the Authentic Grief

Apparently, he is getting married again. And as much as I knew this day would eventually present itself, I really didn't expect this particular stew pot of emotions. Grief. Sadness. Disappointment. Jealousy. 

My old friend grief has parked on the davenport again. The flavor tastes different this time around. Waves merging into one another, I float on a raft in the middle of the water. Last time, the open ocean washed over my raft-less form, pushing water into my lungs. Last time, I was certain I would drown. Last time, I cried myself to sleep for a solid year. This time the water from the ocean is spraying me, but I am floating more than not.

This time it's strangely different.

I can't exactly put my finger on it but this time it is as if I'm grieving on humanity's behalf. Not really my own grief.

I'm sad at the loss--but it isn't a loss of the past, rather a loss of the future. I'm sad about what never was. I'm sad about what might have been. I'm sad with a strange acceptance and without hope.

It likely sounds dark. But his story is so sad. He was dealt a bad hand--a tragic hand in life. I see that. I feel empathy on that front. Not so much empathy that I would ever have contact with him again, but still empathy is there at the tragedy. And all the same he had so much potential. Gifts. Strong intellect. Wit. Brilliant mind. Artistic capabilities. Creative leanings.

And as in the Parable of the Talents told by Jesus, the potential authenticity was buried, submerged under the water of unexpressed grief that he never got near enough to work with.

Last night, I cried for the tragedy of it all. I cried for the sad story that doesn't have a happy ending. I cried for the lost authentic self that he might have been if he ever would have approached his highest calling in life to just become. I grieved that person he might have been. I grieved his incredible lost potential. I grieved what I now think might be the real tragedy of it all. And that is the fact that no one--nobody--not me--nor anyone else will ever know the real authentic him. In 20 difficult years, I might be the person who got the closest to knowing something we might call the real authentic him.Which was nothing of the real him, I might add--only shallow and empty longing for the real, lacking anything even remotely resembling emotional intimacy.

And in 20 more years, she--the new fiancee--is not likely to get past the narcissistic walls keeping him from what used to be the authentic self's potential.

That core self certainly had potential years ago. But after being buried for so long the core self eventually atrophies and dies, or so suggests my epic dream.

I've come to see that my gift in life and at times, curse, is in seeing potential.

And so today I sit with my old friend, grief, speaking of what no one else will.

In my grief, I vow to learn from this his fatal flaw of not stepping into his own authentic self. I vow to keep becoming more me even if that means I end up walking this path of life, alone.   

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!!!

lost in the Dark

"There is perhaps a moment in every life that something dark comes along. If we are not careful to recognize its life-damaging potential before it grips us, it can hold us for the rest of our lives. We can become addicted to that wound and use it forever as an identity card. We can turn that wound into sorrow and forsaken-ness, a prison of crippled identity." (John O'Donohue)

There is a tension presented here. On the one hand one has to fully feel and truly experience what happens when the darkness comes along, in order to heal. On the other hand we can linger in the dark without striking a match, without searching for a way out, without doing what we can to gain traction and heal.

And this is my daily battle. I struggle to do anything, everything to help myself out and heal and yet I know I must do the work. I've just never quite gotten the right tension with how much you do and how much you allow to happen and trust the path. In times past, when I've been in rhythm in life, my path seemed to find me of its own accord. I merely allowed it to happen.

But in this healing, I feel as though I'm spinning my wheels, going nowhere. I've made decisions in the face of the advising and my own gut speaking regarding said big choices. And somehow, even still, traction in healing and moving out of the dark seems to evade me.

I made the difficult choice to move away from my ex and my kids. And the colleague I had come to rely on as something akin to family and friend betrayed me a few weeks shy of my moving. In the face of my trusted advisers recommending I move all the same, I followed through with the trajectory. I left everything and everyone I've known for nigh on ten years. I hit the control, alt, delete button and started over.

And once again I stare at the bleak landscape of my life.

I know this nothingness is opportunity to reinvent myself, reinvent my life. The blank slate. I keep telling myself to conjure creativity and imagination. I keep kindling hope that some day things will be better. I keep putting one foot in front of the other in spite of my own impulse to just quit. Not, today, anyway. Tomorrow. You can always quit tomorrow. But I worry my identity has become crippled by the narcissist's wounding. I worry somehow I have lost my own story. I don't want him to be my story. I want to sing a song to the soul that can survive all even when it feels lost, wandering in the endless darkness and hope it finds its way.

But, instead, I just continue to feel lost.

Dear Woman I Never Knew

I don't know what to say to you except perhaps well, you got out. Sure you had to die to do so, but on some level I have come to see your passing as a kind of mercy, a severe one, but a mercy nonetheless. I've supposedly gotten out but alas it doesn't end. Your son, the one I was tethered to all those years, well it just doesn't matter that I moved away to escape, he continues to entangle me. And this, this is the sticking point. I've certainly thought about death, more as a means to escape than anything else. I don't necessarily want to die, its just I'm so tired of the endlessness of the emotional and psychological abuse. Hope as it turns out seems to be a terrible thing. For in spite of all the terrible things he has done to me over and over again, my brain stubbornly refuses to comprehend that someone like him can exist entirely without any compassion or empathy. He grows worse by the day. And in spite of me losing almost everything, he wants to suck more life out of me like a dementor. Why? He has already won a million fold over and over. He now has my children full time. Even still he wants to take more. He bullies. He stabs. He wishes me harm. All that to say, your murderer (your ex) whom fathered this thing that I was tethered to for so long, in so fathering spawned another alien just as his father spawned him. I wish I could say that your tragic death changed him--that he was able to rise above it and break the cycle of narcissist creating more narcissicism. But, I have no such news to write you. I fear for my children. I am hoping and praying that in spite of my not being able to be in proximity to them that they will somehow see through all these narcissistic enchantments and mirrors. I am hoping that I have somehow burdened them with overpowering tools that help them separate wheat from chaff, truth from lie. I pray that the narcissistic propaganda does not penetrate their spirits and souls. I pray that they hold onto compassion, empathy, hope, and kindness toward humanity and that they begin to recognize that there are things in proximity to them that are more alien than human. I'm so sorry that I failed you. When I first met him, I only wanted our relationship to be a source of healing from all of this shit for him. It still grieves me that he ultimately chose this path. They say that the narcissist cannot ever recover. But, alas I am cursed with microscopic hope that somehow this new mother figure in his life will somehow trigger healing in spite of the damning odds. And regardless of what happens with your son, I am hoping that the pattern ends with him. 

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.

The Story

One of my favorite books is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. An apparent, loosely related collection of short stories, with one repeated over and over where Tim kills the punchline and tells you the ending of the story over and over, as the reader, you almost reach the maddenly, irate point at the redundancy. You feel like you've got it already, as if Tim is deliberately insulting your intelligence as a reader. That arrogant writer, who clearly thinks I'm not paying attention to the Curt Lemming story?  Enough, already....

And then it eventually hits you, that you've never felt the story. And this matters to the story. In fact, this means that you've never really heard the story in spite of his telling it over and over. Somehow, you didn't quite get it that Tim held back the pieces that matter. Until, you've really heard the story--which incidentally, is the uncircumcised poignancy of the story intact. And that's when you finally feel it all most acutely.

Today, in this new land of towers. I told the first layer of the story I've been hearing and telling to those that want to hear for nigh on 20 years. The backstory, really--of how my ex came to be evil. The story that birthed my ex on the path to narcissism. How the darkness of death and grief at the ripe old age of two started the cascade and transformation to being a pathological lying sort of person that feels no empathy, in spite of anything.   

As I told it, it struck me in quite a different way, a rather new way, more than it has in the past. My experience of different people listening to the story shaped my sense of the story, itself. Telling it was such a different experience. It was an entirely different story. For the first time, I felt a large distance from the story. And this--this little bit of distance was good.

For the first time, I didn't feel entirely entangled up in the web of compassion and empathy for my ex narcissist. While I was in touch with the traumatic circumstances of his childhood, I could see the steps he has deliberately taken; whereby he decided to sever himself from compassion, cause it might get in the way of getting your way if you're a narcissist.

And I saw anew the power of the story. The power of telling it over and over again. The power of retelling it in a different way, to a different crowd. I saw anew the story itself transformed by the telling of it. And somehow the sense that, just like Tim O'Brien, I've never really told the story in such a way that the emotion gets understood by the listener. And that is the story that most needs to be told.

This is Complicated Grieving

Complication number one. He's not dead. There is no body in the ground with a stone above it. No way for outsiders to recognize that he is as good as dead. The soul went and flew itself away up to heaven or hell or where-ever souls abandon themselves to when those who own them do not take them seriously.

Complication number two. He's not even aware he is dead. Due to complication number one, perhaps because he's not physically dead. But he is very much dead on most every other level. Kind of like the walking dead. Kind of like a Bruce Willis character in the Sixth Sense. Going through the motions of living, but not really there. Hanging around. Haunting the living. Pretending.

Complication number three. His tentacles entangle little people you love--people who aren't dead. Little people who are very much trying to learn how best to live life deeply and passionately from someone who is mostly dead. And right now they have only this example of a dead man walking, ever pretending to be one of the living. And due to complication number two, the lack of awareness factor, they have to live a life amongst the dead.

So there you have it. The complicated parts. Kind of like an open wound of an unsolved murder case where they never found a body. You know you ought get on with your life except that you lack the closure you think you'd gain with the finding of a body. The closure you think you'd gain is just beyond the reach of the grave you don't have. Oh, and there's that ex zombie walking around causing trauma. And maybe this is why you sometimes wish for the closure his death would bring. This is complicated grieving.

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

On Mattering post Narcissist

Maybe one of the real reasons I was able--am able to be escaping the narcissist in the first place was because my work compelled me to do so. You see, if your work is intense enough, obvious enough, especially on the helping people front, it will teach you things, in spite of what the narcissist says. 

And when your work gives you a reason to believe otherwise, or directly contradicts what the narcissist says, you have some thread to hold on to. Mostly, he told me shit like that I was terrible at what I do. Mostly, he was quite critical of my every flaw, even my skill that clearly wasn't on par with his. Mostly, he was the one pulling--dragging us along. Mostly, his work mattered, not mine. But, the facts are that when it comes down to what I do--helping people, well most days, I think it does matter. 

Some days, I can point to real people who might not be around, but for my work. There are folks that might have taken their own lives. On those particular days, I think it does matter, this thing that I do.

But, anyhow. I'm definitely not perfect.

All I can say is some days I do help people. I can't say it's an easy thing, talking someone out of suicide who is dead set on it. (Really, no pun intended). That space opens up and you feel swallowed up. so inept, so small. The emptiness hits you. A human being is waiting alone in the dark for somebody--anybody--to contradict the screaming worthlessness in their own head. And mostly you don't really know if you have the right words. Maybe, you don't have any words.

Please don't kill yourself. Please don't take your own life. Please give it more time.

That's all you have. And it feels so ridiculously inept. After all the specialists, all the people who tried but somehow couldn't reach them, and you might be the last stop?

And there you are trying not to hear the narcissist screaming about all your flaws and shortcomings cause honestly, that might get in the way of helping. You can't go into helping someone in a really dark space with your own demons.

And the psychic space where someone wants help often has its own set of demons. Sometimes that person throws out attempts to sabotage any and all help--sometimes they legitimately want to alienate, to abuse, in order to get someone to give up on them. That is most difficult. It is most heavy. And that is the space inhabited, in this kind of work, a lot of the time.

It is saturated with the great weight of a storm cloud.

And you have to do best to talk them back from the ledge. You have to remind them that they do matter. Sometimes, it sneaks up on you that you are there reminding yourself as well as the other person..The world needs you. There is no one else like you. This is what it means to be human, after all. Unique individuals trying to contribute to the good of the planet.

You say it to yourself as much as to the person in front of you:

Please don't kill yourself.

They don't know you're saying it outloud for both of you. It's not supposed to be about you.

But, sometimes it happens to fall on a day where the narcissistic brainwashing lingers loudly in your head. You try to force feed the good stuff into your own brain as much as into the brain of the person sitting in front of you.

And sometimes the act of doing that helps. The action reminds that what the Narc said about you wasn't true. Your work does matter. At least, sometimes. For the other. For you. For us all, as human beings. Which is something the narcissist really can't understand and never will.

And sometimes you just have to go on clinging to the fact that your work, imperfect though it be, is beneficial. And it helps others and yourself with the narcissistic deprogramming.

On Being a Bore

I suppose my latest strategy is to bore him to death. And this--this is much harder than it sounds.

You see. I don't actually think I'm a boring person.

I've numerous interests. Truth be told, I aspire to be a freakin renaissance woman, most of the time.

I'm the one in the apartment complex in need of a piano. I lift weights. I run the partial racks on the billiard table. I have a brain and a terminal degree. I enjoy art--even the art I make. I write. Most of the time, I prefer to do things myself, because I care about actually doing it to my own personal standard that sometimes seems different than others. As I type, I suspect I sound like a narcissist, myself.

I was raised by at least one parent with very high standards. Standards that might be construed as related to said parent's narcissistic traits.

That may have potentially contributed to my ending up with a narcissist.

Thus, I'm trying the boring strategy.

More or less I aim to communicate that I might be the most boring person on the planet.

I'm absolutely a bore. And this is hard. 

Because, if anything, the narcissist has caused me to work on myself, quite a bit, over the years. At many points, I had to work on myself in order to survive. I worked in order to learn and grow and change. Ironically, this was what the narcissist ended up conjuring out of me, though he can do precious little in conjuring such out of himself.

And so, in some sort of weird, ironic twist of fate, I kind of have him to thank for being who I am.

But, I'm so working on being a bore or at least communicating that I'm a bore. Just so you know...

Church of Stone

What is it about a place that can affect us so?

This year's Christmas, I was dreading being away from my kids as the ex has them this year. So I decided to go back to church. Truth is I haven't been in a while and I knew it would take a fair amount of effort getting there.

In spite of my last minute scrambling, the details somehow managed to work themselves out almost perfectly. I have no doubt that my visiting this sacred church was meant to be.

I set out alone, late morning, down a typically well traveled path, but this time, my fellow walkers were quite sparse. At times I went for several miles without seeing a single other human. I watched a massive storm close in on me, then stalk me on the path for a bit which made me feel like some sort of character out of Pilgrim's Progress.

But, I felt unshaken. I felt 7000 feet deep in me, that I was supposed to be here in this church of Stone baptized by the hushed drizzle. Somehow, this time the stillness had my back in this ritual of awe.

At one point, while crossing a spiny section, forty to fifty mile per hour winds gusted me. My mind's thoughts joined forces with the wind to try to deter me from continuing. However, my thoughts were distracted by my eyes noticing the largest Raven I've ever encountered on the path a few feet in front of me. Intensely staring at me, he spanned his massive wings then almost smirking, playfully jumped into the wind's updraft.

He let some of his calm hang in the air and it quieted my mind and strengthened my heart.

The silence seeped into my soul with the rain as I walked, the cherished gift the Canyon imparts to all who set foot inside her hallowed walls. The untethering of contexts from everything and everyone but my own soul, lent the gift of perspective taking.

The immensity of the soulful emptiness of the Canyon filled me til it seemed the only thing. But, how can such a place most characterized by Her empty space so fill you? I suppose that is the question of the Sacred feminine, after all. I suppose that is also the non-piece to most get in touch with in the recovery from the narcissist--he who often denigrates the emptiness--what to do with the hole of seemingly endless emptiness dug after the taking away of goodness and hope and joy by the narcissist--by the very One thinking you rid emptiness by taking all the material goods you can possibly acquire from others and fill in that crack in the dirt, cause maybe then you won't feel that emptiness?

And this is the catechism of this church of Stone--the experience--the attention to this emptiness, the going there to the absent space, the breathing in the vacuum of apparent nothingness is, in fact, how you fetch soul to the emptiness. Emptiness beckons soul flow, like this Canyon calls water to herself and then the sea.

Ode to the Ivories

Everything was so black and white about you.
telling
the story of clarity and morality in the world
never any grey realms
to sort out like spouses gone rogue.

People either struck the proper notes and
dissonance
didn't exist
or you were Stravinsky and you had some sort of free pass on
ushering in a new Rite, of sorts.

You held a space
like some sort of sophisticated therapist
parked
waiting with a tissue for the running emotions
to flood the chaise lounge.

And now you are gone somewhere else
banished
from my little world to some never-never land
where I can never see or touch you again.
But that isn't the worst part.
You were never about all the things he was about.
And now
it is as if someone
who once understood me is gone.

In your out of tune way,
You were always about
hitting
the center of the true note like one can with a Bach-Strad and singing "on key"
in a strangely Gramps sort of way,
meaning
charmingly lovable, yet off key.

Damn, I miss you.

On Matter and Reentry

If only I could consult NASA as to how to accurately navigate reentry into the narcissist's orbit. Perhaps, the astronauts would have tips for how to calculate the necessary angle so as not to burn through the heat shield or crash into a mountainside in the middle of the Swiss Alps.

The dread usually begins a couple of days out when my intestines begin churning like a den of snakes reminding me that I must return to his orbit, his planet. Every time I think it has to get easier. And somehow the crash landing feels just as hard, maybe even worse then the last one.

I hyper focus on the only reason I come back to this alien planet--my little people who matter. And all the same there is always some sort of narc designed silliness to divert the space capsule to a more problematic trajectory, amping up the heat intensity and potentially blowing me to smithereens. Sometimes the narcissistic weapon is cloaked in a Trojan Horse designed to bypass my fortress walls. One particular reentry I walked into my apartment filled with 20 boxes full of shit from the garage of my old house, flagged for Goodwill 4 years ago. But my ex narc in all his fake concern was "worried" supposedly on my behalf, that I might need some shit from the garage for my microscopic apartment that I didn't even know I had. He also wanted to make sure that I knew he had access to my apartment while I was away. Another time I returned to an old vehicle without the license plates, registration, or insurance to be dealt with. This the same vehicle that I had requested to drive to my other locale, but he couldn't stop roadblocking. Oh, I loaned it to the so in so family. Yet another, my ex agreed to pick us up from the airport. When he showed up, there wasn't enough space in the vehicle since a "friend" had come along. He only had room for my children who were being transferred to him.  "Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot to tell you, I don't have enough room for you in the car..."

Ode to the Reentry into the Narcissistic Orbit. How much time does one have to spend dreaming up schemes of sabotage? How much life can one waste thinking of ways to twist the knife? Just pretend that this ball of matter, doesn't matter to you, Mr. Narcissist, please. 

I once had a therapist type tell me that I don't matter. Probably not the greatest idea for a therapist to say such a thing to a client. I suspect there might be better things to be said. But, clinical decision making aside, the fucked up irony of the matter is that now that things are over, the divorce official, the narc moved on--on the surface, I can only dream of narc's actions demonstrating this very thing--that I don't matter. I would like nothing more! He has new supply, a plenty. And yet, it's still important for him to go out of his way, cause himself more work, more trouble, in order to cause harm to me. I'd love nothing more than to be ignored, abandoned, as if I don't matter, cause there are some things that are much worse than not mattering.

Dating the Real Me

Now that things are officially done, and my lovely narcissist has kinda moved on, I've finally moved into the space of being a free agent and so of course I decided to do something absolutely ludicrous like join a dating site.

You could probably argue that I'm not quite ready. You could probably argue that this might be the worst place for me. And you'd probably be right in so arguing all of the above. But, seeing as how I'm no longer living on the alien planet of narcissism, I was feeling a bit nostalgic for alien and so I thought I'd replace said alien planet with another equally strange place--the wonderful world of online dating. And truth be told, I'm sure I'll come across a narcissist or two in said ventures without even really looking.

You could say the online dating world is a bit in-authentic and rife with said characters and you'd probably be absolutely right in saying so. I've decided to consider it more of a nuclear testing ground for all things explosive in the dating world, which may or may not be about how I feel, relationship wise.

And so it was that I found myself on a casual meet up for coffee last week which seemed harmless enough. Seemingly, everything went fine until near the date's end when the conversation turned toward the topic of whether or not there would be another date. He wanted to go out again. I thought this to be a good thing. Until he said, I'm kind of a traditional guy. I'm not trying to control you but I want to get to know you without you getting to know anyone else.

Uh, dude have you forgotten that we just had coffee? We just met.  And you are trying to control my life already. 

No, really. How would you feel if tomorrow night I was out with another girl like this?

I should hope she could keep the standard as high as I have... I should hope she could raise the standard, even. And I should hope to be the sort of person that you don't forget so easily.

I want you to consider this compromise where you do exactly what I'm proposing and don't date any other guys while we are getting to know one another...

Uh, I'm sorry, but what part of we just met, don't you understand? I felt the oddly familiar coiling and talking and hypnotic looking into my eyes in trance formation. As the strangulation factors began to seem cozy, something triggered. There is a snake, I thought.

Startled. I got my bearings. I'm gonna check in with a friend, I told myself. I'll ask my friend about this boa looking thing coiled around me sharing my breath with me after coffee.

That's weird. Bizarre. Clingy. No, you're not the crazy one. It was only coffee... 

I knew it. I knew all the stuff my friend said. I think I had almost the same thoughts my friend had. Except I didn't trust my thoughts. Thanks to the lovely stamp on my soul by Mr. Crazy Town, himself. This is why I still need for somebody outside of myself to confirm to me that I'm not being crazy. Or unreasonable. Or paranoid. Or over-reacting. Cause the brainwashing continues onward sans narcissist.

The voice of my ex is still there right inside my head. Loud as ever. Telling me I'm stupid. I'm less than. I'm inept. I'm paranoid. I'm over-reacting. I'm worthless and don't matter without him. And as much as I've journeyed onward and I don't believe these lies, there is still the problem with the doubting of self. I know all these things are not true and it's still hard to argue against the part of me that I became in order to survive, and now suddenly I'm apparently supposed to cut off this gangrenous part of myself--but it's still me that I must now ironically sever in order to become the real me again.

it is Finished

It is finished.
The marriage is ended. Unceremoniously declared undone by some ultimate power that rules over things like devastation and loss for a salary-of-sorts at ten minutes past 4 o'clock in the afternoon on a day not all that dissimilar from the day things began in June, far too many years ago.

It is finished.
After all the waiting. After all the speed bumps. After all the endless time spent working with the soul who abandoned itself.

It is finished. 
Those final words, oh-so-similar to the martyr I grew up hearing about. The martyr who hung in the pain of imagining God doing all the forsaking.

It is finished.
Somehow the perspective always gets skewed. The martyr chooses to sacrifice.

It is finished.
And then the martyr questions the abandonment.
My God my God, why?

It is finished.
Why hast thou forsaken me?
Perhaps God did. Perhaps God did not.

It is finished.
Sometimes we are the ones doing all the forsaking of self.
And we don't know it--the abandoning we project onto the divine figure in the sky is our own abandoning. We do the finishing. We do the abandoning of soul all too well on our own, without the Divine and then we blame the Divine for the finishing.

It is finished.
The relief at the closure of the death of relationship is ours. And we feel the stab of the snake, lifted high, in the wilderness, healing all who look. Healing with the finishing of closure. Finality. A death of sorts. Enacted by a judge, in a clinical office in the county of nowheresville. A judge knowing no-one. A judge knowing not the look of a bright eyed boy hoping to change a future and a past wrought with agonizing awfulness. A boy and a girl hoping that love might be enough. But, instead the honorable has ruled it finished. Stamped her signature on the death of a marriage. Called it at ten minutes past four on an afternoon in June when the parties knew nothing of the passing until the lawyers notified the dead of the death of a relationship past. The lawyers waited to send the email. Waited for the day after the anniversary.

It is finished.
Sometimes the finishing hurts more than you think it might. The pain seeps in even after you think you've cried your eyes out till the tears dry out and they are no more. The sadness at the finishing still hits you all the same. You tell yourself its not an ending, but rather a beginning. You tell yourself it is a return to the sacred abandoned self. The snake said so after all. There is a circle. A snake symbol looped around signifying eternity.

And it is finished all the same. 

And somehow, that hurts a bit, more than you might have imagined. Circles and death and life and symbolism aside you still feel the horror of the ending. You still feel the my God, my God, why have you abandoned me piece? 

It is finished. 

the Funeral and the Performance

There was a funeral. And then there was a performance. And the two ran together in some goopy mess. Singing at the funeral. Crying at the performance.

A great man was buried.

A mystical scene was performed.

I thought I'd be ok at the performance which was after the funeral. But there was a bathroom passing. An intermission where I distinctly knew her in passing as she paused after speaking with him, the performer and his man bun, (which by the way kind of repulses me) but that, my friends, is beside the point. I saw her for the first time. She is pretty. She seems kind. Good. All the same, I had this weird flash of wanting to help her with tips--to make it work, you know. Cause I kind of need for it to work. I need for him to be stable. I need for him to be grounded and taken care of by her. I realize this sounds kind of fucked up--that I actual think about managing his narcissism in some sort of clinical way like some sort of pet to be looked after for the weekend get-away, but I do. I do as part of the get-the-hell-out exit strategy. I think I do it selfishly. And while its practical, it isn't altruistic.

And I feel guilty for such. I feel awful thinking of her as a means to escape in a cost-benefit analysis sort of way, as if she is not a human being. And believe me the irony is not lost upon me. Because this is exactly what he does. Sees people as things to use and abuse for whatever pressing needs he has. And I ask myself if I'm becoming like him? Are we attending the funeral of my own soul?

And then I wander elsewhere to the awful imagining of the future and what is likely to happen to her and her soul with him.

He is likely to crush her soul.

Because that is exactly what he does.

He is likely to suck the life blood out of her, like a vampire, leaving her a shell of the woman she is now. It is almost as if I can predict the future--magical seer that I now am.

And in the split second on the way to the bathroom, it was as if the future and the past and present congealed in the intermission. Her look of disguised recognition and avoidance, where she seemed to dramatically drop out of the bathroom line to avoid standing near my presumed wrath, anger, and hatred. None of which seem to be on the list of emotions I was able to conjure out of the air and actually feel. All I could feel in that coagulated moment was guilt and sadness and the ripping pain of knowing the future hole in the space where her soul once was. I felt the imagined grief of her future pressing in on us as my own dark past with him pressed in from the other side. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand with some sort of nod to the sacred feminine spirit and tell her how sorry I am in advance for not warning her. She is part of the sisterhood, after all.

Instead, I stood in line, no acknowledgment of recognition, trying to be true to myself, neither feeding the resting bitch image she needs to see me as, nor firing off the SOS flares into the dark sky. I acted the part of the clueless woman visiting the bathroom during the intermission of a performance.

The performance--but that is the sticking point. Act 2, scene 4. The scene I get stuck in is the one where I desperately try to be the powerless actress that surrenders to the ending of the play, ok with the knowledge of autonomous human beings fucking up their own lives, yet desperately driven by a seemingly magical healing force inside that wants to help, even those that want not my help. The guilt in the wake of healing potential or not. Preventing harm. Futures that while not set in stone, still seem ominous. I feel the weight of Merlin, in just trying to be faithful to who I am, and whom I'm meant to be, and whom I'm meant to heal in life. Of all people, she is not my responsibility. This I know. All the same it's complicated. And the healing always bleeds over into every corner of my life. It is not meant to be contained in some sort of healing box.

The healing piece shows up at funerals and performances alike and in brief moments in passing your ex husband's new girlfriend in the bathroom who wants to hate you and it is probably best if she does, anyway. And the healing dresses those wounds in tears.

This is the weight of being in the healing arts. The weight of being in proximity to something you don't really control, you only facilitate it, and sometimes see the pathway to help someone, even your ex's new GF; all of this married to the knowledge that you can only heal when someone wants healing and of course she doesn't--not from you anyway--antichrist that you most obviously are...

The specific tragedy this time is intimately knowing the two extreme poles. Knowing both the real sorrow she might find herself in down the road with him and the joy of authentic living in walking the wounded down the healing pilgrimage. Two counterfactual worlds adjacent one another.

And the tragic powerlessness is overwhelming, in watching her standing on the edge of the Dementor's vortex, being readied for the soul chewing up and spitting out into the void. I know this sorrow, this grief, this monster that lies in the murky waters. I know the countless days of praying for death, just to escape, yet hanging on by a thread.

And so there I was. Caught in the interim between a performance and a funeral. What was the performance? Was it mine? Was it hers? Or was it something else altogether? And who's death was being mourned? It was all too blurry and too looped together, intertwined like the caduceus.

I suppose that is why I found myself sobbing at a performance and singing at a funeral. The funeral felt more beautiful with a healer soul flying into the collective unconscious finally being a bit more free.

While the performance was overwhelmingly sad and heavy with the weight of seeing another soul begin her walk down the suffering path. I wept at the seeming endlessness and loneliness of the narcissistic journey on repeat. I wept at my own healing loneliness and powerlessness in carrying the weight of the world and nobody really giving a damn about it, my own journey doomed to repeat. It was only then that the loss of the great Scott gone hit me. And I began to feel the looming heaviness of the absence of a fellow soul carrier gone elsewhere. And I wished he could weigh in on the goopy mess of it all and still just be a part of the sorting out of all the snakes.  

It's Not

I keep going round and round on the same old circuit.
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot,
where something I can't see interrupts the current.
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot.
And from behind the screen,
it can look so perfect.
But it's not.

So here I'm sitting in my car
at the same old stoplight.
I keep waiting for a change,
But I don't know what.
So red turns into green turning into yellow
but I'm just frozen here on the same old spot.
And all I have to do is press the pedal.
But I'm not.
No, I'm not.

Well people are tricky
You can't afford to show
Anything risky
Anything they don't know
The moment you try
Well kiss it goodbye.

So baby kiss me like a drug
Like a respirator.
And let me fall into the dream of the astronaut.
Where I get lost in space
that goes on forever.
And you may call the rest
just an afterthought.
And I believe its you
who could make it better
But its not.
No, its not
No, its not.

                         --Aimee Mann

regaining intuition

When will this narcissistic experience not define me? I suspect that is when and where there is healing.

When I'm just my own unique person. Not defined in relation to the man with the mirror at the lake.

Not defined by a reaction to the narcissist, but rather when he becomes inconsequential. Just another puzzle piece on the table that is my life. A part of the whole that has shaped me into a (hopefully) better person. I'm not sure about that, but I am working at that.

I will wander where life takes me. Ushered by intuition. I will and must listen to Her. For she has never actually let me down. It is the narcissist that tried to drive Her away. And made me judge Her, untrustworthy. And so I shall usher Her back. And make space for Her. Allowing Her whims of change to influence me and guide me.

New GF

Tis Spring Break. And my narc is vacation bound to the mountains with his GF. The new one, I might add. Not the old one, he would have to fly to visit. I guess she was too much trouble after the funds to fly to see her dried up. But the One round these parts. The One with a lab named the same as mine... Kinda creepy, I'd say.

I can't believe he told you so soon about her, I said to my kids.

Oh, he didn't tell us, mom. We just figured it out already. He's traveling on vacation with her. In case you don't know, mom, that means something in relationships.

They lecture me now on how to tell if your dad is dating someone without telling you. They school me, as if I don't know already.

And I let them.

And the truth is, I don't tell them of my own schooling of how to tell when someone you love is being unfaithful. How to figure out if the underwear was left by your sister, or another? How to tell if the razor appearing after you were gone for a weekend magically appeared in your shower by accident? How to ferret out why you feel so empty and alone in a 20 year relationship?

Truth be told, I'd rather this. I'd rather little people who love me and want to break it to me gently, tell me of his escapades. 

But, no, contrary to my assumptions, he hasn't told them. They've just grown schooled in the art of figuring out the schemes already. They've grown accustomed to watching the actions and not the words of the narcissist. They know to wait for the behaviors that tell the truth. And this, this is progress.

Because he. He can't.

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.