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. 

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.

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.