For a long time, a seemingly endless, enduring amount of time, I've been doing this work of healing from narcissistic abuse. Depending upon how you frame it, eight or nine odd years now--give or take--from the waking up point in the Matrix, through the hell, fire, and brimstone of getting the fuck out of the marriage, to the moving away, to the starting afresh in the mountains and again now in the east. Looking back on the pilgrimage thus far, nearly nothing is the same. I'm a different creature than who I was upon waking up in the NPD Matrix. Red pill swallower that I am, the overhaul has been overwhelming at times. And exhilarating. And terrifying. And heart wrenching. And sorrowful. And strangely joyful. And relieving. And infuriating. There have been paralyzed moments where the upside down felt inescapable. Where death felt next to me all blanket-esque and truly living felt so far off it almost couldn't exist even in my imagination, and the Shaman priest, alone, held onto the golden thread to find the way out of the web--a way--any way.
The gift of this much time spent climbing out of the Matrix is the gift of perspective. Only now, am I beginning to see the bigger picture. As I gaze backward like Lot's wife looking at the glowing, obliteration of Sodom and Gomorrah (which by the way, I'm not sure why she was crystallized into salt for that?) patterns emerge. Also gratitude emerges.
I see that somehow, Healing in all her grace has climbed out of the gauntlet with me. Walking beside me, my ever present companion of original lovingkindness, she afixed herself to me, all glue like, all over me like my shadow on this journey. Hovering so close, shading me from the bombastic sun, even as I've felt completely lost, wandering the desert of narcissistic abuse--Healing was there hunting me down.
I now see that I haven't actually been alone on this journey--in spite of it seeming that way--in spite of seeming as though there was no one in the pitch black, cave like dark. She's been there. Right there. So close, I couldn't even see or feel her breath.
As of late, the healing She has settled a bit, as the traumatic tentacles have loosened and receded back like the falling tide into the abyss or where-ever tentacles recede to, a mild sense of forgetting has come ashore. She--the healer hasn't needed to be parked upon me, pulling my lungs up to take in oxygen, or pressing on my chest to remind my heart to contract, or restlessly compelling my legs to take another step.
Panic no longer greets me everyday at dawn. Anxiety no longer paces my room far into the night. Sadness no longer steals my breath from my chest nor my throat.
Peace is a newish companion.
There is this amazing bearded wonder that has been hanging around a lot, capable of connection on so many levels--emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical. He shows up. All there and then more. He feels. He gives. He loves.
And with gratitude, I love.
Already, I feel as though I can't live without him. Already, I feel a wonderous intensity of bliss beyond reason.
Somehow, this blissful feeling, in all its glory is also terrifying and triggering. For in it, I feel the remnants of the narcissistic tentacles on my mind. The warped, poison words of the past echo in my spinning head, the lingering brainwash from someone who was supposed to love me, but never really did. The perpetual, painful, embedded, You're not good enoughs and Why can't you be such-in-such and No one but me would ever want you.
I know that we all have to do enough of the work in order to engage in a healthy relationship. We have to be whole again. We can't go in thinking, This person will heal me, fill up all my emptiness, and complete me.
And yet, the paradox is that we do heal in relationship. A regulated nervous system guides another adjacent nervous system back toward self regulation. A thumping heart in the midst of fight or flight, slows down to parasympathetic levels when another nearby heart beats at a slower rate in peace.
And so I lean in to healing and love with courage and tenacity. I lean in and hope that the demons in my head find there way out of my head. I pray that I give them the right amount of attention, but not too much and that healing and love relentlessly chase me and always find me. And that this amazing bearded wonder has all the courage and patience and compassion and love that it takes to keep on coregulating. Amen.
