An Unwinnable Game
An Introduction to The Chronicles of Divorcing a Narcissist
Large quartz specimen. A reminder that if this can grow from the ground up, so can we.
If you are looking for a clear cut, nicely labeled, neatly contained story about triumph, this isn’t it. This story is about subtlety. Gaslighting. Grooming. Undercurrents. Narcissists and sociopaths. If you need a label you can use any one of those but they don’t tell the whole story. This is my story but it could happen to anyone.
I married B knowing he was an asshole. He had an air about him that was just like my dad but not as cool. They were both charismatic, intelligent, narcissists. They were both a show. My dad was better at it than B was. My dad had focus and love in his heart for people. B did not. He still doesn’t. He was and is a true sociopath. The real deal. I didn’t know that until it was too late.
B and I got married when I was twenty and he was twenty-one. Despite my intuition fire alarm going off nonstop for almost two decades, I stayed in that marriage for eighteen years. I ignored all physical and emotional signs that something was wrong. I persevered out of duty. Marriage wasn’t something you leave without dying first, or so I was told. I lied to myself and everyone around me to protect someone who was holding me down from the start. Our marriage fit my childhood paradigm. It was snug and familiar, almost suffocating most days.
I contorted myself into a mold that B was always changing. I assumed that’s what love felt like so I bought it all. He had convinced me I was the problem, the mess, the one who needed to change and to work harder. I tried everything. I never even considered B was the problem. That’s how he designed it, how he groomed me to think. My brain was wired by a magnificent manipulator, but he didn’t have to try that hard. I had been convinced of these things since birth. I had swallowed the pill that I was a loser and I should be happy that anyone would have me. The only way I could prove my worth or be happy was to try harder to work on myself.
Anorexia was my first stop. B was so good he had me feeling badly that I was doing this to him, to us. I barely survived. At 98 pounds and vegan, exercising about two hours a day, unable to physically put avocado or peanut butter into my mouth, I was still trying to apologize for making his life so terrible. This was one year into our marriage. The rest of our years together would always have a shadow cast upon them because of my anorexia. It would always be my fault from there on out. It was something I had done to him and he would never let me forget it.
At sixteen B was diagnosed with testicular cancer and barely survived. He loved playing the cancer card. It was B’s get out of jail free card. It didn’t shape him into a better person, it molded him into an undefeatable, indestructible, egotistical monster. B made it clear that I was to never again take the spotlight from him. He was the cancer survivor and he needed all the attention. In our relationship he was prettier, more talented, smarter and I would be foolish to think I could outshine him, even in sickness.
Large amethyst geode. A reminder that a narcissist wants to keep your shine on the inside.
In all eighteen years I was with B, I never shined. I won a recording session at an open mic for a song I wrote and performed. He reminded me he was the one who taught me how to play guitar. My recipes sold products in Whole Foods Markets all over the country. He reminded me he was the one whose vision and amazing salesmanship got us there. In B’s world my voice didn’t matter. My vision had no relevance. His vision for life was the right vision, the only vision, and had to become my vision.
There wasn’t a thing about me or my life that B didn’t have an opinion about. That he didn’t have his sticky little fingers in. My clothes were too boyish and never fit my body right. My body was too muscular, my thighs he called “tree trunks”. My friends were either too stupid or too bossy, so I dropped them. He hated my cooking so I constantly tried to better myself in the kitchen. He would even comment on the clothes I would dress my daughter in, at times he would go and change her outfit just to show me how bad of a job I did.
Narcissists will do this to you if you let them. They will twist you into something they can use and devour for their own purpose. The only way out is to leave which is a tricky business because they probably have you believing that you are too weak to do so. What would you do without them? What value do you even possess? What makes you think that you could ever survive on your own? This is what they tell you so that they can continue to live off your energy.
If you do end up being brave enough or lucky enough to get out, that’s when the real work begins. You must relocate yourself then forgive yourself for all the years you spent working on the wrong problem. That’s when you will realize that the reason things never got better wasn’t because you didn’t work hard enough to better them, it was because it wasn’t your fault that things were bad to begin with. It was a setup. An unwinnable game. An unattainable goal. The definition of madness. It was them all along. The narcissist. All you had to do to end the suffering was to see it and walk away.
Forgive yourself.
Thank you for this:)