I See Sanctuary
When I first meet you and I look into your eyes I find a certain sanctuary. Your optimistic eyes seem like paradise to me. I can see the hope, the desire and the adoration burning in your eyes. Be they brown, blue, green or grey I can see the promise of salvation. That is why I try so hard to win you over. I apply everything I can think of to ensure that you stay with me so I can gaze deep into your eyes and drink the delight, trust and admiration that flows from them. You have no idea how much I need to see those things. The more I show you love, affection and how interested I am in you, the greater the radiance that shines towards me and the sanctuary that you have created for me remains in place. It surrounds and protects me, keeping the pain and the hurt at bay. It is a simple formula; I shower you with affection and attention and you return to me that magical protection in the form of how you look at me. The admiring glance across the restaurant table, the wide-eyed desire when we are in bed together, the simmering passion as I undress you and the sheer adoration as you quicken your pace to cross a room or a road to meet me. I need that place of safety and respite. A sanctuary where I know that the whispering, taunting voices will be silenced. A place of salvation where that cold-fingered dread cannot grip my throat and silence my scream of terror. Those draining shades that manifest from a past which I try to consign into oblivion cannot reach me in this place. That is what I hope for and believe every time somebody new enters my life. If I can just keep you sending me the power and the protection arising from those magnificent eyes then I will be safe. I apply my every effort to maintaining that gaze which will keep the darkness and the foul creatures lurking amongst it at bay. Everything I do is geared around making you feel happy, loved and wanted so that you will keep looking at me in that way and preserving my sanctuary.
Yet, no matter how hard I try, notwithstanding every effort I apply to maintaining your state of joy and happiness, you let me down. Each time someone new appears I am given renewed hope that this time the sanctuary will be permanently preserved and each time you fail me. Why do you do this to me when I try so damn hard for you? The burning admiration that you exhibited towards me suddenly dims. The adoration that blazed across the room has lost its intensity. The shining lustre of desire has become dulled. You do this to me and in so doing you turn the key of the gates, lift the heavy bar and push them open. You do this on purpose don’t you? You breach the citadel so that the screeching, moaning and howling tormentors that have gathered beyond its walls are admitted to assault me once again as they try to pull me into the abyss of insanity. The craven creatures slither forward, their mucus-covered tendrils slipping and sliding as they seek me out, determined to coil about me and drag me silent with terror into that place I must not go. Why do you do this to me? What have I done to deserve this treatment? All I have ever done is love you with a perfect love to cause you to generate that sanctuary and now, with no warning or help, you allow the paradise to be violated by those that seek to harm me.
I am left with no option but to fight them. To muster my strength and seek to defeat these agents of darkness by gathering my rage and anger. I must lash out in all directions, often and without restraint in order to stop my tormentors from destroying me. It matters not who is caught up in this frenzy, it is incidental whether you or anyone else finds themselves collateral damage from my necessary defence of my being. I fight and fight and fight, it is exhausting but it must be done. I have to survive until the next promise of sanctuary is identified and drifts my way. There I will find peace and a place to restore my waning strength. Is it you? Perhaps this time the sanctuary will remain intact.
18 thoughts on “I See Sanctuary”
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HG, Does this disappointment in the victim always come after the victim has opened their eyes to the lying? Is is because they are beginning to see behind your mask? Are you aware of the moment when your victim has begun to open their eyes? Is this when the devaluation begins and the control takes a new level? Or is there another reason the howling tormentors come at you?
It can be or it may just be because you are not giving us what we want any longer even though you are unaware of what we are. It is our perception that causes this.
Have you ever “fallen” for someone ? At first , with any relationship it’s magical. You can’t get enough of that person. You want to be with them, do for them , ect. This is the “golden period”. Now, we all (I hope ) have lives, family, friends, jobs, ect. outside of a new romance, and so much as we may wish at the time that we could neglect those things and get away with it, we know we can’t.
In a normal relationship this would be fine, as it is normal.
With a narc this is the end of the golden period. Why? They no longer have your full attention, which is a grave offense .
No. The golden period SEEMS real. It IS NOT.
They know it from the start.
They know they need you to be hooked deeply. That’s why they create this beautiful illusion for you. They know that that’s what keeps you with them through the abuse (through ‘the big things’ – my narc would say, quite mysteriously).
They know it all to well.
Don’t fool yourself. Watch your thoughts. Stay sane ❤️️
When you look at it like this, the golden period IS real. Maybe it’s not a feeling of love, but it is a feeling of sanctuary which is positive. If only it could stay this way forever…
HG, you have to go that way, all alone.
This romantic desire to find someone, who is able to shift away all those monsters and creatures of your past, it is only emotional thinking, your emotional thinking.
And you know better than anyone else that you change your mind within seconds.
Or is it only another manipulation to let someone think, that you fear some monsters of your past?
You do not fight against others, you abuse people. It is a huge difference. Antisocial behaviour is not fighting, it is destroying.
Come back to reality.
The monsters of your past, who created your meanwhile adopted own monsters in your brain, have been abusive and violent people.
No less, no more.
There is no abyss. It is your brain, that creates that abyss. Your own brain, which has been misleaded.
It looks like we were both rigth – eyes. Also Neil Gaiman in the “Ocean at the end of the lane”: “At that age, I would often wonder, who I really am and what exactly is looking at me in the mirror. If that face was not me, as I knew it wasn’t because regardless of the way it looks, I would still remain myself, then what am I exactly? And what is looking at me?” [retranslated, sorry]
Me, at that age: “Where am I looking from? Eyes – but eyes start here and end somewhere there, no, stupid. Brain? But brain doesn’t have eyes! Ohhh… Nevermind, maybe they teach that at school.” [I more authentic than Gaiman’s editor recommended. Brother.
HG,
I love this! It is sad, but I love the honesty in your explanation.
💜
Do you really feel like we let you down? That it’s us that fail?
Yes.
HG, lately almost everything you seem to post whether it be an article or comment reply seems to have an opposite ring to it in terms of things my narc has said to me. Now in terms of the you feeling that we let you down I have heard, “I have been the one to let my wife down repeatedly…”
Who exactly lets who down here? I guess it goes both ways? And in continuing with the theme of opposites many of your posts continue to have me thinking that I am a narc!
🤯
You have already let him down. He is saying this to triangulate you. He does not actually believe that he has let his wife down.
Okay so not admitting such, he feels that she has let him down too.
A follow up question….do we ever stop letting you down? In your view that is? Like today we let you down but tomorrow we don’t let you down anymore? Like that black vs. white thing? Or do we always let you down as soon as we “initially” let you down so to say? I hope this question makes sense.
Writing letters at ourselves, or are we?
What I can’t understand is this; I took responsibility even when I knew it wasn’t me that started the fight or brought on issues. I would ask how I could fix it. I’d ask what he needed or how I could make everything better. Nothing was ever resolved. Nothing was ever clear. How can he seriously continue to believe that I let him down when I busted my ass to make him happy?
I’ve read article after article and I understand Toxic Logic. I still have yet to accept a reasonably intelligent person can be so emotionally unintelligent. If I keep letting him down why won’t he just disappear for good without me having to go no contact? Continue to find his fuel elsewhere.
Consider these questions.
1. How is it that a very intelligent, university educated, person who is on the board of a listed company, falls victim to a narcissist? How is it that same person keeps going back even when that victim is let down again and again?
2. How is it that a very intelligent pharmacologist knows full well the damage caused by long-term cocaine use, yet he keeps using it?
3. How is it that a very intelligent politician told lies under oath and knew he was lying, yet he still did it risking going to prison?
There are thousands of examples of intelligent people engaging in behaviour who flies in the face of their intelligence.
How can he believe you let him down? Because his perspective causes him to see that you let him down. Just because your perspective states you did not let him down, does not mean he sees it the same way you have. His perspective causes you to be the one who lets him down because the narcissism requires it to be that way so you are at fault and he is not.
Why won’t he disappear for good? Because there is fuel to be gained. Because you belong to him. Because he has invested in you and he wants a return on his investment.
I think so. The one (one!) time in 6 years I had no time when my narc wanted to talk to me, he behaved as if I had done that to hurt him on purpose, immediately directed his attention elsewhere, overreacting in all ways – and once we were back on speaking terms, he seemed not to understand why I was now shocked, frightened, and overcautious, as opposed to always happy to see him (which was the case before that day). As if he thought I had no right to feel injured by him triggering all the small pain points which he had learned so well over time. As if I could go back to the former trust and vulnerability. Which I can’t. Sorry.
“The burning admiration that you exhibited towards me suddenly dims. The adoration that blazed across the room has lost its intensity.”
No. It has not dimmed. It still burns bright. It still blazes and has not lost intensity. At least from MY perception. Even though you ignore the shit out of me and pretend that I do not exist, my feelings have not changed one bit. You invited me to your show because you know how I feel and know how much you mean to me and know that I will end up going to be there for you. I am sure you keep re-seeking this supposed “sanctuary” from your wife but it is never enough because you feel the need to invite me to your show too, right after telling me you never want to see me again. Maybe you just want to see the “burning admiration and blazing adoration” from me across the room as I sit and watch as your fingers glide over those ivory keys, along with the same from whomever else is there too. I still love you but I also hate you.
(This is obviously directed at “Piano Turd” and not specifically at you HG but much like your birthday cake meme that said “no one loves you” this one also hit a nerve with me too).