Au revoir to a Narcissist

Hope your week’s been swell so far! If you enjoy my tales, I invite you to consider an upgrade to a paid subscription, forwarding this to a friend, or maybe even Buy Me a Coffee! Enjoy this week’s entry.

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I received this gem via email on Monday.

Let me explain.

Last week’s essay included the story of how I ended up buying my house in Tampa.  The email above is from the person I mentioned in that piece who found the listing and drove me to see it as a “surprise,” nudging me every step of the way to purchase it by assuring me how proud my recently deceased father would be for making such a “responsible” choice with my inheritance.

I’ll call him Brian.

I met him freshman year of college in 1981 and haven’t spoken to him since around 2005. Our relationship was toxic, complex, and deceptive. For example, I learned after I moved twelve hundred miles to New York to be with him that he was gay. Even that took a couple of years to come to the surface and in the meantime, he assigned all the issues we had to me being fat and crazy.   

I took my final leave almost twenty years ago and this email is the last in a long line of insults I’ve received over two decades designed to garner a response from me. This is pulled from the narcissist’s playbook, along with things like begging for my forgiveness because he had end stage cancer and couldn’t die knowing I hated him. The list goes on.

For the most part, I’ve not responded, no matter how cruel his remarks. After reading multiple articles on how to deal with narcissists, I told myself it was best not to engage no matter how inflamed my ego got. I even consulted the police and a lawyer at different times, but it turns out the law only recognizes harassment if you fight back. My tactic of ignoring him meant I wasn’t entitled to any kind of legal protection.

Over the years he’s left comments on blogs I’ve written, revealing private details of my life I shared with him in confidence. He’s stalked me on social media under phony accounts and left provocative remarks that were sometimes complimentary and sometimes critical. Regardless of their intent, he always said just enough so that I would know it was him.

I have a stack of fake apologies for the abuse he doled out (and that I accepted - it wasn’t a one-way street) that I realized were bogus when they were followed by vicious emails when I didn’t respond to them. He’s insulted my body and my financial status. And he’s frequently gas lit me into believing my perceptions of his behavior were ill conceived.

While I used to convince myself that I was taking the high road all those years by not answering him most of the time, I now realize my special blend of trauma had me terrified to poke the bear, believing that fighting back in any way would result in a much worse situation. Turns out I was afraid of poking the bear when the bear was just a slug who hid behind cryptic email addresses to maintain his anonymous keyboard warrior status.

What he doesn’t know is that while his attempts at cruelty leveled me when we were in each other’s lives, that hasn’t been the case for quite some time. Let’s dissect his diatribe.

You said your friend wanted to purchase that house in Tampa, but it was for you to buy, not your friend. Now you say you were pressed to do it. Remember you couldn’t wait to do it.

Brian was visiting about two months after I’d returned from my father’s funeral. We were out running errands and he slipped in a stop at a house he’d found on the Multi-List. I resisted in the beginning, but he suggested we call the agent and see if she could meet us. We went to a diner to wait for her, and he stoked the fire of my burgeoning excitement with all the pluses of owning a home.

As soon as I walked in, I fell in love – with the house, with the fantasy, with the idea that I could finally garner my father’s approval. Walking away from six figures to become a novelist didn’t my dad’s parameters of adulthood and I didn’t really feel as if he approved of any of my choices. The truth was this dynamic existed the entirety of our relationship. And Brian knew this.

I listened intently as he suggested furniture styles and paint colors - he had a knack for that. He talked about how I could make the mother-in-law cottage my office and reminded me how I always wanted a pool. He pointed out what a great party kitchen the house had and got excited about the parties and cookouts I could have. He even said that if he were looking for a house in Florida, this bungalow would have been it.

Some might say this just sounds like a supportive friend, wanting me to have the things I dreamed of. But this was the man who slipped a credit card I accidentally left near the register of a NYC diner into his pocket, watched me go insane when I realized I didn’t have it later that day, and said nothing. It was an American Express card with my name on it, but it was my father’s account. Brian fessed up that he actually had it a few days later, after I called my father to admit I’d lost the card. He said he was teaching me a lesson.  

This was somebody who understood financial responsibility. Money was always top of mind for him. So the fact there was no mention of the costs around pool maintenance, upkeep on a home that was pushing a century old, taxes, insurance (in Florida no less) or any questions about utility bills, much less how I would pay for any of it, tells me that once again, he decided what was best for me and found a way to get me to agree.

Plus, he always enjoyed living vicariously through me, pumping me up to do things he didn’t have the courage to do himself – asking strangers ridiculous questions, posing as a French tourist in a shop, and other things that often made me feel and appear foolish while he looked on and laughed.

And let me be clear. I went along with it. My drive to please others. My inability to say no for fear it would rock the boat. My infantile heart insisting I was in love with him. All of that allowed me to make excuses for his bad behavior.

I don’t do that anymore.

So no, Brian. You don’t get to tell me that you didn’t try to influence me. You don’t get to tell me you didn’t nudge and push and persuade. And that if you did, it was because you cared about me. I see you now.

The only mistake you make over and over is having a reductive memory.

Of all the things he said, this is the only one that stung a bit.

It took me an hour or so to see that it was the kick in the ass I needed to push me through the edge of the portal and into the life I’ve been creating since the last time I had contact with him.

Being gas lit has been my kryptonite. His assertion that I rewrote history, oversimplified the facts to buttress my perspective is Narcissism 101. Because God forbid anyone see you for who you really are.

This is not unlike when we’d be walking down a street in Manhattan and he’d continually pinch me under my arm. In that soft spot where a molehill feels like a mountain. I’d ask him to stop. Then beg. Then raise my voice. When I could take no more and punched him in the arm to make him stop, he made sure I was the one who looked crazy to all the passers-by.  

And in many ways, I was.

I’m the one who hid the bruises with longer sleeves because I didn’t want to explain my inexplicable willingness to still be around him. I couldn’t keep the door shut, no matter how much I swore I was going to. Because I believed that somehow everything had to be my fault. If I could just be more. Or less. Quieter. Louder. Thinner. Calmer.

This comment ultimately made me realize how much I trust myself now. Unhealed trauma makes you doubt everything, especially your ability to see reality clearly. You question everything, constantly solicit the opinions of others, and never feel safe in your own assessments and judgments of people or situations.

You insisting the sky is red when I clearly see that it is blue is no longer a viable tactic to make me question myself.

No love in your life.

The healthy love (not the definition of love I once had) that I experience on a daily basis from the people in my life is the oxygen that enables me to keep going when I want to quit. It has supported me when my mind said no one cared. It is the lifeblood of my creativity, my achievements, and my sanity.  

And being fat your entire life.

Breaking news! I’m fat!! I’m not saying the journey to love and accept my body isn’t ongoing. But I started at disgust and shame and currently reside in deep appreciation and understanding.

You are weak.

Weakness is hiding behind cryptic email addresses and fake names. It’s not taking responsibility for your cruelty, manipulation, and entitlement. It’s making others out to be liars at worst and crazy at best so you can maintain the story you’ve told yourself.  Weakness is refusing to leave the victimhood. Weakness is someone who is unwilling to do the work to accept and love all of who they are.

You are the very definition of weak.

You are destined to die alone.

How the hell am I alone when he never goes away? Seriously, though, everyone dies alone no matter how much they’d like to believe otherwise.

Final thoughts.

I’ve found the only way to deal with a narcissist is to focus on yourself, your growth, your healing. And let the results speak for themselves.

Thank you to all the Brians in the world from all of us who didn’t know how powerful, brave, and divine we really are and for making sure we worked our asses off so that we could.

One final wish as I bid you adieux “Brian,” may you enjoy the benefits of what you’ve given tenfold.

P.S. I never responded to the previous email, yet after I finished writing this, this was in my inbox.

Um, yeah. I did get out of bed today. And I’m in love with me. It’s clear you cannot say the same.

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