on True Presence

Sometimes I wonder at the irony in investing so much of my self, my everything in learning the art of listening, in the art of being-ness with people in their pain, some sort of attempt at actual true presence. And yet, I've failed miserably in finding such a reciprocal sort of listener in my personal life. 

No one would argue that the narc can ever deliver such. Rather, the partner of the narcissist wakes up alone in the relationship. But of course the loneliness in the midst of a relationship is worsened by a fake togetherness. So no one knows you're actually, alone. Your loneliness--invisible to the world. Worse yet, you find your soul being sucked away.  

And then post narc, you think your chances of finding someone who can listen should naturally increase, because you've eliminated the whole category of serving the narcissist. You just want to find someone who has the capacity to listen to pain.

But, apparently people are losing their capacity to listen and be truly present to each other, the world over. 

In my work, I give everyday one of the things I most value in life, to all who seek my help. Something I consider a true gift. They don't know that almost always, I won't even let my mind wander--I concentrate so earnestly at listening with every cell of my being. It demands tremendous energy. I won't allow myself to check my phone nor surf social media. That kind of listening most of my people can't necessarily tell when the "whole being" listening isn't present, but some of my more sensitive patients can. And I can feel the difference. And the true, real, authentic whole being listening is the only time I've experienced other healing shit spontaneously happening. And so, most days, almost always, I give fully, the one thing I most want the Universe to give back--the thing I've given a thousand times to people, but have never experienced in the context of a significant other relationship. One day I hope this bit of irony ends. 

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.

Red Pills and Spells

Several days ago, it occurred to me that things are not always as they seem. Well, No shit, Sherlock! You might say. Hear me out, nonetheless.

My perspective as of late has focused on getting out, unlocking, escaping—extricating myself from the spider’s web of my narcissist’s spun entanglements of falsities dominating the landscape of the old, red barn of my life. I've felt trapped. I've seen myself as being imprisoned, abused, and victimized. And while those things are true, they are more or less my experience of the past. Yes, the narcissist continues to wound, but as the GI Joe tagline advises, knowing is half the battle, or perhaps with the narcissist, knowing is the battle.

I suspect, ironically enough, this might be one of the most valuable lessons the narcissist can teach. The inherent value in seeing and knowing the fullness of reality--whilst balancing one's own perspective alongside the perspective of others.

His blindness teaches me of my own blindness. I so oft forget that my own experience is only partial reality--only one perspective. And whilst important aspects for me to see and acknowledge in order to escape the web, the enlightening parts and pieces can become my new entrapment, my new entanglement, if I so allow or become too identified with my own particular perspective. I can shape a new reality around indulging my own victimhood.

This might be the ultimate lesson I take away from the narcissist. 

Trapped by his own delusions, caught by his own lies, he thinks his own perspective, enough. He cannot see that the Fun House is mirrored. He cannot access the infinite in himself or others. His rigid holding of his own perspective bars and locks him in. Other perspectives, other people's experiences are invisible to him.

Recently, my ex informed me that he might have to move into an apartment of all things. Perish the thought. As he went on and on as to how terrible this will be for him, and how he will have to find a place, and how he will have to downsize, and how rough this will be on him, I was struck by his complete inability to see my experience for the past year--of living in a tiny apartment--of moving out under the gun without adequate savings without much time to find something. In hearing his antics go on and on about his plight, the invisibility of my own experience sparkled and glistened while bouncing off the Fun House mirror. Hyperbolic. Comical.

And so I remind myself to see. His blindness inspires me to relentlessly look at my own blindness. I vow to keep looking into the light of the fire, though my eyes burn, though I see pain. 

It occurred to me this week that things are not always as they seem, even inside my own head, inside my own perspective. I think I’ve been looking at this whole thing through the limited perspective of my own warped Fun House mirror. As much as I don't care to admit it, I have focused on the shadows on the cave wall cast by the glow of the fire.

In awakening and seeing a fuller perspective, I afford myself the gift of vision but vision has to keep opening to itself. It must continually take in more and adapt. It must pilgrim down different thought paths. How we think about where we are determines so much of what happens to us, in fact often determines where we are.

Why am I still staring at the wall of Plato's Cave?

I am no longer invisibly tethered. I am awake. I swallowed the Red Pill.

And so, I begin to learn a new way of being in the world, a new way of thinking. “The old barriers no longer confine me, the old wounds no longer name me, and the old fears no longer claim me.” (John O’Donohue). I choose transformation—shape-shifting—metamorphosis—growth and expansion of soul. I choose to journey onward and remodel the entirety of myself. I choose to slip out of this old skin and become who I am meant to be.

The web—the matrix no longer has to hold its spell over me. I took the red pill, dammit. And while there is certainly power in coming to this realization, perhaps even greater power lies in realizing that the matrix, itself, is often of one's own making. So, more red pill, please. 

Alien Planet

I wonder at the ability of my life to reproduce the same parallel universe over and over.

What does this mean you might ask?

This is what I struggle to answer.

Why is it that my narcissistic relationship mirrors my experience in the rest of my life in critical ways? What is the Universe trying to teach me?

In my relationship, I was invisible. For the most part—nothing I said, mattered. I could not say, This hanging out with the 22 yr old girl matters to me and I'm hurt by it, and it be taken seriously. It was as if I was not a reference point in my own significant relationship. 

After all, what argument do you have for why I shouldn't be an engaging, cerebral influence on the 22 yr old? I am exemplifying what it means to be a fantastic teacher. 

In essence, I could not appeal to what I thought about my own relationship and it matter to my significant other—the narcissist. Because there was always a fact or an argument or a logical strategy that could overwrite what I thought or felt about my own relationship or why this boundary problem was in my best interest such as--don't you want me to be a devoted faculty member that has a job? 

I'm not sure why I allowed myself to be written out of my own relationship. It sounds so over the top--so preposterous that it is almost unbelievable. 

No one would do that--you must be exaggerating.

As things continue to unwind, I feel like ET on some alien planet. I spit words out. I point a long finger at the sky and garble out ET Phone Home... Mostly, no one gets the words I belch out or believes the words make sense. I utter them all the same looking for some sort of Elliot to keep me alive and away from the scientists in tents.

You mean to say that this magnificent, heroic man is emotionally abusive? But he has done so much for you? How can what you say be true? He is so polished, so perfect, so intelligent, so giving.

I am alien. People believe the more familiar, romantic, cozy, smoke and mirrors world of my narcissistic ex. I have been written out of the coding of my own relationship where other people’s FaceBook opinions or my ex’s spectacularly timed texts to my own relatives mean more. Even now, as I escape I exist on an alien planet--my own relationship a rather different species when lived upon, but far away—it is a sort of fairy tale looking place. No one else gets the nightmare unless they visit and kick up the red dirt with their moon boots. Most cannot see through the sophisticated ploys and dancing words of the charming, extroverted, philosopher, word-smith, and pathological liar.  

And somehow, I ended up in a profession where the alien planet phenomenon catches me in a similar situation. I live in a world where I help people out of situations that no one else can seemingly help them out of. I restore hope to scenarios where hope has dried up. I help people heal that are supposedly beyond healing. Most people don’t get it. Those I help get it and step onto an alien planet where things are not as they seem from across the galaxy. They wonder at how outside perceptions and insider actual experiences upon this planet could swim so far away from one another--seemingly, the gap of a galaxy betwixt.

And the universe repeats. My own experience in my relationship being the opposite of what the world seems to think--what my narcissist projects. My experience in my profession being the opposite of what the world seems to think--what conventional, cultural bias projects. 

I ask myself, what is the lesson? Am I here to learn to how to perpetually swim against the current? Am I here to learn to bridge the gap from the language of the alien planet into words others will understand? Or am I here to let go and just embrace being alien?