Perchance To Sleep
When I am first with you, I like to sit and look at you as you sleep. I like to see you lying there content, your arm draped across me as if checking that I am still there next to you. Your eyes are closed and your face is in a relaxed repose as I feel your chest gently rising against me. You look content, safe and loved. I wonder what you are dreaming about as a small smile plays about your lips. I often believe that it is me. The wonderful, incessant and perfect love that I furnish for you throughout your waking hours must surely continue when you are asleep. It must bleed into your sleep, percolate into your dreams and such is its all-pervasive power it makes you feel loved even when you are asleep. It is during these moments that I consider how I can continue to give you this perfect love that you rightly deserve. I can see what a good and decent person that you are. I feel the admiring love that you pour over me and I know it is genuine, I can tell a fraud at a hundred paces and you are no such thing. It is entirely understandable that you flow with this love for me, who would not when faced with being the object of my perfect love? I look down at you, your delicate features framed in the low lamp light that I have kept on in the bedroom solely for this purpose. You seem so fragile and vulnerable as you lie there, unaware that I am watching over you. I want to protect you; I want to shield you from the darkness that is out there and keep you safe. You deserve nothing less because you give me such a wonderful love in return and I must protect you. I must ensure that my investment remains cherished and loved. It is during these moments as I sit and look at you that I know I must truly love you. How can I not when I feel such a sense of responsibility over your well-being. Look at you; still, perfect and oblivious. Who could not fail to love someone like you? Who could not fail to have such a care for your well-being? Who could ever cause that beautiful face to frown and crease in bewildered pain? Who could cause a solitary tear to trickle from your eyes and spill down those flawless cheeks? I cannot bear to think about you being hurt, feeling sad and in pain. I feel a deep-seated desire to look after you, to keep the darkness from your door and ensure that you are always only ever happy and loved. This sense of being your guardian is strong. I feel anger at the thought of anybody lashing out and wounding you, someone causing this perfect creature to feel anguish, pain and concern. I lay a hand on your shoulder and you shift slightly in your sleep acknowledging this gentle gesture of protection. You face nudges against me as if you know what I am thinking and you feel safe and wanted.
Yet for all these thoughts I know that this is purely the way I am expected to think about you. This is how I should act in order to maintain the façade of our relationship so that you continue to give me what I want. I sit and wrestle with these thoughts. Are they genuine? Are they what I truly feel about you yet I know I do not. I know that the apparent abhorrence that I manufacture at the thought of you being hurt is purely an artifice because it will be me that eventually causes your hurt. It will be me that will twist that beautiful smile into a gash of despair. It will be me that makes that light voice become wracked with anxiety and pain. It will be my words that wound and my actions that scar. For all the tenderness that I apparently exhibit as I sit here now looking over you, I know, as sure as the world keeps turning and that the sun rises in the east, that I will be the one that will bring you to your knees. I will have you feeling exhausted, crazed and desperate and as I sit and recognise that I am the architect of your downfall I feel nothing. I feel no guilt, no despair or remorse because those things have been stripped from me. I was never made to experience those sensations and that is why I know I will do as I do to you, as I have to all the others before me and I will only feel one thing; power. That raw and visceral power which I must have. I am blessed with sufficient insight and intellect to know that what I do is wrong. I can see the tears in your eyes, hear your begging and see your hunched broken frame which tells me that you are hurting and I caused this. Yet for all of this understanding I am unwilling and unable to do anything about it because I am not forged with the desire or the tools to do so. This is what I am and better you remain asleep, oblivious to what is really looking down on you.
29 thoughts on “Perchance To Sleep”
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“I am blessed with sufficient insight and intellect to know that what I do is wrong.” Yet for all of this understanding I am unwilling and unable to do anything about it because I am not forged with the desire or the tools to do so.”
That is your challenge then HG. Because you have been gifted with the insight and intellect to be aware and transcend. If you think it is visceral power breaking someone else down emotionally and doing them harm, which you know is wrong, try empowering yourself now to break that pattern. That would be the most powerful move of all to stop letting your mother, your aunt, The Creature keep winning over your standard operating procedure through life so far.
“Who are you then?”
“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
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Very good.
HG surely you realize that the work that you do here serves “good ”
And yet you say narcissists are evil at the core .
What’s the deal with that? Why would evil ever choose to serve good?
I am not serving good. Good arises from the attainment of my needs.
And we thought you were simply being altruistic, HG. Never would have suspected you of having an ulterior motive for gathering all of us adoring empaths to hang upon your every written word.
You’re too honest to have an ulterior motive…😉
That’s…a priceless lesson: a good deed doesn’t make a good person, just like a bad deed doesn’t make a bad one. I just listened to Elon Musk saying that one of his mistakes was taking what he believed for truth. We must keep reality in check at any hour!
There is no such thing as an altruistic narcissist.
Correct.
HG
I googled emotional contagion and found this statement.
“True Empathy is an act of altruism, as well. It does not seek accolades, awards or thanks. It is genuinely offered, with the purpose of reaching out to another person and helping them, without the expectation of receiving anything in return.”
I never really thought of empathy as being altruistic; empathy is quite fascinating, if you think about it.
Indeed.
Wow … I so felt like u were a fly on my bedroom wall 9 yes ago as I read that… I would wake up to him staring at me hatching me as I sleep.. I remember thinking that was a little creepy but shrugged it off.. As if I was being ridiculous…
Sometimes I wish I could just go back to sleep with my narc, and just go back to being oblivious to what he is and why he acts the way he does. The 28th is our anniversary. Four years of marriage. I remember in those first golden months… it was beyond perfect. I found me pinching myself often. As anyone who gets involved with a narc knows in hindsight it really is just a dream. Within a nightmare.
Quick question HG: Why can’t you narcs come bearing the red and blue pills like in the Matrix?
Because we do not want you to have a choice.
this is so desperately heart breaking to me.
Aright then Mr. Tudor, you choose then. …
The blue pill makes you sleep,
the red pill makes awake and aware…
“Go ask Alice, when she’s just small…”
😀
Ah Bobbi, you maybe offering me a choice but remember, I choose the choices to offer. I choose control.
My former narc faked sleeping as a way to avoid dealing with me after a hoover and fake reassurance that we were back together after months of games. She literally lied on the floor all vulnerable and innocent looking. I picked her up and put her on the couch, and said i’ll see you tomorrow. Next day, no call ,no visit. Supernova commenced.
Hello HG,
I noticed a rare event in your writing. I am going to rewrite it here and wonder if, am I right or may be mistaken?
“I was never made to experience those sensations and that is why I know I will do as I do to you as I have to all the others before me and I will only feel one thing: power.”
You used the word “me” not you. Maybe you (all of you) feel more connected to us in some way than you realize? Please do not be offended. I do not mean to criticize your writing, just thought it could be an unconscious slip and was curious. Thank you!!
“Before me” is a reference to physical proximity as opposed to time.
“I laid waste to all who came before me (appeared in front of me).” – physical proximity.
“I laid waste to all the people who came before me and my coronation (historically anybody who preceded me in time)”
Thank you for clearing that up for me!
I remember this one.
It reads just as beautifully now as when I first read these words. This piece continues to touch me for many reasons.
This post made me think of… whatever happened to Tabitha from Chained? She seemed perfect.
Perfect, except Tabitha had no backbone.
Tabitha drove me nuts, MLA!
HG , lovely . Question : how self aware must he narcissist be to really KNOW they are wrong? or at least to know ahead their nature will cause pain. Would the mid or upper range narcs be able to see ahead like that
This post illicit profound sadness in me. How sad for us and for them,
since there are no winners here.
me too. so much sadness, almost one year later and my heart still breaks as I read this.
this is almost unbearable for me.
skc8130, It has been 6 weeks of no contact for me and the sadness seems to have amplified. It’s a weird phenomena isn’t it?
It’ so strange because I want nothing to with him, but the sadness is profound.