Shut Up!
I think I have said enough. I wish you would think the same. You have never shut up asking me about my day at work as I try to watch the sport on television. On and on you have gone asking question after question. It makes me wonder why you are so bloody interested. Fishing for something are you? Trying to catch me out? You won’t do that. I am cleverer than you. Much cleverer. What I do at work is nothing to do with you and you won’t find out about my plans there until such time as I decide that you should know. And it isn’t time, so I wish you would just be quiet and let me watch this game. You keep on going, talking over my television viewing which tells me that you regard my viewing experience as unimportant and that tells me you obviously think I am not important and you really ought to know by now that I am important. I hate you doing this. I can feel the burning from your selfish and treacherous action and it is paining me, but I know what to do. I know how to stop this pain and believe me I am going to do it and do it now.
You never know when to shut up do you? I suppose you think you are being pleasant asking me how my day has been, but you don’t care, you just do it for the sake of appearances, to make you look good, the caring and interested partner. I know your game. I have you worked out, you are a fraud. Yap, yap, yap,like some irritating puppy around my ankles, on and on you go. Just shut up will you? I cannot concentrate with your wasp like buzzing around me.
“How is the new recruit getting on?”
“How is the project developing?”
“Where did you go for that business lunch? Was it good? What did you have to eat? Who was it with?”
Just shut up. No, you are still chattering away. I don’t think you are even waiting for an answer are you? Just asking questions to seem like you are involving me in the conversation when all you are doing is engaging in another of your pointless and egotistical monologues. Do you know how boring you sound? If I wasn’t trying to concentrate on this match I think I would slip into a coma listening to you drone on with your worthless opinions and your anodyne observations.
Just shut up. No? Very well. I will. No, I am not saying anything. I am not even going to nod, shake my head or make an affirmative grunt. Nothing. A total silence.
My goodness me, you have stopped. Perhaps you have remembered that you need to breathe? Ah, excellent you have noticed that I no longer appear to be listening. Believe me, I am listening and I am doing so with considerable attentiveness, because I need to listen to what is coming my way. Let me guess, I think you will lead with “are you listening to me?” any second now and yes, there it is as predicted. I am not going to answer. Go on, repeat the question and true to form you do so. Now I have your attention haven’t I? I can see you from the corner of my eye as I stare at the screen pretending that the figures running around with the ball are more interesting than you. They are not because what you are starting to do is what I am interested in. I can see you leaning forward, trying to catch my eye. I know you are there but I am not going to acknowledge you. Sometimes you throw something towards me to get my attention, usually a cushion. It is not a nasty action,not like when I throw things at you. That reminds me, I must replace that coffee mug which I hurled at you. You were light on your toes that day as it sailed past and smashed against the wall. Anyway, that was last week and this is now and I can hear you asking the question a third time. Will it be the cushion? No, you have chosen to stand up instead. Gosh, you must be looking to assert some authority from the get go.
“I am talking to you.”
I know that you are but I am not answering you but already I can hear the mounting irritation in your voice and already I can feel the flames rising inside of me as they burn away the cold, harsh iciness of your criticism. That pain is already receding.
“Will you answer me please?”
No I will not. I have to turn my head so you do not see my smirk at your attempt to be commanding. It amuses me. I can see your hands move to your hips and I half expect you to stamp the ground with your foot.
“What’s the matter? Why won’t you answer me?”
The voice rises higher, signalling your anxiety and frustration and the flames continue to build inside of me. I maintain the stony faced expression, ink black eyes staring at the screen. I can see the movement on the television but it as if I am watching it from very far away as all that I am concentrating on now is your voice and the continuing delicious flaming sensation that is sweeping across me.
“Why are you not answering me?”
The questions have altered now haven’t they? A switch from your nosiness about my work to you now asking why I have fallen silent. You can keep asking and I know you will. You will go on for some time. You will storm out of the room trying to force a response from me, but your slammed door just keeps the flames burning. You will come back in. you always do. You will return contrite and apologising although you won’t know what you are trying to apologise for. Still, that won’t stop you going through a carousel of reasons in the hope of breaking my silence.
“Did I upset you?”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Did I not listen to you?”
“Did I say something offensive?”
“Please, what did I do wrong?”
“Please will you just talk to me?”
“I hate this. I hate falling out. What is that I have done?”
Every time you ask these questions, the pain and concern in your voice keeps adding to the sense of power that I am feeling. The wound you created has long since closed and now I am savouring the growing power that courses through me. You have no idea what you are doing as you try, as you always do, to make things right. I will stay seated here, not even looking at you. You won’t try and stand in front of me whilst I am watching the television. You will not dare do that or switch it off. You remember what happened last time when you did that don’t you and I know you won’t be in a hurry to experience that again. I can sit and revel in my power over you and you just keep adding to it with your pitiful and plaintive questions. You will try to find out what is wrong, you will blame yourself next and start to apologise as you scramble to guess what it is that you have done wrong in the hope that you stumble on the right subject matter and make things right. But you will fail. Then you move on to trying to bribe me into speaking to you, suggesting we go out, or my friends come round for drinks tomorrow night or that you will cook me something special. Keep at it, I won’t respond. I will not even look at you. You are completely invisible to me as far as you are concerned.
I wonder how long I will maintain this silence with you? You haven’t worked out what to do yet, I am pleased to say. You keep on asking, pestering and questioning, driven by your own anxiety that causes you to want to ascertain what has happened and make things right. This means you might break off for half an hour but then you resume, trying a different tack. If all you knew you had to so was do exactly what I am doing and it would stop. Go silent and get on with what you want to do and I will start speaking to you and acknowledging you once again as I consider a different manipulation to use against you to gather my precious fuel. Fortunately, your empathic nature which means you want to understand and you want to fix and heal, will make you hang in there and all the while you provide me with fuel and power me. So long as you do so, so long the silence will continue.
Beat the narcissist and avoid the above scenario
The Virtues of Keeping Your Mouth Shut
6 thoughts on “Shut Up!”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
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Joa’s words in this thread “I lied a lot to “survive””.
Referring to ‘A Letter To The Narcissist No. 10’ “I know you lie to me all of the time. Do you think I would lie to you to survive?”
It makes sense why a) an empath would lie, and, why b) a narcissist would lie. Operative word = “survival”.
My sister’s first words “Shut up!”. Not dada, mama, baba (like mine were)……
Mother used to unplug her phone when Blake’s Seven or the old Star Trek was on tv. My father’s mother used to unplug her phone (or, at least refuse to answer it) during Coronation Street – cos mother used to deliberately call her mother-in-law…….. it was tit-for-tat. Laughing……. Yes, my father’s mother was not a fan of my mother. I am not surprised.
My sister and I couldn’t watch TV without my stepfather’s special permission. We were also not allowed to enter the lounge without permission (we stopped at the threshold when he called us – standing with your feet exactly on the line).
He worked at home. When he left, he set up a lot of ambushes and then investigated.
For example, upon entering the house, he would immediately check whether the TV was warm. As for tenths of a millimeter, he would arrange the remote control and various things at appropriate distances, in various combinations – we put it away in exactly the same way. Microscopic cards falling out from wardrobes (we learned to arrange them the same way).
I remember that after school I invited my friend home (against the ban). I was 8 years old. While playing, my friend (I don’t know why) wrote the word KNIFE on the dust on the TV with her finger, and I didn’t notice it. My sister and I had to write in capital letters on a piece of paper – he was checking the way the letters were put to find the perpetrator. She wrote similar to me, so I took it upon myself.
There was a lot of it…
I remember that I was attracted to his adult literature (mainly painting, architecture, sculpture) locked in an old library. It is forbidden to open. Of course, I had to get there 🙂 I kept going through these books, as if they were the most valuable old manuscripts. One day, the glass fell out of bookcase. I put my foot under it so it wouldn’t crash. I managed to put the glass into the bookcase. I limped for several days, pretending to trip in the street. When my fingers turned almost black, I showed my mother. The surgeon said that in a moment and there would be nothing to save, they would have to cut it off 🙂
My stepfather had an old, pre-war inkwell. Once, I accidentally splashed ink on a wall. I painted the plaster with poster paint and a school brush so perfectly, following the texture of the wall, that my parents realized it only after 2 years 🙂
Disconnecting the phone – very common. We also had to learn to lie pretty quickly that he wasn’t home, when he was. In general, as a child, I lied a lot to “survive”.
My sister and I were very well trained, but we bent well between these rules.
Pros: I am good at spying, which is useful to me now in my profession and in my life. And I can break free from a locked with key room, ha ha ha 🙂
Joa, thank you for your comment. That step-father comes across as a total, utter control freak. I am sorry but I really laughed at your friend’s word ‘knife’ on the TV – very interesting about the dust on the TV – as if to leave a ‘trap’ to catch you and your sister out. It seemed that your friend did not like step-father very much.
You learned from early age to use your lateral & analytical mind, which in some way, would have been your ‘saving grace’ for coming up with ‘solutions to the problems’ – despite also being “trained” as you suggested (the ‘conditioning’ of an abusive parent).
Yes, I totally understand about having to ‘lie’ in order to protect yourself – a good way to describe it “I lied a lot to “survive””.
Thank you for sharing more of what you experienced.
“What is it with you narcissists? You want us to pay you attention. Then you don’t.” – Asp Emp, 8/31/2020. This is great! My mother always told us to shut up. Now she does everything she can to get me to talk to her. She can’t be happy, it’s contrary to her nature.
AV, I have just seen this comment…..maybe master the art of speaking without sound? 😉 Give her the impression she has become Deaf LOL.
I did that to MRN when he was having his hearing tested…..for one moment, he believed he had lost his hearing LOL.
That’s a suggestion for a 404 😉 (I know that’s Bad Advice!).