A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 52
I was so relieved to get out of sixth period when I was a junior in high school. A friend of my family got me an after school job at your law firm. I didn’t care what I did, I just wanted to leave school early. I never felt like I fit in there. I watched other girls have boyfriends and relationships that I was terrified of. You knew upon seeing me that I was searching for something I’d lost as a child.
When I met you my first day of work you knew that I was struck by your magnificence, your passion, your danger. You could feel it. The energy flowing from me to you was electric. Everyone could feel it.
You were kind, gracious, humble and beautiful. You looked at me as though I was the most beautiful creature you had ever seen. I didn’t care that you were 18 years older than me…for some reason it made me even more attracted to you but I had no idea why. Onlookers viewed me as the teenager I actually was and thought it was a painful, adorable crush. You saw an opportunity.
It took time, but you were as patient as ISIS. You consistently told me how beautiful, smart and compassionate I was knowing how thirsty I was to hear those words. You knew the end game and would wait as long as it took. Each day that I came to your office you injected a tiny bit of poison in me. It was so slow that no one, including myself, could ever notice that I was getting sicker. I didn’t know that I had already been infected as a child from another one like you years ago. I didn’t know that my infection was lying dormant only to be awakened again by another of your kind. I only knew that I desperately wanted you to choose me.
The days passed and my infection grew worse. The poison accumulated in my body until I was completely infected. You asked me to stay after work one evening to help you. I was so flattered that you would ask me to work alongside you. What an honor. Was this it? Did you really choose me?
I trembled that evening prior to you taking me. Yes, I wanted you physically. Yes, I flirted with you mercilessly. Yes, I wanted you to pursue me and choose me. All of those wants fell away in the moment you entered me. I was afraid but at the same time I felt chosen. You cast the die that could never be removed.
I quit my job thinking that you were preparing to leave your (as you said) horrible, crazy, frigid wife to come for me. The reality was that I was put on a very high shelf. I was comfortable with the shelf but, still,I had no idea why. It’s not that it didn’t hurt or that I didn’t feel abused, but it was so familiar. Like returning home.
The years passed and you took me off the shelf monthly to assure me that I was the chosen one. That I was the one you loved. Pleaded with me to just wait a little longer for you while knowing all the while that I was never going anywhere . Just a little more time and you would be mine. I didn’t know why I actually felt safest being on the shelf. I didn’t know that you were a reenactment of someone I had already known. But you did. You knew.
It has taken decades for me to truly learn who you are even though I’ve returned to you again and again throughout my life. You are my father. You embody abuse, abandonment and the most dangerous place I could ever be. To this day I struggle with that reality.
I wanted you to be the father that would finally choose me. That loved me. That wanted me. You are not and neither was he.
I still have the infection. It is constantly waiting for me and desperate to resurface. I am getting better now because I know the disease is there. Recovery is slow and it is painful. I have help from one who knows your kind and what you are, however, he is blessed with the duality of accepting what he is and using it for good in a part of his life.
Goodbye, Father.
26 thoughts on “A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 52”
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So relatable
Hi repeater…great letter and i can really relate!! My narc is so many things to me that i never got as a child or adult but its a false sense of security like fuel is to the narc bc its not sustaining or real. We are merely like the narc if we keep repeating the cycle bc we crave what they give us as minimal as it may be. Whats real is the shelf you will waste many happy years on waiting to be chosen and thrown breadcrumbs while life carries on and takes its opportunities for happiness with it. That fathers love you so want has to come from within now. You cant change the past but you can reinvent the future and find healthier ways to give yourself what your father didnt.
Climb off that shelf and grab what life has to offer you and thats happiness that is unconditional. Break the cycle and claim your life and its choices. Best of luck 👍
Dear Repeater,
When a child is missing the love of a parent, it can have a profound effect that can last a life time and your letter very clearly demonstrates that. Recovery is slow and painful, indeed, and I am happy that you are here getting better.
P.S. Your letter was an excellent aspect of the dynamic and I am still learning, so am I correct in thinking that you were a DSL*?*
*Dirty Little Secret
I am ever so grateful for having discovered my infection and working to heal it. Now that I have seen the truth, I cannot unsee it – I will NEVER be used and abused again. I’m grateful to you HG for sharing the truth.
Very sad letter…
But I see that you are recovering. Your calm serenity, self-acceptance and zero aggression will help you to finish your healing journey. Keep your kindness at bay. Not all people deserve it.
Although not with my father, I have abandonment issues as well so this hit close to home with me. A very moving letter. Very profound, thank you for sharing.
Over the holiday season I have had the time to try to understand why I got caught up with a Narc, and I came to this exact conclusion. My father was absent- and I always wanted his love and I knew I would have to work at it- it would not come easy (my father passed away when I was 13 so that is long gone). I realized over the holidays that this was what was going on with me and this creature I met. IF, I could get him to love me as I loved him I would finally have won true love. Crazy but once I started putting the pieces of my behaviour into place it made sense– and this is also why he played with me so long– he knew I would fight to win– fight to not lose, fight to prove to myself that I was valuable. My ego and my pain is what drove me to fight for a creature that is so far beneath me that I could not see it.
I do think we MUST sit down and accept what part/s of us need this lesson.
I absolutely agree with everything you say here. It is well put, and it is very true of me. It was my mother who was absent, but the result has been the same. I too have realised my ego and pain caused me to fight for someone who was so far beneath me I should have vertigo!
Being here has cleared the fog. He will be my last narc.
Stunning and so sad. I am also the child of a narc father, who was emotionally unavailable. Until last year, I never had understanding of why I attracted the wrong sort of men. Thank you HG, the fog is clearing.
What an honest, painful and beautiful letter that you’ve written. It really touches me and I feel your hurt through your words and in between the lines. When I first found HG a few months ago I only had an inkling as to the connection between my childhood and my abusive relationship; and I remember that I was utterly astonished at how many of us here have been conditioned to this kind of pain by our parents. But it think that painful experience of our past might also be the key to setting us free now. We need to address what happened then; the grownup narcissistic relationship we’ve had now is only symptomatic and probably just like a drop in the sea to what lies beneath. We’ll recover. You will. Putting a name to the infection helps. Your letter moved me.
I so related to this story! Thank you!
Very recognizable. I was always involved with older men. Indeed, it’s the missing of a normal relationship with a father.
Amazing!!! 💘
I could relate to this as my father was very much the same.
Very sad and moving piece of writing. It’s crushing how people who are already wounded from past experiences get ensnared for years by the same kind of abuse, although it’s delivered by a different face. People literally waste years, even critical decades, of theirs lives in these narcissistic and terribly painful and exhausting dances. And the worst is that it’s because they* opt to keeping themselves that way because they lose the emotional battle again and again.
“I have help from one who knows your kind and what you are, however, he is blessed with the duality of accepting what he is and using it for good in a part of his life.”
Thank you, HG, for all the good that you’re doing by helping us understand the narcissistic dynamic and showing us how to protect and defend ourselves.
Hi M.
Can I just ask what you mean by ‘they opt to keeping themselves that way…’? Have I taken that the wrong way? How is it an option?
For some of us it’s not about the emotional battle but just understanding the foe you’re up against in the first place as the truth of what you’re experiencing has been veiled from you. You know instinctively there’s something wrong, just not what it is. It’s hard to fight an enemy you never knew existed.
RH
Great letter Repeater. The part about the father, very relatable.
[Note: I changed my name from M. to Mara as, I learned there was another M. on this forum]
Restored Heart,
I think we make a decision to stay in a narcissistic relationship because, ultimately, aside from factors such as ignorance that you’re dealing with a narcissist or ignorance on how to best deal with him even if you did know etc, this decision is being taken from the standpoint of our emotional thinking. However, we do have the power and the option to choose differently. It is a choice.
I agree with HG that the emotional thinking is what keeps us stuck making the wrong decision. There’s a compulsive aspect to this, I think. But what helps us choose differently is counteracting our emotional thinking with logic, knowledge, and understanding. As you mention, ignorance can be a factor that keeps us in a narcissistic relationship but in my view that ignorance is what allows our emotional thinking to take over.
I don’t see how a narcissist can have the power s/he does through the implementation of Ever Presence and infecting us with what HG calls the “mixture” if our emotional thinking were not running the show. Narcissists prefer as targets emotional people not only because narcissists are able to bind to themselves emotional types more easily, but because emotional types provide potent fuel, as fuel itself is about emotional reactions.
Hello M,
I don’t believe that we really “opt”to keep ourselves that way. Until I found HG’s website and fully understood narcissism and the role it played in my childhood, I had no idea why I kept getting entangled with narcissists.
We don’t “choose” this, it’s just what we have been conditioned to accept as love. As I read through this blog and HG’s books, I’m finally aware and making the connections. The emotional wounds that we carry from our childhood are what we are still trying to heal in our adult relationships.
I am so grateful to HG, and all of the contributors on this blog for this awakening.
Nina
Please see me response to Restored Heart.
I do think it’s a choice. It may be a compulsive one, or one driven even by unconscious issues, our emotional thinking and/or ignorance of what we’re dealing with, but a choice nonetheless.
We can choose differently by becoming aware, applying logic, and acquiring knowledge etc.
If this were not a matter of choice, then knowledge and understanding would not change anything.
We also have to choose* to exert our will to apply logic and to fight the Heart to Head battle.
I also think that seeing this as a matter of choice from the very outset is empowering and highlights our self-responsibility. Denying the choice factor merely exacerbates a sense of victimhood, in my view.
Mara, nee M,
I think you have a point. I know three people who are fully aware that they are in an abusive relationship with a pathological narcissist and do NOT want to dis-engage and go no contact. There was no golden period for one, one has been in devaluation for years, and the third is an NISS who feels “guilty” about ended the “friendship”. WTF!!! I have spoken to them and very clearly explained what they are dealing with and they have opted to stay. The hell with them.
Thank you, K.
Yes, those people who choose to stay while they recognize they are dealing with narcissists are allowing their emotional thinking to choose a course of action that is to their detriment.
Many of us have to learn the hard way, again and again. There comes a point where we realize we have to exert our will to choose differently.
Hi Mara,
Do we have a choice? Yes. Did I believe in many circumstances especially when I was younger that I had a choice? No. But did I ‘opt’ to be that way? No. Some of us have been so affected by childhood trauma & veiled in the lies of the distorted thinking patterns that it created as a means for survival that we don’t believe we have a choice. (Just like narcissists.) That it is our lot in life to constantly be ensnared in these toxic tangos. Resigned even. All lies. Some of us need that light to shine in so we can see the way out. To see the victimhood. To see the choice. For me, it was an encounter with a UGN who showed me what was going on. I am a logical person but my own childhood abuse & neglect left me at the extreme end of a personality disorder vulnerable to abuse & with C-PTSD both of which I only learnt last year ironically thanks to him. Until then, my ‘choices’ were based on lies from distorted thinking patterns of which emotional thinking is but just one.
Now informed, now empowered. (Well, it’s a process…😬)
Mara
Another way to look at this, & while you’re entitled to your opinion but why I can’t agree with saying that we ‘opt’ & have a choice from the outset, is like throwing a child into a pool without them having had lessons & expecting them to be able to swim. Sure some may make it to the edge kicking & splashing having taken on some water but have figured it out enough to survive but others will go under & drown. Give those same drowners some lessons & some will become Olympic swimmers & sure, others will then choose to keep drowning. Then it becomes a choice between victimhood & empowerment.
Restored Heart,
“I can’t agree with saying that we ‘opt’ & have a choice from the outset,”
To be clear, I didn’t say that we opt to have the childhood experiences or traumas that we did.
By “they* opt to keeping themselves that way” I meant that as adults we have a choice to either continue succumbing to our emotional thinking or to overcome it by endeavoring to build our “vessel” of logic and understanding.
I recognize though that there is an element of “luck” or “grace” in that we were fortunate to have encountered valuable information in our search for understanding, such as HG’s, to help us in this regard. But now that we have encountered it, we have a choice to act on it or not. I recognize that without this insightful information our choices with respect to narcissistic relationships would largely be driven by our emotional thinking, which don’t seem like much of a choice.
“I recognize that without this insightful information our choices with respect to narcissistic relationships would largely be driven by our emotional thinking, which don’t seem like much of a choice.”
But they are choices nonetheless, in my view.
Absolutely True and Beautiful!