A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 32

Dear A,

I don’t know how to hold on to you any longer.

Those were my last words to you. After yet another all nighter of flaring tempers and cruel accusations, you had at last resorted to violently abusing me, appeasing the monster within, finally letting loose upon me the raging fury that I’ve through the years come to know as the essence of you. I was expecting it. It was a matter of time I guess. Still, I don’t know how to hold on to you any longer after that. Truth be told, I never knew.

Your nickname for me was a projection. You chose to name me after the savage storm that whirled rampantly around us the first time we met, whipping strands of my long red hair into your face, making your coat flap in the strong gusts of wind, forcing me to hold on to you tight from the very first. You became the uncontrollable whirlwind spiralling violently into my life that night, and through fleeting moments of hesitation I sensed your primitivism, your absence of a cultured layer; I was appalled at the darkness of you, I was enchanted with your choosing of me. The overwhelming sensation of needing imminent escape was there too, I knew in my heart what you were; I moved even closer; you see, I had been looking for you too. Therefore I willingly invited the chaos of you into my life, the random blowing and shattering of me into millions of shards and tiny pieces; the storm gaining strength and then again, loosing force, closing in on me and leaving me far behind; again and painfully again. It was all there from the start. I somehow knew. Yours was the kind of icy wind that would chill me to the bone. Yours was the kind of ferocious storm that would leave nothing behind. Inexplicable, raw, true to its destructive core.

We were both addicts you and I. You to power. Me to pain. A perfect fit of damaged goods, formed out of the same abusive clay, differing only in how we coped with our childhood wounds. The predator and the victim. Together we set about the daring journey of unraveling our past, reliving our twisted paths, moving deliciously slowly through the intricate steps of the glorious dance of complete destruction, savouring the sweet taste of pure annihilation, turning into flames and ashes as we progressed, uncannily repeating the patterns we both knew so well.

You unsettled me deep within, you touched the untouched. You burnt a scorching hole in my safe existence, stealing my laughter and my joy, tearing me apart, punishing me harshly, controlling my innermost being, putting an all too high a price on love and pulling the strings of life and death in our eternal struggle.

I readily offered myself to you at the altar. Submissively I shivered with pain and pleasure in front of you, giving up my soul to the emptiness of you, loosing sight of all times but the present, crawling in the dust, mortally wounded by your horrendous assaults, bellowing in the wind from the pain of it all, not making the slightest sound as my dry lips repeatedly tried to form those devastated sentences that consisted of my begging and pleading with you.

You were my destroyer, I surrendered to you; you were my saviour, forcing me to kneel in front of the pain of the past. You punished me for what was in your nature, I felt gloriously alive reliving the highs and the lows of my childhood, being able to truly feel again, finally finding the love that is the only love I know of. So who actually victimised whom? Who was the parasite, the emotional vampire; who was the abuser and who was the abused? Who fed off whom? Who sought redemption from whom? You who could not feel, I who could only feel with you? You who will always be that vast empty space in universe, sucking all object matter into you; I who will treat my lessons learned like precious pearls, wearing them close to my heart, moving on eventually with more insight, trying to undo the damage of the past?

It’s all so quiet here now. Even ferocious storms will eventually abate, the utter calm in the aftermath of our viscous tosses and turns is in a way peaceful to me. I miss you still. I still wake up with the thought of you, I still fall asleep with you on my mind. But my all consuming need for you is gone.

I don’t forgive you. I never will. You wounded me deeply. You hurt me irreparably. You poisoned my heart, you taught me to hate.

I forgive you. I always will. You brought me back to my beginnings, made me confront my fears. You taught me what love is not. You set me free.

You on the other hand will never be free. My cage can be opened through self awareness, your bars will never be removed. I choose through my emphatic nature to search for happiness now; that is not a choice for you to make. You will be forever pacing there in your self made imprisonment, your vision clouded, the beauty of life and love escaping you.

I don’t know how to hold on to you any longer. Those words still echo within me having now finally let go.

Yours
Catherine