Every person in a relationship experiences a different version of the person they are with. Two people together are an alchemy.
They create an energy.
I remember being around twenty four years old, in a house provided by the military, in Connecticut. I had three young children and a husband. I remember feeling very dissatisfied with my life and I couldn’t figure out why.
Later I would find there were so many facets to this untangling it is unimaginable. I am still doing that work to this day.
The first facet was being gay, and having not even realized it or having any indication and then finding myself with a husband and three young children. I did that to survive. Created that family to have one. Having no idea how to be a mother or a wife. Just that I needed a family.
I needed a family. Expansion: I needed a safe family.
As I well know now this is not why you create a family. I wouldn’t have known any better then, and I’m aware that many people begin in this way. And that who they become from the experience is the most important part.
I remember looking for my answers on the Internet. It ran much slower back then. Not quite the days of dial-up and you’ve got mail, but not very far out of that time either.
My seeking made me feel selfish at the time. I was supposed to be a mom and a wife forsaking all others. But I wasn’t even anyone to myself yet. I was an outer design with a burning inner emptiness and suffering.
I was absorbed inside myself. While I watched my husband play with our young children with complete envy. I envied the children for being played with. And I envied the husband for being able and knowing how to play.
I envied anyone who looked like they knew how to live, I merely knew how to survive. But I didn’t know that then.
I sat there lost inside myself having no idea what was wrong with me, because that was always the question of the first… Well actually it’s still the question, only with a little bit further along on the self-love journey.
So I focused more on my selfishness that I could notice, then the things that had happened to me to make me so lost. So I ordered about seven different books on narcissism. I became a narcissist scholar if you will. Malignant Self Love. The Narcissistic Family…. and so on…
Here’s the rub. I had to become so self-focused to figure out how to even be, that it was a self fulfilling prophecy. And I’m startled to find myself back at square one with myself again in this place. That is the most humbling recognition I could ever have.
I thought it was just figuring out my sexuality, the reality is this pattern would continue over and over until my untended self and my created self could reunite.
I’m about to be forty years old folks. A well respected clinician, a like-able gal, a mostly good mom most of the time. And my wounds, they still haunt me. And they still effect anyone who dares love me.
Back to my story.
Narcissism (24 years old)
The first recognition of this tumbled me into complete and utter acceptance of my fatal diagnosis. I was a monster. There was no hope for me.
And I became very depressed.
This depression led me into the office of my very first therapist. Who said a few words to me that have changed my life forever. He was the first person to ever recognize or say something to me like “I’m surprised that you’re alive.” I looked around for who he might be talking to, because it couldn’t possibly be me. I was fine just look at me. Strong friendly outgoing energetic attractive.
Sidenote; this therapist having only seen me about one year in total, upon me calling him and telling him I was graduating with my masters degree, attended my graduation ceremony. He was the only parent type figure that was there. My therapist. He had asked me at one point during a session what I thought I might like to do for a career. At this time I hadn’t finished through the 10th grade of high school and I had my GED. I had looked right at him and said I think I’d like to do what you do. And here I am.
So now I know where to begin my memoir and what I am going to write about. I will continue to figure out how to keep my thinking not frenzied and chaotic, and how to stay grounded within myself.
What I will say for now is that even with all of that work studying and knowing these dynamics, when you are wired with intense terror Over a significant period of your life and abuse and manipulation, your life will look entirely different in One way or another because of it.
People deal with this in a variety of ways. Each of their ways is never a thing that should be judged. For nobody, not even them sometimes, is able to see or realize what they had to do to survive emotionally.
Where do the emotions go when they are unwelcome by our safest sources?
They become internalized in one way or the other. Either a frighteningly low self-esteem, being incredibly hard on oneself, A variety of addictions, assorted masks, I could go on for a very long time.
The person is left to deal with their emotions by themselves, and when we are little we have absolutely no idea how to do that. So we develop coping mechanisms subconsciously that will play out our entire lives. In who we are attracted to, how we handle that. Our ability to delay gratification for being responsible. Etc.
Is it any wonder that these survivors on top of already living through hell in their childhood, end up having very short fuses, lots of irritability, a sense of dissatisfaction that can’t even put their finger on, and they need to go in wild cycles of hating themselves, and then doing impulsive things just to try to make themselves feel better in an immediate moment.
This is the land I live in. No matter how far I’ve traveled it takes constant awareness and effort just to exist in the world in a loving way.
Being able to connect to someone else’s emotions and to be kind to them, and to listen, and to take accountability for my actions. Instead of being so fragile that I become an entirely different person. One who doesn’t fight fair. Unrecognizable to myself and no one that I would want to be around.
I read this vampire series by Linda Leal Miller when I was a tween, in the final of the series the vampire and a human who had fell in love make a baby. I wonder if twilight stole from this. Haha
She’s a half breed. And so am I.. ….half narcissist by absorption, half empath by effort. Finding knowledge and cultivating awareness to sew up my wounds so I don’t cut others with my sharp tongue, with every ounce of pain I’ve been carrying.
A brilliant tortured sad lonely beautiful mind.
Capable of warm connection when all the right conditions are present, and also capable of cutting off from emotion like a switch. And then terribly aware of what that feels like for the other person and the damage that has been caused, but unable to correct it until later.
Frozen. Seemingly unfeeling, but very much the opposite.
The child the adult the child the adult the child the adult. Is it any wonder how confusing it all is?
Until she can connect to herself with the written word. A survival tactic. At least this one is a favorable one to balance out the others.
Until she can fully reconnect with herself ….