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.

Unfriended

Unfriended on FB, I found myself this week. Yes, FB, that tell-all world--that world where you are friended sometimes with people, you don't even know--that world where you have hundreds or even thousands of "friends." Yes, unfriended by someone married to for 17 + yrs--and technically not yet divorced from. Unfriended status, as in unable to "access" pictures of my own children. Why would someone want to do that? I have no idea. There is so much. There is all of this. And yet, he will not admit that he wants a divorce. No, the entire blame rests on my shoulders. This is the world inhabited when abandoning the narcissist.

Your pain does not exist. Only His does, for all the world to see--oozing openly--so they can coddle and rescue and feel sorry for the narcissist. And yet behind the scenes, he will strive to wield more pain at you, in any way possible. Twisting the knife, in any way possible.

Dumb things like, no ride to the airport, something he would offer to a stranger, if and only if it served some grandiose narcissistic purpose. Perhaps, only if the stranger could broadcast his oh-so-lovingkindness on FB. Which apparently, I have never quite done to narcissistic satisfaction.

He continues to herald news to the family of all the wonderful things he does for me, in spite of my breaking his heart in leaving. Wait a minute, I broke his heart when he had an affair?

Let me get this straight. The cheater's heart gets broken when his wife is faithful to him and then decides to leave in the aftermath?

I'm sorry, I'm confused. WTF?

Yes, you read that right.

He is the victim, after all.

She is leaving me and.

And.

I, Mr Narcissist, want to make it work.

In spite of my being the one and only to inflict knife wounds every chance I get. 

Oh, and wounds by proxy? Oh, my friends are just so angry. They can't even be civil, I'm sorry. Cause you--you are to blame--evil woman that I cheated on. 

And so I am the evil villain leaving the cheating narcissist who likes to conjure words to mean any and everything under the sun. He likes to "brick wall" it when communication is attempted. I am the evil villain who says, NO. Enough is enough, I will not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, anymore. I will not put up with this dehumanizing treatment. I will not put up with your wordcycles.

Some day, some people will be sharp enough to put all the pieces together. I await that day.

Down is Optional

Down is optional. Up is mandatory. Words posted on signs in a National Park in the West that reflect the sentiment of where I'm at.

I climb up out of the depths.

I tell myself to just continue. Keep on walking. Put one foot in front of the other. Don't worry about the rest.

Though my quads yell, though my lungs doth protest at the limited oxygen, though my people doth vanish, keep walking, I scream at myself. Get out of the Grandiose Narcissistic Canyon. You must.

Don't expect anyone to get this. It is ok. One day the straining will be less. Forgive those that do not have the endurance for this marathon climb up with you. Maybe, they carry too much already. Maybe, they are too hurt themselves. It is ok. You will survive. Down is optional, but up is mandatory. Remember that.

the Music of the Sirens

Sometimes their music calls me out of the ship. Hypnotized, I want to jump in the water and swim or change course and move toward that most compelling music of the Sirens. The ethereal songs of love of the past that would draw me back towards certain shipwreck, again onto the Island of Narcissism. The old friends enchant by believing the false music that I sang for so long. Somehow, they think that I cannot hear the beauty in the delusions. They think I don’t know this seductive music. They think I must be killing the music.

These people—attached to the carcass of who I became in order to survive. These people—attached to the carcass of the projected false image. These people—attached to the unreal me—the ghost shell of a girl I used to know well. These people do harm. I must pass this island that wields my own self as weapon back at me. It is as if I am fighting me—the mi who knows all my habits, my deep seated needs, my fears—the self I became in order to survive does not want to fold on this hand to the core me. My true neglected self must somehow regain strength. I remind myself that embers can smolder a long time away from the fire. My true self, like a smoldering ember must hold onto its cold, almost snuffed self. Waiting. For itself, like a soul friend waits for another half to recognize its other half. Thus, I paradoxically journey and wait the long way back to self, a pilgrim, a voyager, a friend paused on the way—moving and waiting for the me I am at my core—for the me that almost was no more.

No, I cannot explain how one journeys and waits, at the same time, I just know it to be true, somehow. I know I am quite used to an external locus of control, so says one of my therapists. Perhaps that is where the waiting and journeying occur. I am journeying by waiting to round the corner on the island of the Sirens and be out of earshot where I am no longer at risk of being dashed against the rocks. 

I must complete this odyssey. Therefore, on this passage, I have strapped myself to the mast and hope everybody on deck has waxed their ears to ignore the wailing of the Sirens.

I worry when the therapeutic mast gets a little shaky and sways in the wind. Is the mast sturdy enough? I worry when the mast doesn’t seem to take the strapping to—seriously enough. I worry when the mast gets a little pissy because I have emailed too much in a week. 

But the point is to escape the narcissist and his Sirens--to break from it all. I think that means I have to sail past alone, as they beckon me back to the traumatic familiar. I know I might die if I go back to the island. And I might die on this voyage, as well. But, nonetheless, somehow, I must find the courage to fight the haunting voices of the old me the Sirens sing of and journey on without that music. I must go it alone without accompaniment in order to find the new me. I must find the rhythm of my own haunting song and let it call me back to myself, for it will not dash me on the rocks.

  

Feast on Your Life

Most days, I forget to eat.

Not that I have some sort of underlying, anorexic aspirations of being a waifish, Kate-Moss type. No rather, food has just fallen off the To-Do list, beat out by all the other overwhelming tasks.

Until, I look in the mirror and wonder why the woman looks gaunt and skeletal. And the clothes hang strangely and I am reminded that I have no money to buy clothes and my pants are once again falling off. I used to be pleasantly plump—a little extra padding around my organs.

Now I wonder at the stranger staring out at me from that world behind the mirror. Who is she? Will she survive this? How do I nourish her?  And the lovely words of Derek Walcott float out…

Love after Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread.

Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott