Moving On

I heard yesterday from one of the narc's flying monkeys “We just feel like you aren’t moving on like you are stuck in vengeance mode”. I assure you, I’m not out for vengeance. I write to help heal myself and help others. As an empath, helping others is in my blood. Teaching is what I’ve done. And now that I intimately know trauma, I am working to turn this pain into purpose. I’m 5th in a line of 6 women that the narc has abused. If we don’t speak up, nothing changes.

Revenge indicates I have something to gain from this blog. What I want is my time and energy back, I want my emotional, mental, and physical health back. I want to help others on their journey to healing from narcissistic abuse. Unfortunately, for the narc and his flying monkeys, sharing our story probably does feel like revenge. Helping others is not a part of narcissism and flying monkeys live to serve the narcissist. Narcissist abuse is a lot to take in. Especially when he doesn't abuse everyone equally and some still see the narc as a good person. I remind everyone, these were not our choices.

Living with the narc, I wasn’t able to leave the house without being followed or being endlessly questioned about who I might have f*cked. To help myself survive the intensity, I told myself at the time that it was temporary. What I didn’t know was that it was invalidating me as a person. I didn’t know it was traumatizing my nervous system and teaching me hyper-vigilance. I was surviving. I talked myself right through the trauma. I had the determination to prove my love and loyalty. My endless well of hope was that he would return to the man I married. I needed to prove to myself whatever I did, no matter how small I made myself, it was never going to be enough to satisfy him. My hope was based in that he would wake up and see how much I was sacrificing to help him feel safe. Since leaving, coming out of that small shell of myself has been emotionally terrifying. This was not the story I wanted to tell.

A few weeks after I left, I shared my experience with 65 yr old friends, one of which is a recovered alcoholic. He said, “Man, I’ve heard everything in those recovery rooms, but I’ve never heard of something like this; he took your entire identity”. That stuck with me. This wasn’t just a normal Alanon/addict relationship. There was something more. He left me with debt, no cash, no job, no house, no businesses, and no social network. Nor did he care. The only thing he had left to take was my dignity and soul. I fought him hard to keep those. I drove away on Sept 05th in my Prius with my 2 puppies and cat. I had to call roadside assistance to get my car started because it had sat in the woods tucked away for a year. In fact, when the abuse continued through the summer, I took my documents, jewelry, and a few hundred in cash to tuck under the seat. If I needed to run fast, it was enough to get to my parents. I don’t remember driving away that day. I only remember about 10 miles on the interstate, I rolled down the window to feel the air on my skin. I needed to feel something to know I was my own person and I was alive. That was the day I began to reclaim myself. I have since found that the storyline is so common in narcissistic abuse survivors. For others, it can take years to piece together their lives.

Reclaiming

Coming back to myself has been a spiritual awakening. It’s not easy work. In fact, it’s incredibly uncomfortable. Spiritually, I feel like I am meeting myself for the first time. I am waking up. One of my 73-year-old yoga students once told me “Life begins at 40”. I didn’t understand that at 37. I also had no idea what the next 36 months would bring. At the time I heard that, I simply remember thinking, wow, I must be ahead of the curve, I love my life. As it turns out, according to that wisdom, I am right on time. Coming back to myself at almost 41 has been like meeting a stranger online. I am waking up out of a trance where I performed for love, and validation, and neglected my own needs to care for others. It has been a terrifying realization. That 40-year trance was my role in attracting a covert narcissist to love.

Narcissistic abuse took my ability to speak up for myself. As I speak my truth and experiences, I am reclaiming my ability to speak. Narcissistic abuse isolated my social world. As I connect and share, I am rebuilding the capacity to connect with others. Narcissistic abuse invalidated my reality and stole my confidence. As I share my experiences, I am learning to validate my reality and rebuild my confidence. Narcissistic abuse created a constant state of confusion. By reconciling my reality with the study of narcissism, I am learning to trust and use my ability to logic again. Narcissistic abuse left me questioning my value and worth. In continued brainspotting therapy, I can feel my value and self-worth sprouting with a renewed inner strength.

Narcissistic abuse survivors are often left to rebuild with very little or nothing at all. I read the stories in the narc abuse survivor group on social media. These men and women are left on a spectrum of despair with a lack of trust in anyone around them and questioning their reality. I am six months out and feel fortunate I trusted my intuition enough to reach out to his ex-partners. That connection catapulted my healing. I was not alone. Fortunately, my parents allowed me to land where I could focus solely on healing the abusive trauma. Relatively speaking, the progress I’ve made has been lightning-fast. And even on my bad days, I am nowhere near where I was when I left.

In 6 months of moving on, I have reclaimed my building. It's no longer wrapped in his logo and I took out a loan to fix the walls and put the floor in (see post A Thief of Dreams). I do not have it in me to rebuild my businesses. It was so much work to get them to where they were. The shame of walking away from my passion has weighed me down. And now, it’s financially not possible again. I reclaimed my rental properties to get their repairs addressed and yards cleaned. Those particular projects felt rewarding. I told myself, "see, you can do things". It was that basic to begin reclaiming my confidence. Of course, I could do things. I did a whole lot of things before I met him.

Reclaiming my voice has been work. I listened to myself rage against his accusations. I listened to myself begging and pleading for him to stop devaluing me. I didn’t recognize who I had become. Six months to identify, educate, connect, reconcile, and heal is a short amount of time. Narcissists move on quickly, oftentimes new supply is identified before discarding the old supply. Why? Because they just want to move on and not process shame. The faster they smear the old supply, the quicker no one believes the survivor's emotional pleas for validation. Flying monkeys also want to move on. Why? Because it allows them to live in the narc’s world without questioning anything. That storyline then progresses into "See, they have moved on, why haven't you? You must be the crazy one". I am not shy when I tell his monkeys what I experienced is abuse. One responded, "Call it what you will”.

I lived in it. I know it's a lot to take in. That's why it's called abuse.

A quick Google search for the definition of abuse, I highlight the keywords below.

1. use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.

2. treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.