love « Surviving Narcissism

Posts Tagged: love

Moving On — 10 Comments
6
Mar 10

I Am Part of the Universe or Get Yourself Off the Roof

So a flood is coming. The man has been warned. He sees the waters rising. He’s standing in his front yard praying for God to save him when another man floats by on an inner tube. The man on the tube says, “Hey, there’s room on my tube. You better come with me.” The first man says, “I’ll be alright. God will save me.”

The waters rise forcing the man to climb the side of his house to wait for God’s help on his roof. Just then a motor boat goes by, and a woman in the boat yells up at him, “Hey! We’ve got room. You better come with us!” The man yells back, “That’s nice of you, but I’m fine. God will save me.”

The waters begin to crest the house. The man is running out of time as he continues waiting and praying on the roof. Suddenly a helicopter appears. The pilot hovers over the man’s house and sends down a rope. The man waves off the pilot. The pilot cannot hear the man over the roar of the helicopter. What the pilot couldn’t hear was the man yelling, “Thank you, but God will save me.”

After the man enters the gates of heaven, he summons up the courage to approach God. The man says, “I don’t understand. I prayed. I waited. I had faith. Why didn’t you save me?”

God said, “Geez, Buddy. I sent a rubber raft, a boat and a helicopter. What more could I have done?” Continue reading →

Quotes — Comments Off
5
Mar 10

Where Is The Universe When I Need It?

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist

Moving On / Parenting / Recipes — 6 Comments
5
Mar 10

Recipe For Moving On

cup-o'-joe Apparently life is not waiting for me to catch up. It’s time to put an end to my little pity party, round up the soggy wads of kleenex, wipe the mascara from under my eyes and move on.

Ever since the kids could walk, I’ve asked them to get a kleenex when they see someone is hurt or crying. It’s not because I wanted them to wait on me, but handing someone a kleenex when they are crying is a great way to show you care when you don’t know what the hell to say. It’s better than standing there waiting for the sobbing person to tell you, “Could you get me a kleenex, already.”

Tuesday night, Will wised up and brought me the whole box.

There’s too much to do, too much to plan, and too much to anticipate to spend any more time licking my wounds.

Enough is enough. Continue reading →

Moving On / Quotes — Comments Off
4
Mar 10

Loved And Lost

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

Anonymous

Moving On — 5 Comments
3
Mar 10

Stop The Clock

broken heart It was the winter of 1996 and I was standing in the middle of the produce section of a grocery store wondering how anyone could fuss over a navel orange when my grandfather had just been found, face down in the drifted snow next to his mobile home. I thought for sure that the clocks would have stopped, that time would be frozen somehow, so that everyone could acknowledge the passing of someone who was so dear to me. How could people go on about their day, squeezing heads of iceberg lettuce, griping about the long lines, and fumbling through their purses for coupons? How could life continue to be so ordinary?

I thought of that today when my neighbor walked by with her Golden Retriever. She’s a pleasant gal. I’ve not chatted with her a whole lot. She has commented that she likes the wine glasses hanging from the wine rack above my kitchen window. We exchange pleasantries. She always has a smile on her face. Her dog is beautiful, and he’s always excited to see Rita. Today her smile annoys me. Last night I said goodbye to my long distance friend. I can’t quite fathom how my neighbor can be so damned happy when I feel as though my heart has been flattened, drained of life, and pinned to the bulletin board. Naturally, the neighbor lady doesn’t have a clue. I envy her delight in the simple, mindless pleasure of walking her dog. She makes one pass, two passes, and the kids comment on her happy grin. By the fourth pass, I’m thinking, “Pick a different route. Please.”

I am marveling at how messed up I am at the demise of this relationship. After all, it was long distance. I’m not sure it ever had the chance to get to the point of being called a relationship. We didn’t get to know each other well enough to find out what would irritate us about each other. Maybe that explains the sadness. It’s over before it got bad, or before we had the chance to see that it could be really, really good. But I’ve been thinking all day that it’s strange that I’m worse off now than when I left Mark. Back then, things had been bad for quite awhile when I decided to move out. By the time the kids and I had moved to my mom’s, all I could think was that it was great to be able to breathe again. It was good to see that the sky was still blue. Life could be simple and good. I could find pleasure in the routine of caring for kids, and being with family. We had come out of the darkness at Mark’s. It was hard to be too sad.

The end of this relationship is different because I was clinging to what I thought was the promise of a happy future. I see now that I was clinging to him like a lifeboat. He even told me once that I should remember that this was my first relationship since my divorce — and all that implied. (I hate the word ‘rebound’ as it applies to relationships.) He was a huge part of my surviving the narcissism. I’m thinking I’m going to learn more about the surviving now that I don’t have the lifeboat anymore.

Maybe it’s time we got a dog.

Child of Narcissist / Lack of Empathy — 7 Comments
1
Mar 10

No One Can Cut Your Shadow In Half

“How did you sleep?” “Did you have any dreams?” Each morning begins the same way. While rubbing eyes and stretching long thin arms, we ask each other how the night was. We’ve talked about dreams since the kids could talk, or since they first started having dreams. I can’t remember which came first. When Jen was little, she felt left out if Will and I were discussing our dreams, and she didn’t have a dream to share. I don’t know if she just couldn’t remember, or if she had a hard time with the difference between dreams and reality. When it was her turn to talk about her dream she’d always say, “It was about a snowman.” And that was it.

Last night she had a symbolic dream about ‘a guy’ that cut her shadow in half. When she realized that he cut her shadow in two pieces, she cried for a whole day. When she had finished crying, her shadow became whole again. But just as the shadow became one, ‘the guy’ cut her bunny in half. (This was the very special pink bunny that she had gotten when she was in the hospital with pneumonia.) So with tears in her eyes, she brought the bunny to me, and I “sewed the bunny all up and it was good as new.”

I have always felt that we process things and solve problems in our dreams. Some of us are lucky enough to remember dreams, and then we can hang on to what the dream means. Some of us don’t remember much about our dreams. I’ve taken the approach that if we talk about them everyday, we start to remember them more, and we’ll have better access to the lessons. In Jen’s case, each time I’d prompt her to tell us about her dream, all she could come up with was the snowman. But after awhile, she seemed to listen to herself more, and she started remembering her dreams. It’s kind of like intuition — if you stop paying attention to intuition, it will stop speaking to you.

That being said, sometimes (a lot of times) dreams are too bizarre to have any real tangible significance to anything in ‘real’ life. But there’s nothing wrong with a little comic relief in the morning. For example, Jen’s other dream last night was about catching friendly, minuscule rubber-headed leprechauns in a tiny paper house. Not sure where to go with that other than the kids set a trap every year to try to catch Larry the Leprechaun. Maybe she’s working out a plan for a new trap.

Jenny’s dream about ‘the guy’ is pretty straight forward. To me it says, her dad is squashing her spirit (cutting her shadow in half). She has been afraid to cry out when her dad does something that denies who she really is. She is learning the value in crying — showing who she is and how she feels. And as she lets herself out, her spirit (shadow) can be whole. And sometimes she just needs a little help from her mom.

Moving On / Quotes — Comments Off
28
Feb 10

Let Love In

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.

Morrie Schwartz

Moving On / Quotes — 4 Comments
24
Feb 10

The Search

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

Michel de Montaigne

Child of Narcissist / Lack of Empathy / Opportunistic / Quotes / The World Revolves Around Me / You Might Be a Narcissist If ... — 1 Comment
20
Feb 10

It’s All Talk

Big hat, no cattle.

Unknown

Quotes — 2 Comments
17
Feb 10

Love Is A Gift

Love is always bestowed as a gift — freely, willingly, and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.

Leo F. Buscaglia

Child of Narcissist / Moving On / The World Revolves Around Me — Comments Off
17
Feb 10

Love Notes and the Narcissist

I stepped out of the shower this morning, head full of what to make for dinner; are they on track for home schooling; did I figure the taxes correctly; gotta order some firewood …. And I found this on the bathroom floor — a love note from Jenny. Sweet words sung to the tune of ‘Clementine’. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Mark used to write me notes. He wrote a lot of letters to me. For obvious reasons, I can’t bring myself to look at them now. But I remember they were quite wordy, windy, and showy. I hadn’t ever received love letters before. What did I know? There’s the classic examples of love letters that you can find in literature. To me, that’s a lot like the Latin Lover with the rose clenched between his teeth. No thanks. When I think back on Mark’s letters, I remember thinking that there was a lot of stuff about Mark in them. It wasn’t so much about how fabulous I was, it was about how fabulous he was. Maybe he saw the necessity, even then, in trying to convince me.

And he kept track of my responses to his letters. He wouldn’t write to me, until he’d received a response to his most recent letter. He was definitely keeping score. At the time, I thought that there must be some sort of protocol for love-letter writing. I know, now, that love isn’t about keeping score, it’s about giving freely with heartfelt intentions. A genuine expression of love ought to be as innocent as a note from a child. When Jenny penned that little note this morning, I’m positive she wasn’t thinking, “Okay, I’ll write this to mommy, but I sure hope she writes one back to me.” That was not her motivation for writing the note. She loves me, and wanted to tell me. There’s no agenda.

But love is also about some measure of reciprocity. It’s also about loving yourself, and realizing that you deserve love. It’s not stomping your foot, demanding acknowledgment or recognition. It is giving freely without expectation of return. And love is also about respecting yourself enough to move on to something healthier when you keep giving, and getting nothing back.

When was the last time you wrote someone a love note? Write a note to someone — maybe even to yourself. It’s not as silly as it sounds. It’s sending good words out there, that you deserve. You can make it flowery, if you like that sorta thing. Or make it straightforward and to-the-point. Just don’t sit around waiting for a response. That ruins the genuine intent of the whole thing. And if your choice comes down to writing to yourself, or the narcissist in your life, please write to yourself.

Moving On / Quotes — Comments Off
16
Feb 10

Life Moves Fast

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in awhile you could miss it.

Matthew Broderick as Ferris Buller

Moving On — Comments Off
16
Feb 10

Distraction as a Means of Survival

We are not going anywhere tonight. No one is coming over. I’m going to cook a simple dinner. We have planned not to make plans.

Isn’t that how it is?

You plan not to do something so as to focus on what is at hand. Then, life gets in the way, and once again, you are afforded the opportunity to avoid what really needs to be addressed. And you are so thankful for that bump in the schedule, because you would give anything to keep from handling the real life stuff.

I see it all the time with my kids.

The light is blinking on the answering machine. In fact the light blinks on the four phones around the house. Uniden, the company that made our cordless phone, probably thought that was a great feature — a selling point. “Our phone will conveniently remind you when you have an urgent message that needs to be answered.” It’s enough to pretend that Mark didn’t call. We don’t need the phone to continually blink its little red light to nag us about calling him back. Continue reading →

Moving On / The World Revolves Around Me — 8 Comments
14
Feb 10

Be Your Own Valentine

tink I was going to work on my taxes today. I was going to try to unclog my bathroom sink. I played all day yesterday, so I’m feeling like I’m supposed to be productive and accomplish something today. (As if spending a wonderful day enjoying the company of my kids isn’t productive.)

Then I remembered, “It’s Valentine’s Day!!”

*sigh*

I don’t have anything insightful to say about Valentine’s Day. If you’d like a chuckle to go with your obligatory box of chocolates, then check out a previous post on narcissism and gift-giving.

Enjoy this quote on love, or this one, too. Continue reading →