Things I Remind Myself of When I Start to Waver

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.

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.

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

What's so special about you
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

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

But she cuts herself
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

What she ought to do
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

So she cuts herself on you every night
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

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.

Quest Ions

He questioned Me on the stand. I didn't know what to do. Yes, it was triggering of the PTSD. I froze I think. I'm not sure. Perhaps, I blanked out. I definitely couldn't concentrate. How was it that He got to wield philosophical weapons at me? Well.

He fired his lawyer.

After spending an obscene amount of money on her sophisticated arguments.

After She argued for this date in time, wherein She could be here on His behalf.

She wasn't.

It was only I on the stand being Questioned by He. My Narcissist. Echoing all that has already passed.

I survived, at least.

We shall see.

Unfriended

Unfriended on FB, I found myself this week. Yes, FB, that tell-all world--that world where you are friended sometimes with people, you don't even know--that world where you have hundreds or even thousands of "friends." Yes, unfriended by someone married to for 17 + yrs--and technically not yet divorced from. Unfriended status, as in unable to "access" pictures of my own children. Why would someone want to do that? I have no idea. There is so much. There is all of this. And yet, he will not admit that he wants a divorce. No, the entire blame rests on my shoulders. This is the world inhabited when abandoning the narcissist.

Your pain does not exist. Only His does, for all the world to see--oozing openly--so they can coddle and rescue and feel sorry for the narcissist. And yet behind the scenes, he will strive to wield more pain at you, in any way possible. Twisting the knife, in any way possible.

Dumb things like, no ride to the airport, something he would offer to a stranger, if and only if it served some grandiose narcissistic purpose. Perhaps, only if the stranger could broadcast his oh-so-lovingkindness on FB. Which apparently, I have never quite done to narcissistic satisfaction.

He continues to herald news to the family of all the wonderful things he does for me, in spite of my breaking his heart in leaving. Wait a minute, I broke his heart when he had an affair?

Let me get this straight. The cheater's heart gets broken when his wife is faithful to him and then decides to leave in the aftermath?

I'm sorry, I'm confused. WTF?

Yes, you read that right.

He is the victim, after all.

She is leaving me and.

And.

I, Mr Narcissist, want to make it work.

In spite of my being the one and only to inflict knife wounds every chance I get. 

Oh, and wounds by proxy? Oh, my friends are just so angry. They can't even be civil, I'm sorry. Cause you--you are to blame--evil woman that I cheated on. 

And so I am the evil villain leaving the cheating narcissist who likes to conjure words to mean any and everything under the sun. He likes to "brick wall" it when communication is attempted. I am the evil villain who says, NO. Enough is enough, I will not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, anymore. I will not put up with this dehumanizing treatment. I will not put up with your wordcycles.

Some day, some people will be sharp enough to put all the pieces together. I await that day.

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?