For far too long I allowed the happy person I was to be emptied and depleted by someone who only needed the part of me that made them feel like the most important person in the world. My self-esteem wasn't great, and I even told him so. It wasn't hidden news and something I spoke of to friends about on more than just a few occasions. I know how my self-esteem crumbled since childhood, but I was always running to stay one step ahead of completely giving in to the idea that I'm somehow less-than. It took a long, long time to get to a point where I wasn't completely oblivious to the people I was bringing into my life and why. I didn't understand until just a few short years ago that I was bringing others into my life to treat me like crap, the way my mom mostly treated me throughout my childhood and beyond. It was history repeating itself.
No where along the road to becoming the person I would be did I ever consider what was being said to me, done to me was anything other than normal, and that I would continue into adulthood believing that all the sad times, hurtful times, and frightening times were all my fault, every single one of them. I self-blamed right through childhood and into adulthood. This became 'normal' for me, for my life, and I spent all of my life seeking those who would continue to support this idea of 'me' that I'd gotten from others and accepted as truth. Those who didn't treat me terribly I walked away from and early on, because they didn't fit the 'normal' in my life at all.
It wasn't until late 2012 that I began to see the current situation I was in as 'off.' Somewhere inside, however, I knew things were terribly, terribly wrong, but I couldn't figure out what happened or why it happened. Didn't I feel better about myself by then? Hadn't I just gotten out of a relationship that was tearing me apart in that last two of eleven years? Hadn't I regained my health, returned to health once I picked myself up and realized the best thing for me was to be single again? Hadn't I gone through enough to right things, only now to find myself right back in the fire again? I knew the answers to it all, yet I was blinded by love. I'd fallen in love with someone I thought was the most perfect guy in the world. Thing I didn't realize right away, and not until it was too late, is that he thought that about himself too...
The mask began to fall less than a year later. I caught glimpses of behaviors and traits and tactics that I couldn't really put my finger on. As time passed the gaslighting began, and I began to doubt myself, my opinions about what was happening, how I felt, and I eventually doubted the very person I was until I went on a journey at his bidding to become someone else. The very effort of becoming someone other than me was taxing in more ways than I can describe, and the damage it did to me was insidious and cumulative.
Bouncing back wasn't an option, as I would find out in therapy. And I'd gone to therapy because I couldn't figure out why I couldn't let go, why even after the ugly breakup I was bewildered by it all and not letting go. I've spoken about this in entries on my other blogs, but in short I was told that I was having trouble reconciling who I fell in love with and the person he really was. They weren't the same, and the guy I needed to say goodbye to simply didn't exist anywhere but in my mind. I fell for the mask and not the person.
How is it that I didn't know? That's a topic of conversation that I've embarked on far too many times, and I'm still to this day trying not to go there anymore. But the reconciliation that brings closure may be one of the hardest things for me to achieve, because the line still blurs between the mask and the man.
The fragility of the situation is clearly seen now, and yet I find myself trying to reconcile it all just the same. Without guidance I'm left to floundering along trying to compose one image of the two things that will never ever form a consistent or cohesive composite of that person. It's just not working.
The damage is still there. I deal with it every single day of my life. Once again, I'm not going to turn my back on this because leaving it in the bowels of one's mind, and yes... we all have a cesspool of crap that gets dumped into a toxic recycling bin... well, if I left it there I will only be left to deal in the decay of something that was never real to begin with. I'm not going to do that.
The last time I spoke with Beverly (my therapist) was in 2013. I knew I wasn't to be in that area much longer and needed to end the sessions and focus on the business at hand, that being the business of preparing for another life somewhere else. What I was left with was the knowledge that the damage was with me and would be with me forever, that I would simply have to heal around those wounds and hope the strong scars that remain would hold it all in place. I think it is, but the scars are still quite tender at this point, and only because of the lack of closure.
You will never get closure after leaving a narcissist. It's simply not going to happen. Acceptance of this means no surprises down the line when the garbage surfaces, and it will surface again, and reminds you that there is yet still that absence of closure than brings total acceptance and healing.
If you're dealing with this, and if you're feeling lost, bewildered, betrayed, confused and alone... you're not at all alone in that. We are many, those who've had to find our way back again...
More to come....
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