Cassandra Voices

Author: Jennifer Clarkin

  • Dating a Narcissist is no Tea Party

    In nineteenth century England, ‘erethism’, or ‘mad hatter disease’, was an occupational hazard for hat makers. The work involved repeated exposure to poisonous mercury vapours, which neurotoxically damaged their brains. Personality flipping, irritability, apathy, depression, memory loss and delirium were the price paid for the debonair upper-class tea-party, where guests relied on lavish hats and extravagant evening gowns to demonstrate grace, formality and decorum.

    Appearances of sophistication and elite living were produced through the sacrifice of human spirit and mind. In many ways sharing life with a narcissist is like a Victorian tea party. It is a sham, a show, a veneer masking a pit of perverse and senseless suffering. It is a curated paragon of romantic union, an enviable promised land of relationship bliss. Happiness promised but never delivered.

    The Hatter in the story of Alice in Wonderland is trapped in time, in punishment for failing to impress the queen with his song. He had tried but was not good enough, a self-esteem-shattering-back-story all too familiar to those who eventually lose their way in life. He is eccentric, critical, charming, welcoming, exclusionary and at times, a wonderful host to Alice, who quickly finds her ‘in’ by flattering him for his singing.

    All ears, he draws Alice close and encourages her with a big smile to tell her story. Then suddenly he bellows, ‘Those are the things that upset me!’. He interrupts her, reprimands her, twists her words and angrily blames her for upsetting the mouse. In just a moment, his mood switches, and he is once again hospitable and engaged. He recites nonsensical prose and delivers unanswerable riddles, and when Alice repeats his own words back to him, he points at her in terror and labels her insane. On a whim, he demands that the whole party move their seats so that he can drink from a clean cup, he being the only one who deserves the privilege. Meanwhile Alice, though repeatedly promised tea, gets none.

    I feel like a fool when I look back on the dynamic between my ex-boyfriend and I. Of course it wasn’t normal, of course I should have left him, of course I should have recognised what was happening. The reality is though, when you are in love with someone your brain becomes a masterful tool of self-deception, and it can take forever to see that which does not match your own model of the world.

    Even now when I hear about friends meeting him at social occasions I imagine the serene, affable, friendly, popular gent that people love, and I question whether I over-dramatise it all.

    It seemed worth enduring the pain of arguments three times over during the times we spent in our blissful joy, and I did not have the strength to remove myself from the nourishment of his love, when he chose to show it to me. I felt that we were so close to happiness, and he was working on himself. If we could just mend the holes as they appeared then perhaps soon there would be no more. I believed him when he told me that, because what we had was almost perfect. Almost.

    I thought that my true boyfriend was loving and kind, and that the demon infiltrating his body when he ‘went dark’ had nothing to do with him. What I realised (far too late) with horror, disbelief and sadness, was that I had it the wrong way around. It was his narcissism that played the lead in his life, at least when it came to me, and though he had likable sides, his charm was mainly a means to an end.

    Unless we travel through the looking glass and see for ourselves that our world is reversed, backward and upside down, it is natural to believe in the illusion of the Tea Party.

    Nobody has prepared us for the madness of the truth. And the truth beckons an unwelcome question: if opening up to love can bring such pain, does seeking a partner make us all just lambs for the slaughter? How could I have protected myself from what I could not detect?

    When I reflect with what I know now, I can see with a sense of dismay (and of relief) that his behaviour was not as random – or I as powerless – as it seemed. I simply did not know what I was looking for. For there were signs, a dozen signs, that this would be no ordinary adventure.

  • How to Free Yourself from a Narcissist

    A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person’s eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes care of all his mirrors.
    Milan Kundera The Festival of Insignificance

    In the beginning, I thought about him endlessly, night and day, over and over again. I didn’t think the thoughts would ever stop. They were constant, circular and exhausting, and the crushing pain of the descending reality had me questioning everything about my life. I wondered what he was thinking, if he missed me, if he had realised what he had done or if knowing that he’d never get me back would mean there would be no self-reflection. If so, now he would despise me with even more conviction than he had before. It was a limb amputation, an exorcism I didn’t want but knew I needed, an offering of my very cells back to the universe.

    I yearned for him because I didn’t know the truth. How could I? I had believed him, believed who he was pretending to be. Who could intentionally deceive another like that? It couldn’t be so. We had played together, laughed together, cried in each other’s arms. Protected each other. Championed each other. Loved each other.

    It took forever to see past the act. To understand that my baby didn’t care about me, that he wasn’t able to. That my darling didn’t see me, just the things that he could manipulate to draw me in. Everything I gave him, every way I depleted myself, every single thing I sacrificed for him, for us, was invisible to him. Instead, he branded me an ungrateful, unloving, pathological, pathetic joke. And this is what he believed.

    The hardest part for me in the aftermath of my discovery that my love was a narcissist, was accepting that there was nothing I could do to change him. It was the injustice of knowing that despite everything he promised me, he could close himself off to my pain, and move himself on with no remorse. He could convince himself that I was bad, and shred my heart to pieces without a dent to his conscience. And I could never get him to see otherwise because you cannot reason with somebody that depends upon delusion for survival.

    The abandonment hits you like a freight train. There is no way to soften this collision. You may fear that the impact will kill you, or that you will dissolve in desolate depression – your forgotten, worthless, ragged body strewn upon the tracks. Worthless, because nobody could treat another this way, unless it was somehow deserved.

    You find that it takes more strength to stay still than to chase after the train, with all its precious cargo. You desperately want to lasso your ropes to the back of the carriage as it thunderously speeds past you, but you know that if you do so, you will be dragged along those haunted rails toward a phantom promise, forever. And so you wait, but for what you do not know.

    This is not the end. It’s the beginning. Change is coming and this change is going to teach you how to free yourself. Because you are a survivor, and survivors have a deep and powerful instinct to keep on moving, no matter how torn your skin and battered your bones, no matter how much your swollen heart might weigh you down. You survive without becoming like them because despite the pain of choosing someone that manipulated and abused your sacred, trusting offering of love, you do not close yourself to it.

    Slowly, you begin to understand, and later to believe, that none of this was your fault. And that you are not the person your narcissist convinced you that you were. That the world is full of bruised and damaged people that are not as strong as you. People that inflict pain, to feel pleasure in their power, while you and your loving heart absorb their abuse to lighten their load. It’s easy to be like them. They are weak.

    You are here because you have been tough enough to take what they have given you, tough for far too long. You are here because you were chosen for your gorgeous light and your beautiful soul. If you did not shine so brightly, you would not have been valuable to them. They may have learned to drain this light but they did not deplete you. You will regenerate. Because this is who you are.

    Your narcissist fed off you because they cannot create their own goodness. With a closed heart and a suffocated soul they have no true power at all. None. You do. Love, the most powerful energy source on earth is what kept you with your abuser, what caused you to shoulder burdens that were not yours. And love is what will set you free.

    But first, you need to learn to direct it at the person that really deserves it – yourself. Learn to parent yourself with love and see how strong you become. Practice the art of supporting yourself, and refusing to self-abandon and you will never be caught again. Feel the nourishment of your own love and kindness and watch the joy that will spring forth from your powerful heart.

    Float confidently away from those heavy iron tracks. You’ve got something so much better than the train now. You’ve got wings.