Evil Thus I Know

Evil is the other genetic half of your lights in the world as you fight to keep their light--your babies that you pushed out of your body many years hence. Perhaps, because that other part that is mere shell doesn't understand how a mother loves, no matter what. That other part didn't have her--a mother long enough to attach, so He only gets the detachment part. Oh, what a loss.

Evil is the always lying, to keep delusions intact such that one is not causing, nor ever will cause massive pain to one's own offspring and to other peoples on the planet. Perhaps, because everyone is just a pawn on a chessboard.

Evil is a conversation on the phone designed to sabotage sanity in your ex. Where one only cares about destruction and chaos. Where one doesn't care about outcome, other than that it thwart things and people and healing. One that only cares about inducing harm.

Evil is the opposite of the first principle of medicine. First do no Harm. Evil is first and foremost, only care about destroying, causing pain, wielding a sword, even if it causes terrible things to happen to the people you think you might care about. Cause evil trumps people you care about any day.

Evil is stepping into living without meaning and kindness and healing of any sort.

Evil is knowing only the dark side of the moon. Evil is inducing in others, in people who loved you, in those who would have done anything for you the wish that somehow, you'd never, ever met. Evil is in the lie, thus I know.

Narcissistic Abuse in a Nutshell Take 2

Anonymous is

one day waking up and finding yourself

missing

from your own life.

Replaced

by an alien you helped create.

Invisible

you slip toward 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.

Realness that You Don't Recognize

Sometimes the realness surprises you at the most inopportune, uncomfortable times when you'd rather not look your own shit in the face..

The times when you're ready to parade the story out and believe your own bullshit about how things really are.

I've dealt with this shit. I'm over it. I totally know what I'm doing....

And then that real friend shows up and is right there in the middle of the storm. Perhaps being scooped into the ice cream cone, himself. Taking the brunt of the ice cream shit show. Feeling the all powerful anger and whatnot and don't fuck with me edge....

And he just shows up. Takes the words and responds to them even if they don't fully make sense. As if to say it's ok....

Often, he doesn't actually use any words. Just shows up with the joke and the half hearted smirk that makes you catch a glimpse of your own bullshit.

Totally over my ex, you say. 

You don't even really get how much he actually sees through the bullshit smokescreen that you happen to believe about the story you tell yourself everyday until he is there dealing with the windmills and cardboard head gear like Sancho Panzes.

Leaning into the Lies

Somehow with the divorce final, I thought the need to lie and exaggerate things would slow down in my ex. Who the fuck cares anymore? We're done. I'd like for the record to reflect that. We don't need to interact except as regards my kids. But alas, my ex, filling the shoes of his father appears to have embraced the path of becoming more pathological in the lying. For no reason whatsoever?

Good news is I've made progress in the healing. I'm getting better at seeing perspective in his antics.

Case in point, yesterday. Had to have a conversation about the upcoming schedule. In the planning, we reviewed my upcoming plans next month.

That's the first I've heard of that... he said when I reviewed the March plans. He pretended that I was springing this upon him. It was so preposterous, I watched myself hardly allow his antics to register. I may have actually been bored. I felt so much indifference, it was as if he was far off and I could hardly hear him.

No. This is not the first you've heard. I said. I can forward you the texts, the emails, the transcripts of the phone conversations, if you like. Yawn. But, I know that I don't need to. Not for me. Go ahead and lay down in your own lie. Allow yourself to be enshrouded in it.

I felt calm. Nonplussed. Unrattled. I had the sense some two year old child had approached me with a plastic sword. Run along child, go play.

This is the first I've heard of that.

No, the stack of emails, texts, and conversations say otherwise.

There was another document from the lawyer. CC'd his name and mine at the bottom--mailed nearly a week ago--a document that stated that for some reason funds were "insufficient" in a financial account only he has access to.

He feigned ignorance. Even going so far as to take a picture on his phone of the document, cause yeah it's not your lawyer who sent it, not your name CC'd at the bottom on record, not you who moved funds out of the account. Right. Of course.

But, he needs to lie. He feeds on this stuff. And somewhere it has drifted past the point of even having threads of connection to reality, past the point of no return. The lies grow more intense, more bombastic, more ridiculous, so that he can have more food to suck down in order to stabilize his own blood sugar that depends upon the lie. I suspect he's unravelling, falling apart at the seams, self destructing. He's so focused on lie creation, nothing else holds relevance.  He's like the insect that keeps flying into the bug zapper, lying to itself about the shiny pretty light. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me.

Of course, it can't kill you, Mr Amazing Logician. You say you are impervious to that! There is no arguing with your logic.

Keep saying that. At some point, it won't matter that you feel compelled to tell the world that your little bug self is impervious to the light. Eventually, you'll get settled into that truth. You'll get to bask in the light of a truth all your own. No one ever need contradict you. The truth is patient. The truth will wait to assert itself. But eventually, your little bug carcass will be found lying in its own truth on the ground. 

Snake Eyes

If only I could erase the tree of knowledge that came from that look. The look that I perpetually go back to. The look that instagrammed the relationship into one cohesive picture for all parts of me to observe.

That split second that almost seemed to bleed all moments of the past 20 years into one.

Somehow in that look my destiny juxtaposed the Red-Seas-of-my-Egyptian-escapism versus the-slavery-isn't-so-bad bit next to one another. And in that moment, my escape route was hatched. Right down the middle of the walled off sea. The look that was able to break through into my own deluded mind, causing some sort of contrecoup injury to my jostled brain.

I might be choosing a drowning death of the Sea by leaving.

But those frozen far off eyes told me of another death. It wasn't the one I had always thought. It wasn't the pat answer I thought. I realized there must have been a soul murdering way back in the past. For those eyes stared out of a body that had no soul.  

That frozen framed moment crystallized "the why" so that I could mount the courage to enter the threatening Sea that might drown me. The why for how to choose your own death.

That look revealed my real choice was caught in the space between the slow agonizing death of my soul or the accidental death in my escape in crossing the Sea.

The relationship was already dead. There was no resurrection of it. I was holding up a giant empty shell and though already dead, my holding it threatened to kill me--my soul. I had to stab the shell, in order to live or die more authentically.

I looked into the eyes of my own death dream and I vowed that dying in the act of soul preservation was indeed the sort of death worth living your whole life for. And so I stabbed the giant snake.

Somehow I Hope

There is a feeling somewhere between full on hatred and adoration. I'm trying to unpack this feeling and what it feels like. I'm trying to conjure it, I suppose. Because somehow, I can't necessarily feel the hatred that I ought to feel toward my narcissist.

Nobody gets this, really.

A good friend recently told me I ought stop seeing the world in "Narcissists out to get me..."

I had some explaining to do. So explain I did.

I told him how the thing that kept me trapped was not the fact that I see the world as a bunch of narcissists, but rather, my own wanting to see the best in people, in everyone, in my own narcissist for years. This was the piece that held me hostage for 17 years. And only now am I more free because I see his narcissism and that consequently, I can't heal him.

But, even still I'm not to the hatred point. There are times it seems close. There are times I wish for the relief of his non-existence which feels something akin to hatred.

And all the same, he has indeed, suffered so much. There is great pain. Regardless of his ridiculous choices to not deal emotionally with that pain, I cannot add to it, today. There is still a far off part of me that loves the idea of him becoming a different--healthy person one day. Perhaps, the new She will somehow conjure it out of him.

And even still there is this ultimate pain, buried deep that for me is that I would have given anything, maybe everything for him to just step onto the healing path that he never would step onto. And so, I watch my kids pained by a breakup, a divorce. I watch myself, and I watch a woman step into his life who seems kind, sweet, lovely, and good. And though my family gets angry at her, feels all the indignation in the world, I feel hope and gratitude at her being with and near him.

I suppose most ex wives are jealous, indignant, often aiming to thwart things for their husbands that are no more. Somehow, I feel nothing of that. All I feel is hope that somehow she makes him the man he could be. Somehow I hope, even still. Because being him and being her with him is enough burden on its own. There is no reason I need to somehow add to that. And nobody will get that unless they've lived intimately with a narcissist.

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.

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.  

fantasy escape

I don't know what to do with wanting to escape so badly that I find myself disturbed by fantasies of my ex's death. Dreams where he dies. And stops his games. And stops hurting me. Dreams where I feel relief at the end of all this ridiculousness.

In my dream, I have peace. I fly to a tower and of course, have Orange Pekoe tea. As in OP. Which I find comical because I've been called "OP" in that addictive game of minecraft which in server speak means "over powerful" or something like that.

In my dream there are no tethers. No hooks. No chains. I'm free.

Just my wingless self that somehow magically flies above the ground with a robed dude and his six year old son.

And then I wake up. And my hex won't stop abusing me.

And I wish that I were still sleeping in a world where my ex has never existed. Or sometimes I fantasize about some sort of wrath of divine action on the part of the Almighty--striking him dead in some sort of dramatic fashion for all the world to finally see. For the jig to be up.

Except that I'm not sure that there is an Almighty. Nor am I so sure kharma exists.

And so I turn on myself. Hate myself for having such thoughts, such dreams, such fantasies. Because, honestly, I don't know what to do with such thoughts. Am I a monster? I don't really know. Am I deluding myself into somehow sainting myself and making my ex the evil demon character in a medieval fantasy novel? I don't really know.

Am I not being honest with myself? Am I not allowing space? Am I somehow crowding? I don't really know. Because, how else could my life have arrived at this locale? How else could I become so consumed with thinking of the day when I get out of this prison. Which maybe happens when he magically dies by lightening strike.

Truth of the matter is, the days without the death fantasies are far worse. On those days, I don't dream of his death. I only dream of my own. Cause at least then, all of this would end.

Flooded Kindness

I'm not sure why I'm so sensitive to certain things. In particular, lately, my eyes have turned into water faucets. As in, lately, I cry a lot. I suppose that is not surprising. And to be expected. What's strange about it is what turns the water faucet on. I often find myself crying at kindness. Or real compassion. Or empathy.

Yesterday, was overwhelming. One of those days when I felt so raw and precarious and exhausted and worn down to the nub, like a pile of pick-up sticks. One of those days where I had to pull a Kimmy Schmidt and break time into ten second increments--arguing with myself that I could, in fact, manage ten seconds, then ten more, and ten more, over and over. The I'm-going-to-have-a-breakdown-right-here edge stood beside me all day.

I went to the gym to cope. The majority of my energy was diverted from Back & Bi to the landscape of my head in self talk. Just don't burst into tears, here. They won't understand. 

The whole time the tears threatened and I tried to imagine that I was just sweating a lot out of my eyes.

It seemed like the bros were staring more than usual. Do they see my tears?

And then one of the regulars, whose name I don't even know, went out of his way to ask me if I needed to work in and use the chin-up bar. He was just being kind. But, it felt like it violently struck some sort of resonance nearly dropping my bridge into the water. I choked out a yes, then practically ran across the gym to escape observation and to grab my usual 25 lb dumbbell step-stool, as anything less is too tipsy. Its just sweat! I wanted to scream. A lot of sweat is just dripping down my face. 

When I left the gym, a bro stood an extra five to hold the door for me. Uh. Kindness. Another choked word. Thanks. My eyes added more water to the already puddled parking lot. At least, there was nobody around to see. I cried all the way home. Reminding myself that I'd never see the people in the car next to me at the stop light and it really doesn't matter if they see me balling.

At the grocery store, a man motioned for me to go ahead of him in line, as I just had a piece of poster board for one of my little people. Again. Hot tears fought so hard to escape my eyes, they burned.

Kind words in an email involving everyday details from an office manager in Canada. Again, tears.

A season two Christmas episode of Glee. In the story line, Coach secretly buys, Artie, a pair of legs. The unseen act of compassion and kindness. I crumpled into an uncontrollable hot mess on the sofa and my little she dog licked my salty tears.

Somehow, I know this all has something to do with recovering from the narcissist, but I can't for the life of me, sort it out, yet.    

the Liar's Web

A book I’m reading states that the root of almost all human evil begins and ends in the lie.  Lying is one thing. But lying to ourselves, quite another. This is the line drawn in the sand and in my opinion, one of the pieces that distinguishes the malignant, covert, narcissist from the more "benign" narcissist. The malignant, covert narcissist swallows his own delusions. His narcissism is hidden from himself, which effectively (especially over time) hides it from others. Otherwise, how could he convince others? You see, the lies of the malignant effectively, more and more, wall the MC narcissist off from self-awareness, insulating him from outside (and inside) influence.

I don't need this other person's opinion--clearly, it doesn't have merit or is inferior to mine.

I suspect this is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. Indeed, for the malignant narcissist this self lying obstacle is insurmountable.

I suppose the true story of the MC Narc is a story about the murder of Self Awareness. Slaughtered. Hacked up and strewn all over some creepy, cornfield in mid-western America--never to be seen again.

There is no coming back from such a place--apologies to John Walsh. It is the crime that will never be solved.

You see, the Master of deceit becomes a Master by practicing deception on himself, first and foremost. And this is why you cannot appeal to anything or anyone to change him. This is why he will never change.

He has placed himself beyond the reach of influence.

I suppose this is worth remembering. After all, the personal pain of being deceived--being lied to--being duped for so many years stabs down deep. How could I go along with his deception for so long?

The truth of the matter is, I was his confirmation ticket that helped make the story more believable. I made the lies true by being that something outside him that his delusions could bounce off and rebound back onto him--helping him further his own delusions. My own delusions of the world, couldn't accept the circumstances of his childhood--dead mothers, and bodies in rivers, and massive conspiracy theories. I needed for the fairy tale ending to actually exist. For things to work out in the end and the story to be one of good overcoming bad. I didn't want the Americanized, Stanley Kubrick ending of A Clockwork Orange, I wanted the original Anthony Burgess ending where the dystopia ends with a little hope.

A therapist I worked with told me that I need to seal off my porous ego boundaries, as he referred to my being-too-easily-influenced-by-my-MC-Narcs lies. Perhaps, therapist was right in that I must shut out my MC Narc's lies in order to move forward.

But, at the same time, carefully. I must allow some pores on my ego boundaries, particularly as regards safe, healthy people. I need to be open to some people calling me on my own shit. Otherwise, how shall I ever maintain some sort of checks and balances system on my own self delusions? How shall I ever keep myself from becoming just like him--walled off forever from the influence of others, self awareness strewn around some creepy cornfield? Truth of the matter is that he is not likely to ever get out of his own web. He is not likely to ever see the falsehood in the truth he tells.

Caught in his own liar's web, he is.

Revenge

How to Exact Revenge on The Narcissist, or something to that effect was the name of a VLOG I recently stumbled upon on YouTube. I watched some of the video. To watch some is better than none, I thought, since most of me outright disagrees with the philosophy of taking revenge upon the narcissist.

But, I have always been the sort of person who tries to listen to other people’s ideas in pursuit of growth. And I find that I most often need some sort of stop-gap on low self-awareness when I vehemently disagree with someone’s ideas. So I had a listen.

And not being one for commenting on YouTube, I’ll respond here.  

While my own experience has demonstrated that healing from narcissistic abuse involves liberal amounts of "space allowing" for difficult emotions, including the desire for revenge, I think a distinction needs to be made between allowing space and allowing too much space. I believe that the pursuit of revenge creates too much space, lending itself toward a particular sort of imbalance, ultimately stunting the healing process in one’s self--forget the narcissist as reference point altogether.

By itself, the emotion of revenge is nothing more than intense anger coupled with a strong desire for justice. Typically, the desire for revenge surfaces when we perceive that we have been the recipient of intolerable injustice.  

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that.

But, in order to pursue said revenge strategy, we often have to go much further. We often have to foster, even conjure a deliberate imbalance in ourselves—in our own emotional alchemy, often by cutting off other emotions that might get in the way of executing said strategy such as kindness, empathy, and compassion. I suspect the reason behind this fostering is due to the fact that intense strategies like revenge demand Herculean amounts of energy to drive them to completion. Therefore, the energy we might have for other emotions gets requisitioned to our ORS--Omnipotent Revenge Strategy. Our potential energy that we damn up behind Hoover in order to exact our revenge strategy ends up finding its own way. It's worth remembering that once water is released below the damn, it has no agenda--as mere kinetic energy it just flows onto whomever and whatever is caught in its path. Such massive flowing energy might just land on us as we fall casualty to our revenge's course--just as un-damned water knows only to flow into empty space.

Furthermore, ironically enough, with revenge we often have a misguided notion that we are "taking back control." In all actuality, we are surrendering control as we knot and tether and tie ourselves back up to the narcissist. We reattach ourselves by making our well-being dependent upon his painful experience just as it was before! We want him to hurt, to suffer, only now we think seeing him wounded will somehow help us heal. This is akin to suffering a gunshot wound and thinking that shooting the perpetrator rather than going to the hospital will make the wound stop hemorrhaging. In so doing we push our healing locus of control outside ourselves and give it back to the narcissist who gladly takes it once again from us. We make our healing journey about him, which is furthering his narcissistic supply line. Why the hell would we want to feed that beast again? 

Put simply, this is not the path to healing our wound. In fact, this is likely the path to turning our wound gangrenous.  

narcissism

Here is a helpful definition of narcissism that I came across recently.

"The uncanny game of hide and seek in the obscurity of the soul, in which it, the single human soul, evades itself, avoids itself, and hides from itself."

--Buber

dark comedy

Apparently, a point in the narcissistic grand scheme of things occurs when the script begins to resemble dark comedy. The play--anything but predictable. Somehow, the dark comedy morphs into preposterous. As in, who would do that? No one. Except one living on the narcissistic planet.

Do not underestimate such a tool. It is powerful in being unbelievable.

When you go to describe the happenings to someone, no one will believe you.

Even when you minimize as you tell the story, even when you downplay the circumstances, you sound as though you must be the sort of person whom exaggerates things. Obviously.

Recently, my ex failed in manipulating money out of someone. He contacted me to request that I help him convince and fight against some of the people on my side of our disagreements. Yes, you read that right. My ex actually wanted me to argue on his behalf to this friend of mine to help him and give him (my ex) money. This "helping" him would ultimately thwart my own interests.

In the span of a short phone conversation, he adroitly took the stage to play the financial victim of my friend's sudden betrayal--this friend was going to give me money--and now they have turned on him, abandoning him and everything is loss, loss, loss.

Same conversation. He threatened me, if I didn't do this manipulative "favor" for him.

I do not make this shit up. No one could.

So I cope by reminding myself that this will make good material for my book. Question is, will it be fiction or non-fiction? If I endeavor to write a fictional account of  this, readers will think me poor writer for making such preposterous plot lines up. If I write a nonfictional account of this, readers will think me exaggerator par-excellence and my credibility will fly out the window. And so, I suppose it will have to be a dark comedy for the stage.

when two become one

In some sort of facebook-worthy, publishable manner, he was going to oh-so-generously give me two hundred dollars for covering childcare of the kids--our kids--the kids that he fathered--for two weeks while he vacations somewhere in the Rockies, likely with his new GF. But, wait. He decided that I am only covering five of his actual days of kid time and two hundred, would be way too much moula and so decided to give me one hundred, instead.

Oh my. I would actually hate to be the recipient of some sort of ridiculously-over-the-top generosity of two hundred dollars. I mean, my God, what would I do with all that cash?

Step aside, Ivana Trump. Here I come.

I might start bragging about bleeding him dry of TWO HUNDRED greenbacks in TWO WEEKS!

I mean, seriously. Look at my manipulative success. All the cash he's given me in the past year, could amount to a small fortune. And they say the narcissist has no empathy. Clearly, they didn't meet my philanthropic philosopher Ex!!

Oh, wait, can zero technically be defined as a small fortune?

I'm almost certain that, philosophically, it can be.

I'm almost certain, that this is precisely what he tells his friends.

And, I'm certain that he has labeled himself as the most-generous-divorcing male on the planet, par excellence, because, he's got to have you thinking that he is the best at everything, including divorce.

things hoped for

Some days, I hope beyond all hope that I am actually all that He says I am.

I hope that I am the evil bitch He thinks me to be.

I hope that I am actually some sort of vigilante out to destroy him, victimize him, and end all things rosy and pretty in life for him.

Cause that would mean that I am the problem. That would mean that one day three little people—my three little elves—wouldn’t actually have to wake up to the reality that He does not actually care a rat’s ass about them.

They would never have to have their little hearts ripped out in knowing these painful things about him.

And as much as I crave validation. I think I could be ok with just being the problem. I could be ok with just being the fucked up mother who failed them.

And that would be the end of it. I could spare them all of this, by being the bitchy, bitch who never dealt with her stuff. As in mom, needs therapy. Mom needs to work out her shit. Mom needs help. And all of this narcissism shit could just go away. 

Fucked up things you hope for...

Writing Exercise: Five Core Values

This comes from the book: Ensouling Language by Stephen Harrod Buhner.

Directions: Choose 5 deeply meaningful words, ones that approximate the center of who you are and evoke emotive content for you. Write them down. Any words will do--as long as they are meaningful to you.

Example. Earth, Stone, Green, Leaves, Plants.

Or another. Love, Happiness, Child, Wandering, Hope.

Here was my list: Soul, Compassion, Creativity, Healing, Intuition.

Do this part of the exercise now without reading the rest of the directions...

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Next. "Write five poems, each of which uses all five of the words. You can use as many other words as you want, nevertheless each poem must contain all five of the words you have chosen. Take as much time as you need..."

When done, read the poems in sequence. You might be amazed by what comes out. Here are all five of mine in order...

One
the soul of healing
grabs intuition
and holds on
birthing compassion
creativity's apex.

Two
intuition speaks from soul
breathing with compassion
creating a healing force
magical enough
that few believe its existence.

Three
the real trick in life
is ferreting out compassion
from soul
when poured empty
and used up.
creativity wanders in
searching for healing intuition
that has sporified
in order to survive.

Four
living the soul's creativity
heals the parts of
intuition, wounded by those
that sacrifice
compassion on pain's altar.

Five
healing
pilgrimage of creativity
to soul's center.
seeking out
bits that keep us human.
splinters
most wanting of compassion.
the inward glance
pains.
but, in the stumbling dark
intuition
holds our hand.

the Gym

Eyes on the floor, headphones on the ears, I hide out in the open, protected by my walls of being focused, aloof. They know not of lies and narcissists and webs and gaslighting. They touch not the holes in walls or pocketbooks or hearts. They feel not the anguished face of my child. They see not the ugliness of it all.

They know me only by my routine and my outward appearances of being strong. They see my training rituals aimed at remaining in the camp of the sane. They see how my invisibility cloak pulls me skyward, over the bar and back again, masking my inner weaknesses.

Here, in this space, I am capable, maybe even strong.

only You

I am haunted by the twenty year old pictures. I’m smiling of all things. The sun setting behind makes artwork of the sky. Climbing harnesses say we topped out after three pitches at Table Rock. Oh, how times were different.

I ache in looking.

These pictures somehow tear my chest from my heart. I do not know how to hold the two emotions together in one space. Love. Confusion. Pure giving altruistic love, for you, the narcissist. And yet, your love was absent. Faked, perhaps. 

I do not know what to do with that, now. 

Was it always absent? Always faked, or did it somehow morph into this absenteeism--this wretchedness? 

How can my love, not have changed or influenced you, even ever so slightly? How can it be that you find it so easy to hate me? How can it not be difficult to hate? How can you not care, at all, after so much time of me trying to give to you?

No, I wasn’t perfect.

Nobody ever is.

But surely, the something—the all of myself that I gave, must have meant something? Surely it must have changed something, maybe just one thing for you? Surely, you must be ever so slightly different, for having known me for so many years?

But no, I was invisible. I didn’t exist. I guess that would mean, I didn’t influence you, at all. Cause it was always just you. Only you.