This is the beginning.
This is where I start to sort out what it means to survive narcissism. I am still coming out on the other side of this relationship. I’m not sure anyone knows how long it takes to make sense of the experience. Maybe I will always attempt to make sense of it. But with lots of humor and the help of great friends, I’m beginning to see what I’ve learned, and what I continue to learn about why I ended up in a relationship with a narcissist.
Now I can say that it continues to be an entertaining journey. I’m not sure I would say that if I hadn’t gotten out. When I was in the relationship, I was too busy looking at the trees to see the forest. From this new perspective, the forest isn’t scary anymore. And the trees weren’t that difficult to cut down. I’m braver than I thought I could be. Now I can see that those trees were comical, not menacing. I’m sure it sounds crazy when I say the trees were comical, but if I hadn’t laughed at the bizarreness of those episodes, I’d still be there, struggling for my next breath.
I gained a lot of confidence from educating myself about this disorder. This blog helps me to vent, make sense of, laugh at, and maybe even help someone else. This blog will not be clinical, or negative, or cynical. There is a time when a survivor needs to commiserate, and feel sad, and lick wounds. This blog is about how crazy, funny, insane and ridiculous it is to live with a narcissist. It is that humor that made me realize that my relationship was not normal. His behavior was too strange. It was not because I continued to screw up. His behavior WAS NOT NORMAL. I’ve got a lot of stories. Maybe those stories will shed some new light on this disorder. At any rate, it’s always good to share stories with other survivors. There’s nothing quite like that moment when a survivor looks at you and knows exactly what you are talking about because they’ve been there. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of having all this craziness understood by another in a way that only happens if that person has experienced the same thing.
Revision (2/5/10) Continue reading →
