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.   

A Blessing for those Entrapped in Narcissistic Abuse

May you move with an ease that defies the web you find yourself in,
As you awaken in someone else's life and find your sticky spider feet again.

May the light of healing always find you,
As you trudge forward through the dark night of the soul.

May the love of the Ancestors, the history of the beautiful smatterings of humanity surround you and encompass you as you walk through another planet that utterly confuses you.

May the goodness of the Universe infuse your soul, binding it to all things compassionate, all things empathic, all things good, such that you taste kindness in the air around you.

May you sweat this same loving kindness that the Divine breathes on you always
such that you do not feel the flames of the hatred from one whom has no place for love.

Above all, may you find your way out of the deep, dark pain purported by an absent soulless being that has given itself up to the destruction embedded in the lie.

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.

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.

Why Not, Beautiful?

Why couldn't he have just said, some of the time, you are beautiful.

I hear this from strangers on dating apps.

Some of the time, they might have agendas. To get into my pants, etc. But why? Why couldn't my lover, my ex, my husband have told me that he thought me beautiful? How do you never say that to someone you are married to for something like 17 yrs. I work through this shit, daily, perhaps. It's not that I want to be special, or extraordinary or model-esque or some kind of wonderful. I just want to be and feel some kind of normal. I want to feel like there is this one guy out there that thinks me to be great. Beautiful even.

I never got that from my narc. No. Rather, I was tolerable, at best.

Sometimes, he wasn't embarrassed to be with me. Like the time he told me to start using flash cards to memorize GRE words so that I might not sound so low brow, so midwestern, so uneducated at the Philosophy Grad Student gatherings. Sometimes, I didn't sound quite so dumb, to him.

I mean I was never enough. But sometimes, I was not quite as bad. Sometimes he didn't interrupt me or talk over me to tell my story to the philosophy wives standing in a circle around the mustard potato salad.

God forbid I open my mouth at a philosophy picnic and talk to the chair of the Department! Shut up.

I was always less than. Not enough of anything. One that ought be interrupted so as to minimize the damage of what the hell she uneducatedly said.

Never quite right. Just try harder. Be smarter, you dumb ass.

Speak to the philosophy wives about black bean dips. But never ever open your mouth to engage my professors. You are and will always be beneath me and them. You will never be....

But why not, beautiful, just the way I am? Without flash cards or GRE or words or scripts memorized? Maybe for a split second, I am enough. I don't know. Please. Thank you. Perhaps. In the future? Someday? Never?

On Grieving the What Mights

Sometimes the most tragic piece punches me unexpectedly in the gut. You'd think after all the abuse, all the hell in trying to escape the narcissist that in escape there would be only relief. But there is a hidden sadness that can sneak up behind you. You mistakenly think, if I can just get the hell out... If I can just survive and move on.... Why then I'll be fine.

And then there you go imagining like you've always done. Thinking of what might have been, if he'd only been able to choose something different. Just when you think you're finished with all the drama, all the death, all the grief and endings of dead relationships. There is a little spot that gets in.

Call it the what-might-have-been grief.

After you've invested so many years trying to love someone who for all intensive purposes can not ever love you back, you've come to intimately know the good friend of what-might-be. For many years, what-might-be has been one of your steadiest companions. What-might-be has been your hope, your citadel. And then what-might-be flies away into the air, evaporated just like everything else.

And this can be completely ungrounding. Cause who thinks of grieving the loss of the shared dreams, the future, the hopes of the growth, the butterfly transformation. But, you've lost so much. Why not this, too? After all, the snake goes on as perpetual death and life cycle.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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...

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. 

Exhaustion

Dealing, breathing, living in proximity to a narcissist is tiring. Exhaustion sets in when leaving the extensive web. Today, I ground and bless myself with these words by John O'Donohue. May they bless you, as well, dear reader...

For One Who is Exhausted

When the Rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued before has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw along the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

-John O'Donohue

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. 

Beauty from Wounded Space, One Day

Sometimes, oh-so-unrealistically, I think that I could handle the narcissist and all his shit, if it weren't for the havoc he disseminates like some sort of metastasizing cancer to my entire world. Especially, now, I need support. I need friends. And there he is dropping poison into the waters of my friendships. He means to destroy me. Punish me. Teach me, a lesson. And of course, there is always abuse by proxy. Getting my own friends to pressure me to do whatever-the-hell-it-is-that-he-wants-me to do--for whatever ridiculous purpose he might dream up--so that he can ultimately, control me.

Lately, the dark pessimist in me measures time in terms of which friends, I lost at which point in time. As in, oh August--that's when I realized the estrangement betwixt Michelle and I. Oh, September. That's when he got to my friend, Jenn.  

Somehow, right now, I don't seem to have the energy to counter the narcissistic propaganda they all seem to choke down like cough syrup.

I know I'll bounce back, eventually--just now I need time to devote energy elsewhere.

Nonetheless, it is a shame. I could use the support of my friends now, especially. But, I know eventually, the true ones will come back around. The truth will come out. And it is important for me to let go of my feelings of betrayal by them. They don't know better. They are manipulated--the exact same place I was for 20 years or so. How can I expect them to see through stuff any sooner? I certainly, didn't.

And so, I do my best, to let go. Forgive. Not take it, personally. They don't get it, really. 

Instead, I cling to hope in the words of John O'Donohue about said friends. I cling to the idea of beauty emerging from the wounded space, one day.

For Lost Friends

As twilight makes a rainbow robe
From the concealed colors of day
In order for time to stay alive
Within the dark weight of night,
May we lose no one we love
From the shelter of our hearts.

When we love another heart
And allow it to love us,
We journey deep below time
Into that eternal weave
Where nothing unravels.

May we have the grace to see
Despite the hurt of rupture,
The searing of anger,
And the empty disappointment,
That whoever we have loved,
Such love can never quench.

Though a door may have closed,
Closed between us,
May we be able to view
Our lost friends with eyes
Wise with calming grace;
Forgive them the damage
We were left to inherit;

Free ourselves from the chains
Of forlorn resentment;
Bring warmth again to
Where the heart has frozen
In order that beyond the walls
Of our cherished hurt
And chosen distance
We may be able to
Celebrate the gifts they brought,
Learn and grow from the pain,
And prosper into difference,
Wishing them the peace
Where spirit can summon
Beauty from wounded space.

-John O'Donohue

Shell

I keep telling myself that he has to actually live with himself. And really—that is massive burden enough. Don't crack the egg. When I back away and reflect upon what that means, I’m relieved to finally be extricating myself—painful though it be—and I see the curse and Herculean strength it might take to gaze at who you’ve become if you're a narcissist and it sure ain’t pretty.

But the narcissist avoids this at all costs--even the cost of one’s significant other, one’s soul, one’s own offspring.

On some levels, narcissism is quite complicated. On other levels, narcissism is quite simple.

Take the almighty Atlas-like projected image of power, strength, and control holding up the world—in all actuality--just a crumpled over Nymph, chained to the reflected image in a lake, held by the hypnotically beholding power of the mirror, unable to wander away from the source confirming his existence—eternally dependent upon the manipulated, reflections of others. Ironically, as much mirror staring occurs—it is a staring without seeing—a staring at the spinning-armed Giant one needs to slay without the feel of the wind startling one into the reality of the shape of a Windmill. The empty staring never yields the gift of insight into one’s self.

For he will not see his true self—he cannot even see bits of his own horcruxed soul—all scattered around like Voldemort, initially in order to survive, to stay alive.

As strange as it sounds, his hatred of me isn’t really about me, per se, but rather an intolerable, displaced, self-hatred. His weakness—that he cannot handle any small bit of challenge to the delusional, projected, fragile view of self—that the following masses must worship and reconfirm over and over and over. All hail the king.

I am merely the small, peasant child on the side of the road, crying out as the Emperor passes, He has no clothes on.  I am the Christine who pulls back the Phantom’s mask. And in leaving I am refusing to continue to exist as the side-kick knight errant who eventually takes up Quixote’s delusions in his stead.

It really is quite simple and ironic.

He exquisitely hurts when I call him on his fake, new clothes. And yet, the narcissistic injury I induce itself is one rare opportunity for healing the deeply seated narcissistic wound that tethers him to the lake. A rare chance to wake up, after all these years.

And thus he hates.

He hates the truth about himself that he cannot face—that he cannot control—that he cannot manipulate—that for the most part, he cannot even see.

And thus the ultimate manipulator, ironically enough, lacks the smallest, most human ability—self autonomy to control himself without controlling others. He has to manipulate others, in order to manipulate himself. For his true self is too far off and too unknown to manage without the insulation and coating of the admiration of others. His true self that he walled off from, pushed outward, has shriveled up and died behind his own protective wall and most likely doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, the ornate eggshell stands in with the center blown out—ridiculously fragile, void of anything other than the decorated outside, mere hardened, glitzy, expensive Faberge for all to admire until it cracks.