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The Wreckage of the Narcissist
#Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
Narcissism is insidious.
Here you are cruising through life on a highway and things are going pretty good. There is the odd curve every now and then but it’s no problem for you to navigate through them. You feel quite confident you have this life driving thing figured out.
Then one day you meet someone who creates this whirlwind of a situation when you first get together. It’s exciting, it makes you feel alive and excited. Your car is now speeding on that highway, but boy does it feel good to throw caution to the wind and push down that gas pedal.
After a while, they start growing complacent with their ‘be on best behavior so the little potholes in the road that were there when they were testing you in the beginning have now turned almost crater like from their random temper outbursts.
Still, the potholes aren’t all that common and you can typically steer around them, so you aren’t bothered by those red flags too much.
When their complacency switches to devaluing you notice that there are potholes every hundred yards or so. Sometimes it’s pothole after pothole so you’re concentrating heavily on the road to make sure you miss these what are now more common events than ever.
You start to glaze over as a defense mechanism from the near daily fights. They’ve been chipping away at your self-esteem and self-worth so much you’re fighting depression constantly.
The car is getting worn down. You’ve been going nonstop through this Death Valley of road hazards and the potholes you couldn’t avoid have started adding up.
Your wheels are out of alignment, your tires are balled, you haven’t had a good tune up since you met your narcissist. The worn windshield wipers create a hypnotic effect as you are used to the narcissists abuse the wipers lull you into a trance as your life goes back and forth from abuse to niceness.
You get thinking though, it hasn’t been going from abuse to kindness that changed sometime its now actually abuse to less abuse and you’ve just grown accustomed to it so you don’t really acknowledge it but like those worn wiper blades it makes your field of vision very narrow for what is truly going on in your life. Zoned out you stare ahead automatically driving without any conscious thought put into any of your actions.
Then suddenly, out of the blue your narcissist grabs that steering wheel and gives it a yank. You weren’t expecting it because you’re so overwhelmed, so tired, so depressed that you were just blindly gazing forwards.
The narcissists little trick sure took you by surprise. As you come out of your daze from the sudden unpredictable abandonment you realize that you’re not on the highway anymore, you’re now in the ditch going 80 mph.
You instinctively jerk the wheel to get the car back on life’s highway where it’s safe. Your reaction was seen as clingy and needy, and you got devalued as you tried to right the car on life's highway. You’re doing your best to keep everything going but your reaction is now getting blamed for the reason they are leaving. You’re too smothering and dependent on them!
Suddenly you realize that you’re not in the driver's seat, the narcissist was and when you looked over to see what he/she was going to do next you realized that they bailed out already. It’s just you and this cruise missile that you’re on which is aimed at an embankment.
You struggle to keep it going. When you somehow managed not to roll by grabbing the steering wheel you breathe a sigh of relief thinking you’ve got this handled now.
Only, the narcissist couldn’t very well have you escape with no damage. How else are they to feel superior to you? The narcissist took the keys from the car when they jumped out of your car into the hot young neighbors who had pulled up beside you without you noticing. The betrayal is staggering as you realize you can’t steer the car without power steering!
In that moment, your entire relationship begins to flash through your mind as your car hits the approach and begins to turn in the air like a corkscrew going into a bottle.
You feel okay, nice and numb and a little overwhelmed, but you feel okay.
Then you are forced to get grounded and when your car hits the earth again it rolls multiple times. Your finances come to mind as you watch the front end of the car collapse into itself. The car is racking up financial losses just like you had been doing.
Flip after flip, the car tears down the ditch collapsing more and more each time it connects with a new spot onto the ground. Finally, the car stops. Smoke is billowing up from the engine compartment which blows into the car because all of the windows are shattered out because the roof is now 6" lower than it was before.
You sense real danger but you’re near crippled from the realization of it all. There is no delusion in your mind now. You see how bad things really are. You begin to drag yourself maimed and broken from the wreck.
Each broken promise, each anniversary special occasion wrecked comes to the forefront of your mind as you scratch your way to safety one pull at a time.
Your car suddenly explodes and erupts into fire burning the last money that you had in your wallet. Your life is shattered.
You have no idea how you’re going to carry on. You are in so much pain you can’t do anything but howl in agony and rage. As you lay there waiting for an ambulance, your narcissist drives by with his/her new friend groping them like it’s a porn movie.
They do not stop. They do not care.
Alone you sit in your pain. Alone you must find the strength to rebuild. Out from the ashes of this life wreckage will rise a phoenix.
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