Entangled

The specialists would say I'm supposed to be over this--him--by now. Supposed to have moved on. Supposed to have gone and gotten myself a whole new revamped life sans abusive ex.

But every time I try to go and get myself another life I look at the black and white photos on the wall staring back at me. The big, brown eyed baby that used to say woo-ah, woo-ah, woo-ah, when he first learned to walk with the Winnie-the-Pooh walker looking out at me. And I remember the three babies I pushed out of my own body created with the evil one I'm supposed to now erase from my mind. And once again I feel torn apart. I feel torn in two. 

I am haunted by the beautiful pictures in my mind of these lovely person beings. 

How do I share the beautiful memories in my mind with a monster?

No, I never see him anymore. No, I never speak to him anymore. No, I go out of my way to be far from him--to keep him out in every way imaginable. But he is there in the memories. What the hell do I do with the memories entangled with him? What the hell do I do with the most significant pieces of my life buried in the same tomb with him?

 

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. 

 

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.