the Revolution

There are things I'm grateful for and then there are things that I basically cannot express enough of my gratitude for. These things extend so far beyond my ability to be grateful for them--that I almost don't know how to describe them. Things that literally revolutionized everything. Lately, I've been mulling over those things. Which relevant pieces essentially revolutionized everything? That is the question I have been pondering, as of late.

First, there was a listener. A revolutionary priest. A grizzly, bearded, long-haired tatted, F-bomb dropping priest.  Prolly goes without saying but not your typical rigid-religiosity-instilling-personhood-bashing-priest. No. A listener--and that's relevant. A priest with (in fact) something on par with turning-water-into-wine miraculous listening skills where I could bump into myself somewhere on the bookshelves near the magic-eight-ball Jesus in his office.

I remember the startled feeling of not being interrupted. I remember the long pauses. Half the time, I would interrupt myself. Only then would he speak.

I hadn't had that experience in seventeen years. Always talked over. Always repeating myself because the narcissist never actually heard anything I said, except way back in the beginning when it was something akin to ammunition to later use against me way down the road. But I didn't know that then.

So a bad-ass listener. Key.

That and the screaming dreams was how I started to wake up in my own life. 

That was how I started to arm myself for the hellish battle of escaping the Matrix that I didn't know that I was about to undertake.

For something like a solid year he--the Priest--listened while I unloaded--verbal diarrhea for hours every single week. It seemed endless once the Dam broke and uncontrollably the water ran. Sometimes the literal waters ran. Sometimes I gut wrenchingly sobbed for most (all) of the appointment. I had no idea that I needed a place to park my sorrow. Hell, I didn't even know that there was so much unattended sorrow underneath. I had so effectively walled myself off from it that I didn't even know it was there. And certainly, didn't know it was mine.

I think he did know it was mine. He had a sixth sense about those sorts of things. Shaman-esque.

He would do what priests ought to do, but most don't or won't, and just hold space. That is something that should be taught in Priest 101. He could endlessly hold space like nobody's business. And finally then I could breathe. It was one of the only places in my life I could actually breathe freely. But I didn't even know that--that I needed a place to breathe--cause I wasn't really breathing elsewhere.

I started to notice that. I started to notice that I was breathing mostly in his office. I also started to notice that I was not breathing when I was around my ex the narcissist. I started to toss and turn a little bit in my narc induced sleep.

And so that was how the revolution started.

There were others who joined the cause. Others who listened. Others who pointed things out. Others who oh-so-directly spoke into my life. Others who helped imagine a way out.

But his bad-ass listening skills are like none other. The root of the revolution. The revolution would not have ever existed without them.

A string of therapists were certainly helpful. Important. But if I can point to only one person--one significant person that made the revolutionary difference--the person that single-handedly triggered the rebellion--it was this one human who listened like I was the only person left on the planet to be listened to, like there wasn't anyone else, like judging other people about weird things they think or do didn't even exist. And that in a nutshell is how and why I escaped.   

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.

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.