Things I Remind Myself of When I Start to Waver

One. I swallowed the Red pill. This hell of being awake is still better than the hell of being in the delusional narc matrix.

Two. Even if I'm alone the rest of my damn life, true aloneness is still better than false togetherness which is really just hidden aloneness.

Three. The hidden, narcopalypses that will emerge along the path like trip wires and bouncing betties, start to form patterns. Take for example this Christmas. Predictably, when I have my kids and am engaged in being present to them, my ex will do something to sabotage the time. This is absolutely predictable. There will be a letter or email or phone call or text designed to wound me in some way. Since I've gone "minimal contact" it will be embedded in a communication that has the guise of being kid related. I therefore already have a plan. No opening of anything, no matter how "urgent" until my time with my kids is over.

Four. Focus on the progress. The rattling and emotional abuse used to throw me off for months at a time. Lost in the fog, I couldn't find my path or my way. Now, I'm thrown off for a few hours or a day and then back on track. Decreasing your being rattled time is progress.

Five. I swallowed the Red pill. I chose the Red pill. While it would be much more difficult to choose the Red pill if prior to swallowing I had the horrific knowledge from these past four years of this hellish Odyssey, even still, I would choose again to wake up and get the fuck out.

chosen

Over and over on this journey out of the fog, I've had the sense that I did not choose this path. It's as if I woke up one day and finally saw the reality of my life. My relationship with the narcissist, finally struck me as the non-relationship that it was. I saw that I was staring at the projected shadows on the back wall of Plato's Cave. (If you knew me, you'd know exactly how ironic that analogy is.) I woke up in the middle of a nightmare only to find that what I thought was a mere dream that I needed to awaken from yet again--a dream within a dream as it were--was the real nightmare of this world of being connected to a narcissist. On and on it has persisted as the reality I am in that I cannot wake up from further. The exhaustion point in fighting it has set in and still it goes on. And thus the feeling percolates that I didn't really choose this path. I keep trying to wake up out of said nightmare. But I am awake. I never chose to be one of those people who always chooses to awaken and face the fucked up reality over persisting in living in some false dreamworld created by some narcissistic delusion. But I am one of those people. I will always choose awakening. In spite of all the work and grief and hell and turmoil to endure. No, I'm one who always chooses the red pill over the blue pill. And perhaps that is why, I've never entirely felt like I chose this path. Rather, for some reason this path chose me.

And it keeps choosing me.

Odd as it sounds, that thought gives me comfort. In some sort of fucked up-ed-ness, I cling to that.

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.