“Drill”, #inktober52, #inktober

 
I have been reminded of my blogging duties, especially as Mom said she thought I was dead or dying.  My apologies for dropping off the web this past month.  I kept trying to write a post, but I just couldn’t find the right words to say what I want to say.  I want to yell “Don is a bad boyfriend!”, and I’m pretty sure nobody wants to read my yelling.

Here’s the thing, I had a narcissistic husband.  I didn’t know anything about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and I fell for many of his tricks.  Since then, I’ve studied NPD (beyond my friends’ patience and understanding).  I’m like an alcoholic who quit drinking with it.  I want everybody to see the light and know the things I’ve learned.  After I started my studies, Don became the US president.  This really made me want to educate everyone about the dangers he poses – except one of the realities about NPD is other people really don’t want to hear it.  Do you see my conundrum?

Most people know Don is a bad boyfriend.  He cheated on his mistress right after his wife gave birth to their son.  We all know he’s a racist and misogynist.  We know he’s out for himself and hangs out with criminals.  We know he breaks laws.  His base forgives everything even if they say they don’t like him either.

I blamed myself for a long time during the marriage and long after my divorce.  I knew I was miserable, why didn’t I leave sooner?  But I valued the marriage commitment.  Sometimes I believed his lies.  Maybe I’m too stubborn, or too optimistic.  I tried to work out our problems.  I didn’t understand he didn’t want to work them out.  He enjoyed fighting and making me miserable.  He twisted everything around so I didn’t know which way was up, and he felt entitled to do whatever he wanted to do.  Live with it.

This week it came out Don doesn’t respect soldiers wounded or killed in battle.  Nobody is really surprised by this, are they?  Life as we know it is threatened by climate change.  Don wants to drill for oil in one of the last undisturbed places in the world.  He doesn’t care about the planet, nature, or you.  Take away Social Security from old people too.  He doesn’t care about you.  He’ll leave all of us to clean up his messes and heal our broken hearts.

My ex would do something nice every now and then.  Okay, I like getting flowers or going out for dinner.  See, he loves me.  Doesn’t he?  I’ll keep trying to work things out… but then he didn’t come home or show me respect or whatever.  Don is just the same.  He’ll throw his base a bone like nominating judges or giving the wealthiest people a tax break.  He says that’s what you wanted so shut up.

His opponent, Joe Biden, is by all accounts a decent man with a lifetime of government experience.  He and his running mate, Kamala Harris, both have centrist, moderate goals.  For some people, that’s just not exciting enough.  They aren’t turned on by the good man even though he’d make a better partner.  They want the bad boy even if the bad boy punches them out once in a while and might end up killing all of us.

I don’t know how to convince anyone Don is a bad president.  200,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19 because he either didn’t act or encouraged risky behaviors.  His actions have resulted in most Americans saying they won’t get a vaccine when it’s available because they don’t trust how it’s been developed and rushed.  You know in your heart that if Don was a good leader we’d trust the vaccine.  We don’t.  He isn’t.  Please vote responsibly.

"Wisdom"

I keep the Serenity Prayer on my office bulletin board.  It keeps me from strangling certain people and helps me stay centered (or advises me to get centered).  It reminds me wisdom is a goal, not something I've already achieved.

I was walking on a beach by the ocean once and suddenly everything made sense in a whole new way.  I was overwhelmed by the understanding and by the beauty around me.  Even the squawking of seagulls seemed to affirm my new truth.  The receding tide pulled the old reality away.  I was totally in awe and full of joy in that moment.

Having had that experience once, I wanted it again.  I tried to make more epiphanies happen, but epiphanies are unhelpful that way.  You've just got to make your new reality solid by working through all the pieces of your life that need remodeled -- which can be quite a drag to tell the truth, but the end result is a better life than the old one.

Last week I talked about narcissism.  I've continued to think about it, and kismet intervened by a friend's facebook post about gaslighting.  I know the word because my house was repeatedly broken into and things taken or moved, but nothing so serious to be anything other than crazy making.  I changed locks repeatedly and filed police reports but it was a long time before it stopped.

The article about gaslighting talked about (guess what?) narcissism.  Ahhh... the universe is telling me something.  I spent days reading things online, and then switched to youtube.  There's more narcissists than I imagined, and I'm realizing I've had a LOT of them in my life.  I started my research with one person in mind, then two, several, and OMG him too?  Epiphany!  Actually, it was a series of epiphanies without the benefit of ocean and seagulls.

I recommend you look things up online too, but I don't want to make this post a narcissistic tutorial when there's so much better info already online.  I put some key points about them below.  Where I'm going with this is "wisdom".  Gaining more information leads me to see certain people in a new light, most especially myself because I am still living in response to others' behaviors.  New knowledge is giving me a new way to look at things that I couldn't see before because I didn't know what questions to ask.

Studying narcissism makes me look at the Serenity Prayer again.  "Accept things I cannot change." Narcissists won't change.  The professional advice is don't try and run like hell.  "Courage to change the things I can" -- which is my own point of view and with whom I choose to have in my life.  "Wisdom to know the difference."

I don't want to sound ungrateful for guidance and kismet, but next time I get an epiphany, I want seagulls and ocean, or maybe a forest.  It would be nice to have an empathetic someone with me too.

Narcissists...

Don't care about your feelings.  Really.  They act interested to manipulate your feelings more effectively.  They use your words to twist your reality and to make you question yourself.  They cripple you in every way to make themselves feel more powerful.  They won't change and won't get help.  Any sign of change is manipulation.

Dealing with Narcissists...

Flee.  You don't have to be nice to them, you can even be rude, because they don't have regular feelings.  This doesn't hurt them because they honestly don't care about you.  If you can't leave because it's your boss or someone like that, make it all about them.  "I need a day off so I can work more effectively for you."  (Something I actually said to my last boss.)  End the conversation quickly to limit abuse.

Group Dynamics

Narcissists will manipulate others into criticizing and ostracizing you, even if the others aren't narcissists.  The things narcissists do seem unbelievable to others outside the group, so you won't be believed when you talk about it.  It's best to have no contact with the narcissist and also the rings of people involved in the abuse.