How do you explain love?

Is it by gifts? That feeling when you tell your friends about him? Or your first date, picking out that special outfit hoping they tell you you’re pretty?

I guess love is different for everyone. For me, love was different from most others.

Love for me was doing whatever I could to make him happy. Love was waking up and making breakfast, hoping he liked it or it would be a bad day from there.

Love was blocking guys from my social media, so they didn’t take me away from him. Love was blaming myself when he would grab me so hard because I made him be that way. Love was giving him every password to all my accounts, so he knew who I was talking to.

Love was him driving past my house in the middle of the night to make sure I was at home. Love was turning my location services on my phone so he could always keep track.

Love was being silent when we argued because anything I said was wrong and I didn’t want to make him more upset.

Love was locking myself in our bedroom so he couldn’t get to me. Love was sometimes hearing him pound on the door at 2 a.m.

Love was always walking on eggshells with our conversations because at any time he could flip. Love was always thinking he was right, even when I didn’t really believe it, because I didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that I was in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship. 

Love is a weird concept, especially when your ex-lover is a narcissist and a compulsive liar.

Now a lot of people might say, well why didn’t you leave?

That’s something I still ask myself. And I’m not quite sure either. 

I think it was the fact that our lives were so twisted together I couldn’t think of pulling us apart. Of starting over. Of accepting the fact that I worked so long on perfecting “us” and it would all be thrown away. Or maybe it was the nights we were screaming at each other so loud I would nearly lose my voice, and he would run off in the middle of the night leaving me to wonder if he’d come back alive. Maybe it was all pure guilt. He would block my number so I couldn’t even call to check-in—just leave me on the floor alone, sobbing, and blaming myself.

How could I make him feel so bad? How could I do this? How could I be such a horrible person that I make someone want to kill themselves? That’s just about anyone’s worst fear.

And let me say that it’s not because I was any of those things he told me I was. I was not a bad person. I was not the liar. I was not the crazy jealous person he led me to believe I was. I was and am so strong. I am a warrior who fought like hell to keep myself afloat while focusing solely on his needs.

I love you. I hate you. I love you. I hate you.

Things that constantly trampled through my brain like a parade of elephants. 

How could you love someone so much but hate everything about them? How could the person who convinced you that you are perfect, lovely, so angelic, also breathe down your neck about you being awful and crazy and psychotic?

It’s these questions I still ask and still don’t understand. I think that’s part of the healing process, or that’s what my therapist tells me.

It’s okay to not understand 100 percent what happened to you—you had a traumatic experience. You were being manipulated through words and intimidation strategies. It’s okay to feel like this.

And why do I have to feel like I’m the only one suffering? Shouldn’t he feel something? Anything?

But that’s just the thing—narcissists don’t feel a damn thing, and they don’t give a f*ck if you do.

They live and breathe for the fact that they maintain control over your story or your situation by lying. They live and breathe for the fact that you suffer and that you can’t feel complete.

They live and breathe for that satisfaction that you are not okay.

But you know what they can’t stand? Your success with moving forward.

The fact that your life has and is going on without them.

That you never needed them.

That when you think of them, you can honestly say you forgive them. Because you know their mental capacity is too small and damaged to understand real human emotion. 

That you are lovely and beautiful, and that the world knows you are and shows you.

That regardless of what the narcissist says, their lies catch up with them faster than the devil himself; people notice, people catch on, and people eventually leave him just like you did.

The narcissist once again feels alone, pitiful, and pathetic.

This is the only time he feels anything. When he realizes once again that his actions have made his reality actually real and not some sick fantasy he’s been getting off on.

He can’t stand to be alone.

He can’t stand the thought of facing anything he’s done because he is a coward.

He will never tell himself the truth because he can’t keep up his facade of lies to everyone else if he’s honest.

He can’t do that.

He won’t do that.

So he will get up—bones dragging, teeth clenching, 

The monster once again crawls out from under the bed.

To prey on his next victim.

I worry all the time about women and men facing the world of loving a narcissist.

That’s something that I think about every day, and I wish not even my worst enemy what I have heard and seen and felt.

I love you. I hate you. I love you. I hate you.

It still screams in my head.

Mainly the hate part, because I felt used.

I was just one of your projects.

One of your puppets you needed to control,

And that is sick.

It makes me sick when I think about your newest victim.

To think torturing me wasn’t enough for you.

That you have to hurt her too.

Because I left.

You took what you couldn’t out on me, on her.

When will it be enough?

Will you ever learn to face your sh*t?

I have no idea. But it makes me ill to even think about it.

So I try not to.

But my subconscious fears don’t let me forget.

It’s like you laid your demon eggs in my head and now the image of you can’t ever escape me.

It’s me waking up in the middle of the night wondering why you keep haunting my dreams.

It’s having the same reoccurring nightmare of you following me still.

It’s the same sick image I can’t shake.

But you know what? 

That’s okay.

Because my love is so beyond glorious,

My love for myself will be worth more than gold.

That my standards will be so high you will break in fear when you hear about it.

When my success speaks for itself, you will break.

Your heart will ache just knowing that you really are below even earthworms.

That zombies feel more than you ever could.

Guess who’s the victim now?

Not me.

And man, I beg that the world recognizes his evil.

That it takes him up in its wings and buries him so far even the worms are too good to eat that dirt.

But that’s their job. 

The earth.

It’s my job to keep myself strong.

It’s my job to tell my story, so the rest of the world can maybe find their truth.

So that other people don’t feel alone like I did.

~