Soul-Crushing

It’s dark. It’s late. No, it’s early. I’m sitting on the enclosed terrace. Staring at the moon’s reflection off the ocean. No sounds. At this moment, the universe comprises water, sky, stars, and me. 

Why am I awake at this hour? I refer you to my blog post, 3 AM. 

I have no answers why I was created. I have accomplished nothing. There is not one thing that comes to mind when I look at a retrospective of my life. Nothing.

Well, that’s not totally true. I was the Co-creator of two beautiful sons. One entering his third year of college and the other will begin his journey as a freshman in the fall.

It Was The Narc

She took them out of my life. “Oh, they’ll be back,” people say. “Give them space. They’re boys. They just need time. Once they mature they’ll wanna see their father.”

The problem, of course, is those people never lived with a narcissist. Not someone who is selfish or a little self-centered. A narcissist. A mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.

And when it was all over, she was still standing. I was beaten and left for dead. I allowed their mother to take all I had. Let’s forget the stuff for a minute.The property that comprised pieces of my life. She took them, my kids. Every day and every night, she would explain the horrific exploits of their father. Non stop. She would give a daily monologue of how every member of his family, except his dead father, was evil and at fault for the ghastly world they live in. 

The goal, of course, was to fill their heads with anger and hatred, the exact opposite of what the circuit court judge said while enforcing the Co-parenting agreement. 

“Mrs. Kaye, you are to advise your boys that their dad is an important part of their life. He will see them on alternate Saturdays or Tuesdays or Friday nights for all I care. You must share grades and tascs. I suggest you find a shared calendar app and put all activities for the semester on it.”

My attorney offered five different apps. Her attorney said, “We’ll get back to you.”

Still awaiting that call.

Backstory

She wanted to get married. Any man would do. Her biological clock was ticking, and she could not marry her father, the only man she ever loved. So, beginning with our first date, she mirrored me, pretended to be just like me. She copied all my likes, loved all my music and laughed at all my jokes. Then things happened to her. A boredom of failing and seeing her own flaws. So she learned to despise what she could not achieve. She found enjoyment in hurting me psychologically, as she thought she was clever and superior to act in an inferior and below intelligent way. 

It was not rocket science to get the reactions she did from me. My reactions were normal. It was her reactions that were completely deformed! It took intelligence from me, well after we separated, to understand why she did what she did. I knew her better than she would ever know herself. 

Introspection

I’m not sure if this is sad or normal.

Can anyone look back at his or her own life and say, “I got it. That’s why I was put on this earth. I was placed here to do that. I’m great at it.”

Yes. I will bet many people realize why they are here. They recognize their purpose.

I have no purpose. Every move I have ever made was wrong. And before I started making these ridiculous moves on my own, my parents made them for me.

I know. I know. Boo hoo. Stop whining. But my mind is racing. I was and am a TV watcher. It’s like these TV shows are my friends. It helps when one has so little in his life. I keep going back to Seinfeld. 

George: “My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat… It’s often wrong.” Jerry: “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”

The brilliant moonlight reflecting from the Atlantic is continuing to contaminate my mind into vast darkness that continues to hold it captive. I should have gone the opposite way.

Pleasing Others

I began taking stock of my life the day my father passed away. My son was born nine days earlier.

Let’s stop right there.

My son, my father’s grandson, was born nine days after he died. And it was not accidental.

With a Shakespearean twist, my father, the man who practically ordered me to get married and give him what he referred to as Boca babies, was in a coma three months prior to my wife delivering the grandchild he wanted.

My mother, a modern woman who enjoyed a 47 year marriage, now in retirement and having little to do except make dinner plans and keep track of the day the housekeeper was arriving, was forced to pay bills, fuel the car, and pick a day to pull the plug on the only man she had ever loved.

Good thing the Narc had this figured out. “So now, his birthday will be a source of tragedy. Our son’s birthday and her husband’s death. She will so make this about herself. What don’t you get about that? It will be about her, not us. Not his birthday. What a bitch!”

My Life After His Death

I found myself in a house living with two beautiful children and a narcissist. Now, I was aware of my agony. I just was not aware it had a name, Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

There was not a day that went by where she showed happiness or an ability to enjoy the moment. Oh, she spent time with our sons as they grew. Mommy and me. Pre-school. Elementary school. All youth basketball games (with a focus on the boys, rarely the coach who married her). Bar Mitzvah’s. Middle school. High School. Always there, but never happy. Never proud. Always negative. (The gym is too cold. The other coach is cheating. That DJ took off two minutes early. Why are you having a second drink? I hate your mother).

The daily insults turned into middle of the night accusations about how I decimated her life.

Now what?

I learned in court the louder your wife’s matrimonial attorney yells, the more he slanders you, and the more irrelevant facts he brings up the more you wonder whose life he is describing, because it was not mine.

The revisionist history goes like this: “Your honor. Our time today in your courtroom is nothing more than a waste of your time and my time. The man sitting to my left is nothing more than a con man, who would stop at nothing to hurt my client. He was abusive, a drunk, a drug addict who continued to publicly berate his wife and abuse his children. He spent his money on himself while ignoring his children, leaving my client with nothing after stealing the children’s Bar Mitzvah money leaving her to scrounge for food, while begging her family to help her raise the children. This story would sicken you if it were to stop there, but there is more. The reprehensible piece of this story is how he begged her to marry him on their first date, practically raped her on the second date, and spoke about marriage on the third date. He told her how sick his father was and how if he could only get married and have children, his father would die a happen man. My client fell for his charade. He and his family, eviler than he, ripped her soul apart.”

If you’re having a pleasant day, do not go to court with your ex-wife and her matrimonial attorney.

If you are lucky enough to divorce a narcissist, there’s dreadful news: The money is never coming back. The Charles Fazzino art work of New York City she gave you for your fortieth birthday, hanging in her sister’s house. Your pre-marital property (photo albums and family vacation videos, jewelry your father owned and wanted you to have, and your Julius Erving 1974 ABA championship basketball signed and presented to you at your Bar Mitzvah) all gone.

These are the property losses, some sentimental and others merely about dollars and cents — and it’s time to take a deep, cleansing breath and forget about them. (I have bored friends to tears talking about how she hoarded all of my pre-marital property. All respond the same. “It’s stuff. It was important. But you lost it. If a hurricane demolished your home, well, same thing. You are alive. You got out alive.”).

The bigger piece

She ignored two court orders enforcing that Co-parenting agreement. She blocked the boys’ phones from accepting my calls and had them ignore my texts. They were both over sixteen so she would text me every other Friday advising me they were too busy to see me.

The day after my younger son turned 18, I received a phone call from his high school principal explaining how the narc and my son were in her office a day earlier. She handed the principal a notarized document stating my son wanted me to cease and desist from being his legal guardian. He was 18 with five months of school remaining and she had him take away my rights to be a part of his life, but thankfully she allowed me to continue paying child support.

I believe if the situation were reversed, they would lock me up and throw away the key. With her, the court could do just so much.

 Are narcissists as soulless and dark as people describe? Is this not overdramatized?

Let me tell you something, narcissists don’t think in healthy ways. They have a very distorted and dysfunctional way of thinking, which, I believe, results from early childhood trauma (abuse in various forms, neglect, and rejection). They are deeply wounded, insecure individuals who seem to read from the same script the world over.

As I sit here and think about this, she idolized her father, and had no friends at our wedding. Not one. All friends were mine.

True narcissists don’t have a conscience. Without a conscience, a person will do anything and everything and feel no remorse, regret, or emotion for any wrongdoing. They are motivated by their own lust, greed, and selfish ambition. They need power, control, and domination while worshiping their own will and their own way. If anyone impedes that agenda, the narc will retaliate in vicious, cold, and calculating ways.

When my father died, the narc tried her best to wrestle control of the family away from my sister. When my sister turned on her, all hell broke loose. She tore me away over the course of the next few years from my sister, brother, their families, every friend I had prior to her entrance into my life, and finally my mother. She took me away from my mother!

Brainwashing

The sense of being in the presence of something utterly evil and vile is overwhelming. There is a contempt and hatred that seems to be so prevalent it almost feels like you could reach out and physically touch it. This is in direct conflict with the false mask you’re introduced to. As I said, narcissists appear very nice and charming from the onset but there is no goodness in them and there is a difference.

She kept asking me to meet my parents. I had no desire to continue seeing her, but my father, using Jewish guilt by reminding me he was dying of cancer, told me he wanted to meet her. She fooled them so well that I was told to marry her the next week.

Ultimate Agenda

The agenda is to get what they want when they want it. They will do anything to accomplish that agenda and they don’t play by the same rule book that well-adjusted individuals play by. As a matter of fact, they usually don’t play by rules at all. 

I can explain what they will do:

Lie convincingly (pathologically)

cheat

steal

deceive

manipulate

control

never be loyal to you

never be faithful to you

pout

cry crocodile tears

brag about their accomplishments, or something else

criticize everyone, especially you

vent often

rage

project their faults onto you

gaslight

ghost

use passive-aggressive tactics

put words in your mouth

use word salad

use crazy making

use the silent treatment

use sex as a bargaining tool (withhold)

exaggerate and dramatize situations

be completely hypocritical

demean

devalue

dismiss

never receive correction

demand forgiveness but never forgive (hold grudges forever)

never take responsibility for anything

accuse you falsely

insinuate disapproval

know it all (be an expert on everything)

be vengeful at a perceived wrong

always crave and command attention (very attention seeking)

show discord and confusion

be pushy and domineering

use the element of surprise to keep you “off-balance”

talk incessantly

repeatedly cut you off mid-sentence so they can continue talking about themselves and their lives because they really don’t care about yours

be very insubordinate (never submit to any kind of authority)

be proud

be arrogant

use information (either against you or withhold for control)

practice one-upmanship

be jealous

be envious of other’s possessions-personality traits-accomplishments

ignore people if they perceive those people to have no use

never give credit or show gratitude (if so, it’s not genuine)

use people to accomplish an agenda

take credit for everything

often play the “hero” to garner attention

exaggerate and lie about accomplishments and credentials

intimidate by projecting a false sense of power

bully others

never admit guilt or wrongdoing-ever

be physically and/or verbally abusive

addictions (shopping, porn, drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, other)

never apologize sincerely or acknowledge blame of any kind

No Goodness Is found In Them

Are you getting a clearer picture of the kind of person a narcissist is? I hope so because the traits above are a common running list for narcissists (I’m sure there are more), to varying degrees. 

With all those behaviors manifesting in a person, do you think they will be capable of maintaining and nurturing any kind of healthy and fulfilling relationship? Do you think the people they are in a relationship with will experience any lasting healthy levels of joy, peace, happiness, fulfillment, mutual respect and love, growth, or security in a toxic, one-sided relationship?

Any close relationship with a narcissist will always, and I mean always, have compounding negative effects on a person’s physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health, not to mention financial, career, family, social, and creative health. In other words, it’ll cost you dearly. 

No relationship in this world is worth giving up your very self to. The price is too high, and that is exactly the price the narcissist expects and demands.

Now What?

The narcissist does not believe in a person’s right to express their free will or a person’s right to choose. You will always confront and fight to maintain your autonomy, your identity, and your individuality with them. Soul crushing, caustic, abusive, miserable, devoid of any peace, dark, oppressive, insidious, empty, and unsatisfying, are some accurate descriptive words here.

The darkness remains illuminated by the moon as I continue wondering why I was created. I may have never asked myself such a question pre-narcissist. But now, I look and reflect deeply into my inner soul. My parents are gone. My sister and brother want nothing to do with me (they revealed their true disingenuous colors while I was in the fight of my life with the narc) and my two sons will not so much as return a text.

The absurdity? The irony? I stayed with the Narc for all those years because the thought of not seeing my sons at the beginning and end of each day was too much to take. Now? To them, I never existed. Only the Narc’s family.

There is no winning for a narc so even her thought of me sitting in the dark having lost everything, my feelings, my caring, my zest for living, my sense of purpose, does not put a smile on her face. That knife must continue to turn, for, without it, she is irrelevant. There must be at least one person per day she can tell about the torture and trauma she endured and allowed no one to see. 

Maybe there is one thing. As I sit here contemplating life and death, nobody is screaming at me.