Don't Mess with Me When We are on the Cusp Betwixt Pisces and Aries...

And back and forth I go....

Had to converse with the ex today.

Oh-so-surprisingly, he pulled out all the stops. I mean, not surprising, at all....Bullying. Insults. Misrepresentations of the truth. Exaggerations. Denial of reality.

He was ANGRY that I said "No." No, I won't bend to your will for the umpteenth time. He couldn't be reasonable, a human being. He couldn't see anything other than his own delusion of the truth. And his own story.

None of the above was surprising.

What was surprising was me. I said, No. Boldly. Surely. Strongly.

Even in the space of the threats of his getting the law to assault me, I felt calm. I felt like I was addressing a two-year-old with a plastic sword. I'm sorry. But, No, I won't, Junior. 

Perhaps, I didn't say No enough all along when we were together. He is most certainly not accustomed to it. He most generally flips his shit and becomes some sort of two-year-old child when you say, No.

But somewhat miraculously, this didn't phase me much. Distance is charming that way. You get perspective when you finally get away!

And so today, I relish being out of his orbit. I relish saying, No. I relish not explaining myself because I don't have to. He doesn't have the right to demand explanation of me. I am an autonomous human being. And the longer I am out of his orbit far away from him, the stronger I grow!

And so today, I relish this little bit of freedom. Resilience. Empowerment.

And while it is still possible I may have felt a little sorry for him, I choose this lovely space of away, out of orbit, free. I might have felt sorry for the fact that this is where he shall remain the rest of his sad life. Stuck. Walled off from growth. His own narcissistic gravity keeping him from leaving his own delusional shit. He doesn't get to transform and become! He doesn't get to fly away with another to some nostalgic, dreamy, tower to have Orange Pekoe tea while floating. He has to tolerate his same old fragile, manipulative self. And that is burden enough.

So for now, I relish the fact that it is my time of year. My Spring. My season. The Equinox. My birthday month. The time when I feel most right. The time when the planets align for me. The time not to mess with me.... cause dammit, I'm healing!!!

You Know You're Not Healing from Narc Abuse When

You Know You're Not Healing from Narc Abuse When....
You are definitely stuck in some sort of time warp that repeats itself every few days or weeks.

You Know You're Not Healing from Narc Abuse When...
You revert to childish, junior high behaviors.

You Know You're Not Healing from Narc Abuse When...
You dwell continually on all the ways the planet, your kids, everyone would be better off without you. You know should fight this but today it just seems so much more true.

You Know You're Not Healing from Narc Abuse When...
You feel like you are stuck in the same place as a year ago, except all the head clearing from a long hike has gone far, far away.

You Know You're Not Healing from Narc Abuse When...
You don't feel like you ever left the web and there is still no way out.

Cycles

There is a cycle I predictably engage in every time my little people visit.

First, there is the anticipation of magical moments of connection with a trifecta of teenagers. The excitement of catching up, hanging out and just being together.

Then there is the merger with reality, when they show up, want to veg out, lounge around the house, sleep til noon, and play Minecraft all day. My own circadian rhythm gets thrown off as I stay up to bond, then sleep in with them. And expectations drift downward a bit--ok truth be told--they drop into the toilet.

And then there is the knowing how much shit they have to endure in living under the iron fist that is my ex, how they are not respected as autonomous human beings, how he steamrolls over their free will, teaching by example the art of manipulation. I feel that I must balance this yuck in the other direction by teaching by opposing example the art of respect for humanity. And so I need to invest in their kindness banks, filling them up with home cooked meals, less work around the flat, and more chill time as their dad is harsh on those fronts. But it is more than that. I often feel like I need to somehow not merely be a good parent, but make up for the asshole parent by being an exceptional parent to make up for the badness that is to have an NPD parent. And that is a huge problem. I'm only human as it turns out. I'm flawed like anyone else. All of this is iced with a disgusting frosting of guilt in moving away from them in the first place....

Which is reinforced by the fact that my ex constantly blames me for moving away behind my back. He oh-so-wonderfully helped create the hostile context whereby moving away seemed the only option. And now he uses it as weapon against me, as in, "Well, she did move away and go abandon her own children..." He makes sure that everything wrong in their lives has nothing to do with him, nor his narcissism, but rather their evil mother abandoning them. Which is how his own life went.

His own evil mother did the same and abandoned him in death. And he's never dealt with that emotionally--only intellectually--murdered by his own NPD father. But all the same, it probably comes back to the same feeling. He's angry at her getting herself killed by a narc. And so he became a narc in order to not deal.

Which brings me back to why I sit in the stewpot of my own jumbled, disparate, ridiculous emotions. I try to label them, understand them, watch the cycle of them.

After my littles leave, the crash is predictable, as is the impinging guilt that will move in close like a boa constrictor. I'll suck in air for the oxygen deprivation now. 

 

You Know you're Healing from Narc Abuse When

You know you're healing from narc abuse when...

You no longer define yourself as a victim, but rather someone strong, someone who has worked through some shit, someone who has been around the block, someone who has unexpectedly learned of the dark, underbelly of humanity.

You know you're healing from narc abuse when....

You no longer have to tell the harrowing, hellish story of trauma and escape from the spider's web. Instead, you sometimes decide to just understate things like you once did. Only this time it isn't minimizing, its outright deciding whom you want to tell on your own terms. Not that you want to mislead people, rather you just don't have time for their experience to catch up to your own. And the need to be validated by someone else on the planet who can't get it unless they've lived it has been left at sea.

You know you're healing from narc abuse when...

You no longer have to obsess about learning about narcissism, sure you have days when you explore shit, facets of the beast, but mostly the narcissist and his flying monkeys and his fairy-tale planet have all begun to bore you. You've found the bits and pieces you needed to find, you've practiced some skills, you've left his orbit. Now you let your own center of gravity beckon you through space, discovering where your own journey might take you.

You know you're healing from narc abuse when...

You find endless humor in his two-year-old like antics, his ridiculous exaggerations, his philosophical, pedantic over-the-top-ness that seems to permeate everything in his life. And as you remember him demanding you read the stacks of his amazing professor reviews you chuckle, happy that you deleted that job from your task list in walking away. And leaving the state, perhaps that was even better in flipping the script.   

You know you're healing from narc abuse when...

You remember that there are good people in the world and you relish one day finding your own special someone who might also think you one of the good people in the world.