I watched myself rage against your control. Minimized to a shell of myself, I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t get smaller without life's ultimate exit strategy. Instead, I got loud to make myself heard. Every move I made was interpreted as a threat to you.
"You made me do it" was your way of shifting blame. With those repeated words, I took responsibility for your reactions to me living my life and taking care of your needs. I became your emotional servant. Working to prove my loyalty to you with every breath of the day. I would time-stamp my days with pictures for inevitable defense. A massage meant you followed me because my self-care meant deceit to you. I began self-isolating or bringing your family as witnesses to protect the innocent strangers and myself from your fits of jealousy. Masterfully, you manipulated any situation to project your shame, deny accountability and shift the blame to me. This patterned chaos was carefully calculated by you. You stated you wanted it to stay between us, I know now it was so you could emotionally abuse me. It worked. I became unrecognizable. You became the victim. Eternally the victim. I am not the person your paranoid narratives created. My response was reactive abuse. I was reacting to your abuse. I will not carry shame for the rage I had, it was my only defense and chance for survival. I will heal because my gift is my ability to compassionately self-reflect and share empathy with the world around me.
The Collapse
His golden pedestal for me wasn't sustainable. He had held onto the idea that I was flawless, and insisted to anyone who asked that I stay on the pedestal. He promised he was going to walk me across the stage. What stages I asked? He carried on in his grandiose fantasy, insisting, I have never dated a "millionaire" before. He told me I was his power player. He repeated it many times in a day. He recognized my potential he claimed. He created a narrative of his current Chief Marketing Officer sabotaging his company. He had worked there 10 years. With him gone, we could travel, work, leisure, and be together every day. That was his way in for control over my schedule. He named me the Chief Marketing Officer of his company. He said he wanted to spend every day with me, until he didn't.
Dec 31 divided a barely established marriage into what was and what is. Years of trauma, intense emotions, and resentments came to the surface. His rambling emotional vomit suffocated any spark of love or respect. I was knocked back on my heels. These wild accusations of betrayal left my brain scrambled. I recognized this place, it was the same dark canyon I had just been through. The same nauseating fears, the same tightness in my nervous system, and the same inability to breathe. I wasn’t running forward, I had run in circles. This time I stepped outside my body and watched in complete devastation as the covert narcissist tsunami washed our house of cards into darkness.
In the early days of 2022, I stumbled through his continued chaos. Failing to get a footing, I could only be sure the threshold of trust had been ruined by the intensity of the wave. My tears now came like a monsoon. It all felt like it was out of control, sparked by my personal fear of loss, failure, and abandonment. The words he threw at me felt like sharp daggers and were life-changing. I challenged him. He fired me as Chief Marketing Officer, claiming I was never worthy. All that I had been running from was hitting hard. Feb 13, 2022 I ran out of air and this time my white flag was flying. I had to face myself. Maybe for the first time in a decade. I was forced to be with myself. I took light to the deepest corners of my heart where fear had set up camp and began the work of self-compassion, acceptance, and love. I had to get to the other side of my grief and his abuse to know I didn't make him do anything. He is a covert narcissist that has done this many times before.
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