's just a blade too dull to raise.
And in some sort of twisted irony, the band in question, Over the Rhine, has one of the most apt lyrical descriptions in song format of narcissistic abuse and the struggle to recover and get oneself out of it....
She
What she would like to do
Is get you out of her head
She's tried every trick
She's so sick of thinking about it
My own mind conditioned as it has been by the Narc ex in the abuse for all those years started doing what he would do.
But she cuts herself on you every night.
As in, You know that never happened? You know your memory is unreliable. You didn't really order those tickets. You only imagined it. You wanted to go so badly that you emotionally got attached to the idea of going and you thought you ordered those tickets. But we know, you're not quite right in the head. It's understandable, really, you're under a lot of stress these days.
And on and on my brain stewed and swirled. And then the anxiety crept in and started growing into a mountain. My body tensed up, the adrenaline raced through my arms, the thoughts took flight, the overwhelm, the cyclic edge and the feeling of being lost in the drowning ocean of cPTSD swirled....
But, I've been doing a lot of work in healing. And eventually something snapped. And I went, wait. Do you see what you're doing? You're fucking gaslighting yourself!!! You're perpetuating his shit again! You're scared and anxious and losing your head, not because you're going crazy but rather because the PTSD got triggered and this experience took you back to the Matrix. There is another explanation for this rather than faulty memory. Take a deep breath. Figure it out.
It was only then that it occurred to me to check my bank statement. And I've never been happier to see money charged to my account! Hallelujah! That charge felt like a bona-fida certificate from the school of Narc Abuse Recovery. I grinned. I'm not crazy!!! I did order those tickets! And then it occurred to me that the email tied to my FB is a rather old email address that I never check. And the confirmation was probably emailed to that address--the app having been a FB app. I accessed the email and found further confirmation that I need to keep restoring self trust!
And this felt like progress. This felt like I can do this thing called recovery. And I don't have to be perfect at it. There will be hiccups. There will be bumps in the road where I wander off the path and get a little lost. But the further I walk down the healing path, the more certain I am that I will find my way in recovery and continue in realizing that He's just a blade too dull to raise.
And in some sort of twisted irony, the band in question, Over the Rhine, has one of the most apt lyrical descriptions in song format of narcissistic abuse and the struggle to recover and get oneself out of it....
She
What she would like to do
Is get you out of her head
She's tried every trick
She's so sick of thinking about it
What's so special about you
You're an ache she's learned to crave
You're a blade too dull to raise
You're an ache she's learned to crave
You're a blade too dull to raise
But she cuts herself
On you every night
She's just dying
To lay down the knife
On you every night
She's just dying
To lay down the knife
What she would love to do
Is get you out of her bed
She's played it over and over and over
In her head
Is get you out of her bed
She's played it over and over and over
In her head
But she cuts herself
On you every night
She's just dying
To lay down the knife
On you every night
She's just dying
To lay down the knife
She clings to what's familiar
She thinks a change would kill her
She thinks a change would kill her
What she ought to do
Is put a gun to your head
For all the things you said and did
Is put a gun to your head
For all the things you said and did
But what she will not do
Is let you go before you're gone
It's everything that's ever been wrong
But it's all she's ever known
Is let you go before you're gone
It's everything that's ever been wrong
But it's all she's ever known
So she cuts herself on you every night
She's just dying to lay down her life.
What she would like to do
She's just dying to lay down her life.
What she would like to do
Is get you out of her head....
-Over the Rhine
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Why Not, Beautiful?
Why couldn't he have just said, some of the time, you are beautiful.
I hear this from strangers on dating apps.
Some of time, they might have agendas. To get into my pants, etc. But why? Why couldn't my lover, my ex, my husband have told me that he thought me beautiful? How do you never say that to someone you are married to for something like 17 yrs. I work through this shit, daily, perhaps. It's not that I want to be special, or extraordinary or model-esque or some kind of wonderful. I just want to be and feel some kind of normal. I want to feel like there is this one guy out there that thinks me to be great. Beautiful even.
I never got that from my narc. No. Rather, I was tolerable, at best.
Sometimes, he wasn't embarrassed to be with me. Like the time he told me to start using flash cards to memorize GRE words so that I might not sound so low brow, so midwestern, so uneducated at the Philosophy Grad Student gatherings. Sometimes, I didn't sound quite so dumb, to him.
I mean I was never enough. But sometimes, I was not quite as bad. Sometimes he didn't interrupt me or talk over me to tell my story to the philosophy wives standing in a circle around the mustard potato salad.
God forbid I open my mouth at a philosophy picnic and talk to the chair of the Department! Shut up.
I was always less than. Not enough of anything. One that ought be interrupted so as to minimize the damage of what the hell she uneducatedly said.
Never quite right. Just try harder. Be smarter, you dumb ass.
Speak to the philosophy wives about black bean dips. But never ever open your mouth to engage my professors. You are and will always be beneath them. You will never be....
But why not, beautiful, just the way I am? Without flash cards or GRE or words or scripts memorized? Maybe for a split second, I am enough. I don't know. Please. Thank you. Perhaps. In the future? Someday? Never?
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Fly me Away to the Moon
Everyone in post-narcalypse-therapy-world says you have to go No Contact or Minimal Contact if you ever want to heal from narcissistic abuse. I've been chewing the fat on this truth for three plus years now. With my going back and forth between my two locales I've watched myself lose ground, lose energy, lose momentum in my recovery. Reentry into the narcissistic orbit has seemed more difficult each time I do it, which has been about every other week for the past year and a half.
My own body bears the scars. Organs slip and displace themselves. They tell the story of what is really happening. The carrying is heavy. Perhaps, too much.
You can't keep this up. It is too much. You must listen to us or we shall scream louder, telling you things you don't want to hear.
And so, I've had to do the most difficult thing I've ever done (other than leave my narcissist). I've had to move away from my kids. The people I pushed out of my own body. I've had to hug them and tell them they'll be ok, even when I wish I could protect them. I never thought it would come to this.
I never thought I would have to do this. While things have changed in the past few years and slowly I've pulled myself out of the massive spider web, bit by bit. And I'm back to being more me now than I've been in perhaps eons, I never thought that this would be the path. That this would be the end. I mean who goes, "I'll take the Narc Abuse for like 17 years, Alex, then abandon my own children for $200." But, I tell you dear reader, that there is no other way. The Raven says there is always another way. So let me rephrase that. There is no other way that I can see at this point without some sort of XRAY superwoman vision.
The financial abuse has strangled, controlling so much. Now, my hand is forced. I have to be where I can grow in order to get myself further out of the narc orbit and heal. So that I'm not a shadow of the girl I used to be when I'm with my little--now big people.
And so I've sprung. Done that thing that intensifies parental guilt and pain and shame. I've moved away. My narc says so many things. Of course, he'll spin this in a particular way to them. He'll do everything to brainwash them as he did me. And I can only hope that I've laid down enough of a foundation to help them see through all the funhouse smoke and mirrors trick show he inflicts on all around him.
Pain has a way of teaching us the lessons we don't want to see or learn. It certainly did for me. They are bright, brilliant kids even. And in these past few months, I've spoken more openly with them about some of the painful topics they are only now old enough to get.
And so I must do this, step back into myself and into whom I'm meant to be, for them. So that I can be the parent they need me to be, even if from afar. So fly me to the moon, please now.
My own body bears the scars. Organs slip and displace themselves. They tell the story of what is really happening. The carrying is heavy. Perhaps, too much.
You can't keep this up. It is too much. You must listen to us or we shall scream louder, telling you things you don't want to hear.
And so, I've had to do the most difficult thing I've ever done (other than leave my narcissist). I've had to move away from my kids. The people I pushed out of my own body. I've had to hug them and tell them they'll be ok, even when I wish I could protect them. I never thought it would come to this.
I never thought I would have to do this. While things have changed in the past few years and slowly I've pulled myself out of the massive spider web, bit by bit. And I'm back to being more me now than I've been in perhaps eons, I never thought that this would be the path. That this would be the end. I mean who goes, "I'll take the Narc Abuse for like 17 years, Alex, then abandon my own children for $200." But, I tell you dear reader, that there is no other way. The Raven says there is always another way. So let me rephrase that. There is no other way that I can see at this point without some sort of XRAY superwoman vision.
The financial abuse has strangled, controlling so much. Now, my hand is forced. I have to be where I can grow in order to get myself further out of the narc orbit and heal. So that I'm not a shadow of the girl I used to be when I'm with my little--now big people.
And so I've sprung. Done that thing that intensifies parental guilt and pain and shame. I've moved away. My narc says so many things. Of course, he'll spin this in a particular way to them. He'll do everything to brainwash them as he did me. And I can only hope that I've laid down enough of a foundation to help them see through all the funhouse smoke and mirrors trick show he inflicts on all around him.
Pain has a way of teaching us the lessons we don't want to see or learn. It certainly did for me. They are bright, brilliant kids even. And in these past few months, I've spoken more openly with them about some of the painful topics they are only now old enough to get.
And so I must do this, step back into myself and into whom I'm meant to be, for them. So that I can be the parent they need me to be, even if from afar. So fly me to the moon, please now.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
On Grieving the What Mights
Sometimes the most tragic piece punches me unexpectedly in the gut. You'd think after all the abuse, all the hell in trying to escape the narcissist that in escape there would be only relief. But there is a hidden sadness that can sneak up behind you. You mistakenly think, if I can just get the hell out... If I can just survive and move on.... Why then I'll be fine.
And then there you go imagining like you've always done. Thinking of what might have been, if he'd only been able to choose something different. Just when you think you're finished with all the drama, all the death, all the grief and endings of dead relationships. There is a little spot that gets in.
Call it the what-might-have-been grief.
After you've invested so many years trying to love someone who for all intensive purposes can not ever love you back, you've come to intimately know the good friend of what-might-be. For many years, what-might-be has been one of your steadiest companions. What-might-be has been your hope, your citadel. And then what-might-be flies away into the air, evaporated just like everything else.
And this can be completely ungrounding. Cause who thinks of grieving the loss of the shared dreams, the future, the hopes of the growth, the butterfly transformation. But, you've lost so much. Why not this, too? After all, the snake goes on as perpetual death and life cycle.
And then there you go imagining like you've always done. Thinking of what might have been, if he'd only been able to choose something different. Just when you think you're finished with all the drama, all the death, all the grief and endings of dead relationships. There is a little spot that gets in.
Call it the what-might-have-been grief.
After you've invested so many years trying to love someone who for all intensive purposes can not ever love you back, you've come to intimately know the good friend of what-might-be. For many years, what-might-be has been one of your steadiest companions. What-might-be has been your hope, your citadel. And then what-might-be flies away into the air, evaporated just like everything else.
And this can be completely ungrounding. Cause who thinks of grieving the loss of the shared dreams, the future, the hopes of the growth, the butterfly transformation. But, you've lost so much. Why not this, too? After all, the snake goes on as perpetual death and life cycle.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Untitled
I moved my life around for you. I trusted you and your dreams. I let my guard down.
And you went off and let someone advise you that doesn't know much at all. Someone who has no idea about all the players. You listened to someone you've known for a solid month. Someone who only knows how to flatter you and your ego. Someone who knows how to manipulate you into sending more money than you can pay him, so that he can advise you on how to cut off the relationships that were meant to be the Divine in your life.
So go ahead. I dare you.
I'm sorry if the Divine in me bites you in the ass.
And you went off and let someone advise you that doesn't know much at all. Someone who has no idea about all the players. You listened to someone you've known for a solid month. Someone who only knows how to flatter you and your ego. Someone who knows how to manipulate you into sending more money than you can pay him, so that he can advise you on how to cut off the relationships that were meant to be the Divine in your life.
So go ahead. I dare you.
I'm sorry if the Divine in me bites you in the ass.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
On Mattering post Narcissist
Maybe one of the real reasons I was able--am able to be escaping the narcissist in the first place was because my work compelled me to do so. You see, if your work is intense enough, obvious enough, especially on the helping people front, it will teach you things, in spite of what the narcissist says.
And when your work gives you a reason to believe otherwise, or directly contradicts what the narcissist says, you have some thread to hold on to. Mostly, he told me shit like that I was terrible at what I do. Mostly, he was quite critical of my every flaw, even my skill that clearly wasn't on par with his. Mostly, he was the one pulling--dragging us along. Mostly, his work mattered, not mine. But, the facts are that when it comes down to what I do--helping people, well most days, I think it does matter.
Some days, I can point to real people who might not be around, but for my work. There are folks that might have taken their own lives. On those particular days, I think it does matter, this thing that I do.
But, anyhow. I'm definitely not perfect.
All I can say is some days I do help people. I can't say it's an easy thing, talking someone out of suicide who is dead set on it. (Really, no pun intended). That space opens up and you feel swallowed up. so inept, so small. The emptiness hits you. A human being is waiting alone in the dark for somebody--anybody--to contradict the screaming worthlessness in their own head. And mostly you don't really know if you have the right words. Maybe, you don't have any words.
Please don't kill yourself. Please don't take your own life. Please give it more time.
That's all you have. And it feels so ridiculously inept. After all the specialists, all the people who tried but somehow couldn't reach them, and you might be the last stop?
And there you are trying not to hear the narcissist screaming about all your flaws and shortcomings cause honestly, that might get in the way of helping. You can't go into helping someone in a really dark space with your own demons.
And the psychic space where someone wants help often has its own set of demons. Sometimes that person throws out attempts to sabotage any and all help--sometimes they legitimately want to alienate, to abuse, in order to get someone to give up on them. That is most difficult. It is most heavy. And that is the space inhabited, in this kind of work, a lot of the time.
It is saturated with the great weight of a storm cloud.
And you have to do best to talk them back from the ledge. You have to remind them that they do matter. Sometimes, it sneaks up on you that you are there reminding yourself as well as the other person..The world needs you. There is no one else like you. This is what it means to be human, after all. Unique individuals trying to contribute to the good of the planet.
You say it to yourself as much as to the person in front of you:
Please don't kill yourself.
They don't know you're saying it outloud for both of you. It's not supposed to be about you.
But, sometimes it happens to fall on a day where the narcissistic brainwashing lingers loudly in your head. You try to force feed the good stuff into your own brain as much as into the brain of the person sitting in front of you.
And sometimes the act of doing that helps. The action reminds that what the Narc said about you wasn't true. Your work does matter. At least, sometimes. For the other. For you. For us all, as human beings. Which is something the narcissist really can't understand and never will.
And sometimes you just have to go on clinging to the fact that your work, imperfect though it be, is beneficial. And it helps others and yourself with the narcissistic deprogramming.
And when your work gives you a reason to believe otherwise, or directly contradicts what the narcissist says, you have some thread to hold on to. Mostly, he told me shit like that I was terrible at what I do. Mostly, he was quite critical of my every flaw, even my skill that clearly wasn't on par with his. Mostly, he was the one pulling--dragging us along. Mostly, his work mattered, not mine. But, the facts are that when it comes down to what I do--helping people, well most days, I think it does matter.
Some days, I can point to real people who might not be around, but for my work. There are folks that might have taken their own lives. On those particular days, I think it does matter, this thing that I do.
But, anyhow. I'm definitely not perfect.
All I can say is some days I do help people. I can't say it's an easy thing, talking someone out of suicide who is dead set on it. (Really, no pun intended). That space opens up and you feel swallowed up. so inept, so small. The emptiness hits you. A human being is waiting alone in the dark for somebody--anybody--to contradict the screaming worthlessness in their own head. And mostly you don't really know if you have the right words. Maybe, you don't have any words.
Please don't kill yourself. Please don't take your own life. Please give it more time.
That's all you have. And it feels so ridiculously inept. After all the specialists, all the people who tried but somehow couldn't reach them, and you might be the last stop?
And there you are trying not to hear the narcissist screaming about all your flaws and shortcomings cause honestly, that might get in the way of helping. You can't go into helping someone in a really dark space with your own demons.
And the psychic space where someone wants help often has its own set of demons. Sometimes that person throws out attempts to sabotage any and all help--sometimes they legitimately want to alienate, to abuse, in order to get someone to give up on them. That is most difficult. It is most heavy. And that is the space inhabited, in this kind of work, a lot of the time.
It is saturated with the great weight of a storm cloud.
And you have to do best to talk them back from the ledge. You have to remind them that they do matter. Sometimes, it sneaks up on you that you are there reminding yourself as well as the other person..The world needs you. There is no one else like you. This is what it means to be human, after all. Unique individuals trying to contribute to the good of the planet.
You say it to yourself as much as to the person in front of you:
Please don't kill yourself.
They don't know you're saying it outloud for both of you. It's not supposed to be about you.
But, sometimes it happens to fall on a day where the narcissistic brainwashing lingers loudly in your head. You try to force feed the good stuff into your own brain as much as into the brain of the person sitting in front of you.
And sometimes the act of doing that helps. The action reminds that what the Narc said about you wasn't true. Your work does matter. At least, sometimes. For the other. For you. For us all, as human beings. Which is something the narcissist really can't understand and never will.
And sometimes you just have to go on clinging to the fact that your work, imperfect though it be, is beneficial. And it helps others and yourself with the narcissistic deprogramming.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
A Morning Offering by John O'Donohue
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
--John O'Donohue
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Waiting for the Fog
Crossing the ridge on Kepler, if one is smart, one considers the potential for crosswinds and fog and summer snow and Avalanches any time of year. No matter the actual conditions when you set out, the island factor must be considered and you must always be prepared for things turning on a dime. If you can't see the way ahead, you might spend useless hours going the wrong way and you must carry basic tools to deal. A few die every few years on the trail, losing their way in the wrong conditions or not taking seriously the potential for things not going as intended.
Sometimes I think I chose this particular track because it must have somehow felt familiar due to the unpredictability factor. Maybe I chose the whole damn country because of that, as well. My making my way was symbolic. A pack strapped to my back, it was more than a tramp, it was a statement to myself, to the world that I can do this thing called living on my own, independent of my ex.
The truth is, I'm not so sure I can.
Most of the trail I spent thinking just how ridiculous my own anxieties actually are--at least while hiking. My world, my future all felt so crisp and clear and at hand. My intuition, my true self felt so close, it was as if the real authentic me who has felt a long way off was back--central, rooted, strong like the trees on the trail growing straight out of the rock.
Even crossing the spine, the fog rolled in and out like anxiety sometimes can. When it was close at hand, the visibility was sometimes 6 feet. But, even still the sense of things lurking behind the fog did not disturb me. When it cleared you could see for miles. While trekking, I enjoyed the clouds dancing with the mountains like some ballroom choreography set to the rhythm of the winds. So relaxed, as if dancing with my lover on the ballroom floor.
But once back, my anxieties and worries seemingly grabbed on, clinging with a fierce death grip like the moss and trees that clung to those rocks on the sides of the mountains of Fiordlands--waiting to topple and strip a clearing in one giant tree-slip avalanche.
I'm not sure why I chose to hike Kepler in Fiordland. And maybe I didn't choose it. Maybe the track chose me. It was fitting on most levels. The concerns of such variable weather conditions taking me off the trail hit close to home. Much like the narcissistic storms that come out of seemingly nowhere, blind siding my purpose or day or stability and necessitating tools to find my own way, yet again. I perpetually worry that I've lost my way in life--that I'm not getting out the right way, that I'll never find my own somebody to connect with again, that I'll continue at failing on every front in life over and over again. I feel like I've been tramping alone for so long, with a pack so heavy that I'm not sure I can relate anymore to most people. I'm tired of explaining to people who don't listen, who think they get it, who compare their drifting divorce experience to the one where you leave a narcissist who won't let you leave, ever.
Even four years out from "waking up," with his soon to be new wife settled in to the new house they bought together with the pool and the potted planters, you might still get blindsided by deep indescribable sadness as it once again strikes you that he never did love you and the years were just an illusion. The torture of potential memories that you haven't yet grieved for what they really were blowing in like a snow storm on Kepler in the middle of summer can keep you edgy. You do traverse a ridge.
You might never doubt the decision you made to leave the narcissist, but the overwhelming endlessness of the trek floats in like the clouds at times. I still worry I'll never fully escape his orbit. I worry he'll never get bored and leave me alone. I worry he'll never tire of trying to take or find something else to take from me. I worry that this track has no end or that it loops on forever like Kepler.
But looping though it is, Kepler does have a bridge at the end or beginning, however you manage it. And the name of the bridge is called Rainbow Reach. And I'm sure we can all imagine the symbolism of a Rainbow.
I know there were lessons in tramping this track. I'm still sorting out what those lessons might be. Part of that sorting out unfortunately appears to involve still more waiting--waiting for the fog or winds or weather to change.
Sometimes I think I chose this particular track because it must have somehow felt familiar due to the unpredictability factor. Maybe I chose the whole damn country because of that, as well. My making my way was symbolic. A pack strapped to my back, it was more than a tramp, it was a statement to myself, to the world that I can do this thing called living on my own, independent of my ex.
The truth is, I'm not so sure I can.
Most of the trail I spent thinking just how ridiculous my own anxieties actually are--at least while hiking. My world, my future all felt so crisp and clear and at hand. My intuition, my true self felt so close, it was as if the real authentic me who has felt a long way off was back--central, rooted, strong like the trees on the trail growing straight out of the rock.
Even crossing the spine, the fog rolled in and out like anxiety sometimes can. When it was close at hand, the visibility was sometimes 6 feet. But, even still the sense of things lurking behind the fog did not disturb me. When it cleared you could see for miles. While trekking, I enjoyed the clouds dancing with the mountains like some ballroom choreography set to the rhythm of the winds. So relaxed, as if dancing with my lover on the ballroom floor.
But once back, my anxieties and worries seemingly grabbed on, clinging with a fierce death grip like the moss and trees that clung to those rocks on the sides of the mountains of Fiordlands--waiting to topple and strip a clearing in one giant tree-slip avalanche.
I'm not sure why I chose to hike Kepler in Fiordland. And maybe I didn't choose it. Maybe the track chose me. It was fitting on most levels. The concerns of such variable weather conditions taking me off the trail hit close to home. Much like the narcissistic storms that come out of seemingly nowhere, blind siding my purpose or day or stability and necessitating tools to find my own way, yet again. I perpetually worry that I've lost my way in life--that I'm not getting out the right way, that I'll never find my own somebody to connect with again, that I'll continue at failing on every front in life over and over again. I feel like I've been tramping alone for so long, with a pack so heavy that I'm not sure I can relate anymore to most people. I'm tired of explaining to people who don't listen, who think they get it, who compare their drifting divorce experience to the one where you leave a narcissist who won't let you leave, ever.
Even four years out from "waking up," with his soon to be new wife settled in to the new house they bought together with the pool and the potted planters, you might still get blindsided by deep indescribable sadness as it once again strikes you that he never did love you and the years were just an illusion. The torture of potential memories that you haven't yet grieved for what they really were blowing in like a snow storm on Kepler in the middle of summer can keep you edgy. You do traverse a ridge.
You might never doubt the decision you made to leave the narcissist, but the overwhelming endlessness of the trek floats in like the clouds at times. I still worry I'll never fully escape his orbit. I worry he'll never get bored and leave me alone. I worry he'll never tire of trying to take or find something else to take from me. I worry that this track has no end or that it loops on forever like Kepler.
But looping though it is, Kepler does have a bridge at the end or beginning, however you manage it. And the name of the bridge is called Rainbow Reach. And I'm sure we can all imagine the symbolism of a Rainbow.
I know there were lessons in tramping this track. I'm still sorting out what those lessons might be. Part of that sorting out unfortunately appears to involve still more waiting--waiting for the fog or winds or weather to change.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Realness that You Don't Recognize
Sometimes the realness surprises you at the most inopportune, uncomfortable times when you'd rather not look your own shit in the face..
The times when you're ready to parade the story out and believe your own bullshit about how things really are.
I've dealt with this shit. I'm over it. I totally know what I'm doing....
And then that real friend shows up and is right there in the middle of the storm. Perhaps being scooped into the ice cream cone, himself. Taking the brunt of the ice cream shit show. Feeling the all powerful anger and whatnot and don't fuck with me edge....
And he just shows up. Takes the words and responds to them even if they don't fully make sense. As if to say it's ok....
Often, he doesn't actually use any words. Just shows up with the joke and the half hearted smirk that makes you catch a glimpse of your own bullshit.
Totally over my ex, you say.
You don't even really get how much he actually sees through the bullshit smokescreen that you happen to believe about the story you tell yourself everyday until he is there dealing with the windmills and cardboard head gear like Sancho Panzes.
The times when you're ready to parade the story out and believe your own bullshit about how things really are.
I've dealt with this shit. I'm over it. I totally know what I'm doing....
And then that real friend shows up and is right there in the middle of the storm. Perhaps being scooped into the ice cream cone, himself. Taking the brunt of the ice cream shit show. Feeling the all powerful anger and whatnot and don't fuck with me edge....
And he just shows up. Takes the words and responds to them even if they don't fully make sense. As if to say it's ok....
Often, he doesn't actually use any words. Just shows up with the joke and the half hearted smirk that makes you catch a glimpse of your own bullshit.
Totally over my ex, you say.
You don't even really get how much he actually sees through the bullshit smokescreen that you happen to believe about the story you tell yourself everyday until he is there dealing with the windmills and cardboard head gear like Sancho Panzes.
Monday, April 3, 2017
Notes to Self
When someone tells you who they are, believe them, the first time.
Remember that most of the time a person will tell you what you need to know about them without words. You will be tempted to pick the words they say that you find lovely and beautiful, that quite possibly contradict what they have already told you without words. Instead focus on what their actions say and run like hell if you find yourself wanting to focus on those flowering, smoke-screen type words that you especially like. These words aren't real. You are the one who added to their un-realness and you might be creating what you want to see in the world rather than what is.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them, the first time.
Remember that most of the time you will want to project good things onto a person, that aren't there. Wait. Give time. Give space. Shut the fuck up yourself and listen with your whole damn body to the space between the words. The attitudes, the quick judgments, the lack of compassion. If you cringe and want to apologize on the person's behalf to the exhausted waitress or the gay bartender, listen to your own damn body. Get the hell out of there.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them, the first time.
Remember that most of the time they will tell you things about how they see the world in the jokes, in the making fun, in the guessing at what you or others are experiencing. A wise person knows they don't know. The unwise will believe in their own ability to know, swiftly and quickly even in the huge wake of poor listening skills. Pay close attention to the things they "jokingly" accuse you or others of. It is often indicative of how they see the world and communicates much about their unhealed shit. They can't pretend in these instances, and the anger or irritability that is sugar coated in the name of humor will tell you a lot. If you say something and they "can't hear what you say" because "you can't take a joke," it is likely to be their best hearing and their hearing is not likely to get much better even with time. Walk away.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them, the first time.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
A Poem from Fiordland
My eyes are filled with tears
at the sight of the mountains of Takitimu
and the mountains of Manwapouri.
Would that I were a bird,
that I might fly forth;
would that I might obtain
for myself wings.
at the sight of the mountains of Takitimu
and the mountains of Manwapouri.
Would that I were a bird,
that I might fly forth;
would that I might obtain
for myself wings.
Friday, March 24, 2017
Wild Water
What the Ranger didn't say was perhaps more important than what he did say.
It's safe. Nobody has ever had any trouble in drinking it. It's clean. Pure. Glacial. Stone washed.
He didn't say that there was risk, all the same. No diarrhea inciting Girardia, but risk on some other level altogether.
He didn't say that you can't drink this water on this walk and remain unchanged. He didn't say that you will never see the world the same again. He didn't say that this water might seep down into your soul. He didn't warn that this--this water is different precisely because it is wild water.
And the stuff wild water is made out of, no-one can be sure.
This water runs free spirited. And if you bathe naked in it your free spirit might meet the free spirit of this wild water.
This wild water nobody controls. Nobody has poisoned it with chlorine or statins. Nobody has blasphemed it into a box the way the Christians sometimes do.
This wild water is different. In what ways, nobody can really say.
All that can be said is that dipping your cup in this stream and drinking will be more than wetting your palate. You drink this water and you might baptize your soul, in the goodness of the ages mysteriously held here in this water after much of nature's embrace has dried up from other places. Nobody can explain this. But, it might be, that you came all this way across the ocean just to drink this water from this stream, in this tiny moment on this walk. That might be it. And the sense of the Divine kindness in that just might overwhelm you. And don't you ever count on being the same after that.
It's safe. Nobody has ever had any trouble in drinking it. It's clean. Pure. Glacial. Stone washed.
He didn't say that there was risk, all the same. No diarrhea inciting Girardia, but risk on some other level altogether.
He didn't say that you can't drink this water on this walk and remain unchanged. He didn't say that you will never see the world the same again. He didn't say that this water might seep down into your soul. He didn't warn that this--this water is different precisely because it is wild water.
And the stuff wild water is made out of, no-one can be sure.
This water runs free spirited. And if you bathe naked in it your free spirit might meet the free spirit of this wild water.
This wild water nobody controls. Nobody has poisoned it with chlorine or statins. Nobody has blasphemed it into a box the way the Christians sometimes do.
This wild water is different. In what ways, nobody can really say.
All that can be said is that dipping your cup in this stream and drinking will be more than wetting your palate. You drink this water and you might baptize your soul, in the goodness of the ages mysteriously held here in this water after much of nature's embrace has dried up from other places. Nobody can explain this. But, it might be, that you came all this way across the ocean just to drink this water from this stream, in this tiny moment on this walk. That might be it. And the sense of the Divine kindness in that just might overwhelm you. And don't you ever count on being the same after that.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Leaning into the Lies
Somehow with the divorce final, I thought the need to lie and exaggerate things would slow down in my ex. Who the fuck cares anymore? We're done. I'd like for the record to reflect that. We don't need to interact except as regards my kids. But alas, my ex, filling the shoes of his father appears to have embraced the path of becoming more pathological in the lying. For no reason whatsoever?
Good news is I've made progress in the healing. I'm getting better at seeing perspective in his antics.
Case in point, yesterday. Had to have a conversation about the upcoming schedule. In the planning, we reviewed my upcoming plans next month.
That's the first I've heard of that... he said when I reviewed the March plans. He pretended that I was springing this upon him. It was so preposterous, I watched myself hardly allow his antics to register. I may have actually been bored. I felt so much indifference, it was as if he was far off and I could hardly hear him.
No. This is not the first you've heard. I said. I can forward you the texts, the emails, the transcripts of the phone conversations, if you like. Yawn. But, I know that I don't need to. Not for me. Go ahead and lay down in your own lie. Allow yourself to be enshrouded in it.
I felt calm. Nonplussed. Unrattled. I had the sense some two year old child had approached me with a plastic sword. Run along child, go play.
This is the first I've heard of that.
No, the stack of emails, texts, and conversations say otherwise.
There was another document from the lawyer. CC'd his name and mine at the bottom--mailed nearly a week ago--a document that stated that for some reason funds were "insufficient" in a financial account only he has access to.
He feigned ignorance. Even going so far as to take a picture on his phone of the document, cause yeah it's not your lawyer who sent it, not your name CC'd at the bottom on record, not you who moved funds out of the account. Right. Of course.
But, he needs to lie. He feeds on this stuff. And somewhere it has drifted past the point of even having threads of connection to reality, past the point of no return. The lies grow more intense, more bombastic, more ridiculous, so that he can have more food to suck down in order to stabilize his own blood sugar that depends upon the lie. I suspect he's unravelling, falling apart at the seams, self destructing. He's so focused on lie creation, nothing else holds relevance. He's like the insect that keeps flying into the bug zapper, lying to itself about the shiny pretty light. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me.
Of course, it can't kill you, Mr Amazing Logician. You say you are impervious to that! There is no arguing with your logic.
Keep saying that. At some point, it won't matter that you feel compelled to tell the world that your little bug self is impervious to the light. Eventually, you'll get settled into that truth. You'll get to bask in the light of a truth all your own. No one ever need contradict you. The truth is patient. The truth will wait to assert itself. But eventually, your little bug carcass will be found lying in its own truth on the ground.
Good news is I've made progress in the healing. I'm getting better at seeing perspective in his antics.
Case in point, yesterday. Had to have a conversation about the upcoming schedule. In the planning, we reviewed my upcoming plans next month.
That's the first I've heard of that... he said when I reviewed the March plans. He pretended that I was springing this upon him. It was so preposterous, I watched myself hardly allow his antics to register. I may have actually been bored. I felt so much indifference, it was as if he was far off and I could hardly hear him.
No. This is not the first you've heard. I said. I can forward you the texts, the emails, the transcripts of the phone conversations, if you like. Yawn. But, I know that I don't need to. Not for me. Go ahead and lay down in your own lie. Allow yourself to be enshrouded in it.
I felt calm. Nonplussed. Unrattled. I had the sense some two year old child had approached me with a plastic sword. Run along child, go play.
This is the first I've heard of that.
No, the stack of emails, texts, and conversations say otherwise.
There was another document from the lawyer. CC'd his name and mine at the bottom--mailed nearly a week ago--a document that stated that for some reason funds were "insufficient" in a financial account only he has access to.
He feigned ignorance. Even going so far as to take a picture on his phone of the document, cause yeah it's not your lawyer who sent it, not your name CC'd at the bottom on record, not you who moved funds out of the account. Right. Of course.
But, he needs to lie. He feeds on this stuff. And somewhere it has drifted past the point of even having threads of connection to reality, past the point of no return. The lies grow more intense, more bombastic, more ridiculous, so that he can have more food to suck down in order to stabilize his own blood sugar that depends upon the lie. I suspect he's unravelling, falling apart at the seams, self destructing. He's so focused on lie creation, nothing else holds relevance. He's like the insect that keeps flying into the bug zapper, lying to itself about the shiny pretty light. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me.
Of course, it can't kill you, Mr Amazing Logician. You say you are impervious to that! There is no arguing with your logic.
Keep saying that. At some point, it won't matter that you feel compelled to tell the world that your little bug self is impervious to the light. Eventually, you'll get settled into that truth. You'll get to bask in the light of a truth all your own. No one ever need contradict you. The truth is patient. The truth will wait to assert itself. But eventually, your little bug carcass will be found lying in its own truth on the ground.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
On Being a Bore
I suppose my latest strategy is to bore him to death. And this--this is much harder than it sounds.
You see. I don't actually think I'm a boring person.
I've numerous interests. Truth be told, I aspire to be a freakin renaissance woman, most of the time.
I'm the one in the apartment complex in need of a piano. I lift weights. I run the partial racks on the billiard table. I have a brain and a terminal degree. I enjoy art--even the art I make. I write. Most of the time, I prefer to do things myself, because I care about actually doing it to my own personal standard that sometimes seems different than others. As I type, I suspect I sound like a narcissist, myself.
I was raised by at least one parent with very high standards. Standards that might be construed as related to said parent's narcissistic traits.
That may have potentially contributed to my ending up with a narcissist.
Thus, I'm trying the boring strategy.
More or less I aim to communicate that I might be the most boring person on the planet.
I'm absolutely a bore. And this is hard.
Because, if anything, the narcissist has caused me to work on myself, quite a bit, over the years. At many points, I had to work on myself in order to survive. I worked in order to learn and grow and change. Ironically, this was what the narcissist ended up conjuring out of me, though he can do precious little in conjuring such out of himself.
And so, in some sort of weird, ironic twist of fate, I kind of have him to thank for being who I am.
But, I'm so working on being a bore or at least communicating that I'm a bore. Just so you know...
You see. I don't actually think I'm a boring person.
I've numerous interests. Truth be told, I aspire to be a freakin renaissance woman, most of the time.
I'm the one in the apartment complex in need of a piano. I lift weights. I run the partial racks on the billiard table. I have a brain and a terminal degree. I enjoy art--even the art I make. I write. Most of the time, I prefer to do things myself, because I care about actually doing it to my own personal standard that sometimes seems different than others. As I type, I suspect I sound like a narcissist, myself.
I was raised by at least one parent with very high standards. Standards that might be construed as related to said parent's narcissistic traits.
That may have potentially contributed to my ending up with a narcissist.
Thus, I'm trying the boring strategy.
More or less I aim to communicate that I might be the most boring person on the planet.
I'm absolutely a bore. And this is hard.
Because, if anything, the narcissist has caused me to work on myself, quite a bit, over the years. At many points, I had to work on myself in order to survive. I worked in order to learn and grow and change. Ironically, this was what the narcissist ended up conjuring out of me, though he can do precious little in conjuring such out of himself.
And so, in some sort of weird, ironic twist of fate, I kind of have him to thank for being who I am.
But, I'm so working on being a bore or at least communicating that I'm a bore. Just so you know...
Thursday, February 9, 2017
on Clutches and Transitions
The clutch "went out" on my Honda. Maybe, you can blame it on the 200 thousand miles it has weathered and disclaim that it is rather old. You might even suggest we ought expect such behavior from a 1999 Honda Accord. We might even plan for it if we were the planning type.
But the what it "going out" means was that I was driving north on the 17 at 5am on a Saturday morning in the dark and cold when the revving in 5th gear wasn't right and I lost power and the missing sound was obnoxious enough that even I, non car-whisperer that I am, could recognize pathology in the sound and behavior. I prayed for non-texting teenagers as I hung out in the desert shoulder.
The tow truck showed. Only 4 dollars per mile plus the $80 per hour. Geez, what a deal!
Anyhow, the clutch.
The clutch's going out, miss firing or whatever clutches do when they fail struck me as strangely appropriate on some sort of grand symbolic level. You see it is the thing that facilitates the changing of gears, the switching of speeds or the redirecting. It is the one transitioning element.
And the clutch going out, might as well speak for my whole damn life at this point.
Because, I struggle with the transitions. Indeed, I feel like my own gears are perpetually missing as I go back and forth between my two opposing worlds--mountains and sun, entrepreneurial work and motherhood, future and past. There never seems quite enough time to feel settled in one locale before I'm on a plane back to the other.
I've never felt more alone.
I've never felt quite so detached--as if caught between worlds--as soon as I begin to more deeply connect, it is as if I'm sucked back up to that other place.
The garage said the flywheel had to be replaced. Apparently, sometimes you can file it down rather than replace it. But this can only happen if it hasn't taken on too much damage. So not this time--too much damage.
Right now, I feel like that flywheel--worn down to the nub. I feel the endlessness of the journey, like my Honda on the side of the 17, I am broken down, exhausted, unable to seamlessly shift between the different worlds I must inhabit in order to survive. I tell myself that slowly and surely all my parts are getting replaced. I am being rebuilt. I am also reminded that this is probably the antithesis of what my ex Narc would choose--pain leading you down a path of growth, change, and transition? No way. And so I remind myself to let the pain guide me toward the transformation that only this pain can build in me. I clutch tightly my beautiful future that will be all the more meaningful having been here.
But the what it "going out" means was that I was driving north on the 17 at 5am on a Saturday morning in the dark and cold when the revving in 5th gear wasn't right and I lost power and the missing sound was obnoxious enough that even I, non car-whisperer that I am, could recognize pathology in the sound and behavior. I prayed for non-texting teenagers as I hung out in the desert shoulder.
The tow truck showed. Only 4 dollars per mile plus the $80 per hour. Geez, what a deal!
Anyhow, the clutch.
The clutch's going out, miss firing or whatever clutches do when they fail struck me as strangely appropriate on some sort of grand symbolic level. You see it is the thing that facilitates the changing of gears, the switching of speeds or the redirecting. It is the one transitioning element.
And the clutch going out, might as well speak for my whole damn life at this point.
Because, I struggle with the transitions. Indeed, I feel like my own gears are perpetually missing as I go back and forth between my two opposing worlds--mountains and sun, entrepreneurial work and motherhood, future and past. There never seems quite enough time to feel settled in one locale before I'm on a plane back to the other.
I've never felt more alone.
I've never felt quite so detached--as if caught between worlds--as soon as I begin to more deeply connect, it is as if I'm sucked back up to that other place.
The garage said the flywheel had to be replaced. Apparently, sometimes you can file it down rather than replace it. But this can only happen if it hasn't taken on too much damage. So not this time--too much damage.
Right now, I feel like that flywheel--worn down to the nub. I feel the endlessness of the journey, like my Honda on the side of the 17, I am broken down, exhausted, unable to seamlessly shift between the different worlds I must inhabit in order to survive. I tell myself that slowly and surely all my parts are getting replaced. I am being rebuilt. I am also reminded that this is probably the antithesis of what my ex Narc would choose--pain leading you down a path of growth, change, and transition? No way. And so I remind myself to let the pain guide me toward the transformation that only this pain can build in me. I clutch tightly my beautiful future that will be all the more meaningful having been here.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Three Babies
Sometimes I ask myself precisely how many times I can let go of the same thing over and over? Precisely, how many times can I pare down to less? I keep thinking I've given up almost everything. Indeed, letting go feels likes my perpetual lesson.
I let go of house and home.
I let go of those things I thought, necessary.
I let go of the parts of myself that I thought were core bits, but ultimately, not true.
I let go of material things.
I let go of friends and companions.
I let go of family.
And there is always more I realize I'm attached to.
There is always more to let go of.
And then there are some things you really shouldn't let go of, I tell myself.
And so I don't. I won't.
Like my three babies.
Each of these my three babies I will carry with me.
For myself I ask no one else to be mother to these three.
And of course I'm like a wild horse
But there's no other way to be.
Water and feed are not things that I need
For the thing that I've chosen to be.
In my soul
My blood and bones
I have wrapped your cold bodies around me.
The face on you
The smell on you
will always be with me.
And this is the manipulating point my Narc knows.
He knows my love for them means I will not ever abandon them to him.
Each of these my three babies.
I let go of all else, but.
I let go of house and home.
I let go of those things I thought, necessary.
I let go of the parts of myself that I thought were core bits, but ultimately, not true.
I let go of material things.
I let go of friends and companions.
I let go of family.
And there is always more I realize I'm attached to.
There is always more to let go of.
And then there are some things you really shouldn't let go of, I tell myself.
And so I don't. I won't.
Like my three babies.
Each of these my three babies I will carry with me.
For myself I ask no one else to be mother to these three.
And of course I'm like a wild horse
But there's no other way to be.
Water and feed are not things that I need
For the thing that I've chosen to be.
In my soul
My blood and bones
I have wrapped your cold bodies around me.
The face on you
The smell on you
will always be with me.
And this is the manipulating point my Narc knows.
He knows my love for them means I will not ever abandon them to him.
Each of these my three babies.
I let go of all else, but.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Pilgrimages
(To get us through on this journey a poem by R.S. Thomas)
There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat, the way
the saints went, traveling the gallery
of the frightened faces of
the long-drowned, munching gravel
of its beaches. So I have gone
up the salt lane to the building
with the stone altar, and the candles
gone out, and kneeled and lifted
my eyes to the furious gargoyle
of the owl that is like a god
gone small and resentful. There
is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us, and
leaving as we arrive.
There are those here
not given to prayer, whose office
is the blank sea that they say daily.
What they listen to is not
hymns, but the slow chemistry of the soil,
that turns saints’ bones into dust,
due to an irritant of the nostril.
There is no time on this island.
The swinging pendulum of the tide
has no clock; the events
are dateless. The people are not
late or soon; they are just
here, with only the one question
to ask, which life answers
by being in them. It is I
who ask. Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that, in times
like these, and for one like me,
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather, and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?
-R.S. Thomas
Thursday, January 19, 2017
chosen
Over and over on this journey out of the fog, I've had the sense that I did not choose this path. It's as if I woke up one day and finally saw the reality of my life. My relationship with the narcissist, finally struck me as the non-relationship that it was. I saw that I was staring at the projected shadows on the back wall of Plato's Cave. (If you knew me, you'd know exactly how ironic that analogy is.) I woke up in the middle of a nightmare only to find that what I thought was a mere dream that I needed to awaken from yet again--a dream within a dream as it were--was the real nightmare of this world of being connected to a narcissist. On and on it has persisted as the reality I am in that I cannot wake up from further. The exhaustion point in fighting it has set in and still it goes on. And thus the feeling percolates that I didn't really choose this path. I keep trying to wake up out of said nightmare. But I am awake. I never chose to be one of those people who always chooses to awaken and face the fucked up reality over persisting in living in some false dreamworld created by some narcissistic delusion. But I am one of those people. I will always choose awakening. In spite of all the work and grief and hell and turmoil to endure. No, I'm one who always chooses the red pill over the blue pill. And perhaps that is why, I've never entirely felt like I chose this path. Rather, for some reason this path chose me.
And it keeps choosing me.
Odd as it sounds, that thought gives me comfort. In some sort of fucked up-ed-ness, I cling to that.
And it keeps choosing me.
Odd as it sounds, that thought gives me comfort. In some sort of fucked up-ed-ness, I cling to that.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Snake Eyes
If only I could erase the tree of knowledge that came from that look. The look that I perpetually go back to. The look that instagrammed the relationship into one cohesive picture for all parts of me to observe.
That split second that almost seemed to bleed all moments of the past 20 years into one.
Somehow in that look my destiny juxtaposed the Red-Seas-of-my-Egyptian-escapism versus the-slavery-isn't-so-bad bit next to one another. And in that moment, my escape route was hatched. Right down the middle of the walled off sea. The look that was able to break through into my own deluded mind, causing some sort of contrecoup injury to my jostled brain.
I might be choosing a drowning death of the Sea by leaving.
But those frozen far off eyes told me of another death. It wasn't the one I had always thought. It wasn't the pat answer I thought. I realized there must have been a soul murdering way back in the past. For those eyes stared out of a body that had no soul.
That frozen framed moment crystallized "the why" so that I could mount the courage to enter the threatening Sea that might drown me. The why for how to choose your own death.
That look revealed my real choice was caught in the space between the slow agonizing death of my soul or the accidental death in my escape in crossing the Sea.
The relationship was already dead. There was no resurrection of it. I was holding up a giant empty shell and though already dead, my holding it threatened to kill me--my soul. I had to stab the shell, in order to live or die more authentically.
I looked into the eyes of my own death dream and I vowed that dying in the act of soul preservation was indeed the sort of death worth living your whole life for. And so I stabbed the giant snake.
That split second that almost seemed to bleed all moments of the past 20 years into one.
Somehow in that look my destiny juxtaposed the Red-Seas-of-my-Egyptian-escapism versus the-slavery-isn't-so-bad bit next to one another. And in that moment, my escape route was hatched. Right down the middle of the walled off sea. The look that was able to break through into my own deluded mind, causing some sort of contrecoup injury to my jostled brain.
I might be choosing a drowning death of the Sea by leaving.
But those frozen far off eyes told me of another death. It wasn't the one I had always thought. It wasn't the pat answer I thought. I realized there must have been a soul murdering way back in the past. For those eyes stared out of a body that had no soul.
That frozen framed moment crystallized "the why" so that I could mount the courage to enter the threatening Sea that might drown me. The why for how to choose your own death.
That look revealed my real choice was caught in the space between the slow agonizing death of my soul or the accidental death in my escape in crossing the Sea.
The relationship was already dead. There was no resurrection of it. I was holding up a giant empty shell and though already dead, my holding it threatened to kill me--my soul. I had to stab the shell, in order to live or die more authentically.
I looked into the eyes of my own death dream and I vowed that dying in the act of soul preservation was indeed the sort of death worth living your whole life for. And so I stabbed the giant snake.
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