Hey my friends. Wow, am I being shown new faces of the people I once called parents! I saw these faces as a child, but not clearly and through a haze of fear and gaslighting. I saw their abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, manipulation, shaming, invalidation, parentification and scapegoating as what I deserved and should expect. I gaslit myself into disbelieving parents would treat a kid this way. And this was what God expected of me.
But then, on my road to Damascus, a few scales fell off. And I glimpsed, through the chinks, something that I'd probably always know but which still came a jolt. The narcissists didn't and never had loved me. I started to consider that maybe I wasn't just a crazy, selfish, lying, showoff, oversensitive, failure as I'd been told. That maybe things happened just as I recalled.
And the more I saw, the more I was shown and the less I could excuse anymore. I believe God is revealing these things to me because I finally dared to peek though that chink. And I started asking for help to see more clearly. I don't think it was gaming on his part to keep me in ignorance and misery. I think He knew the right time to let the narcissists show their true colors and me to see them.
And the older they get the more their masks slip and the more God is giving me a look at what's behind. And while it's not pretty, it's also not scary like it was before I saw the light. What I'm seeing is that dark tetrad narcissists are more Darth Vader than Dalek, just scary masks and heavy breathing with broken people inside. It's disturbing, yes. Anakin is one messed up guy. And what appeared to be a mask was actually a breathing machine keeping him alive.
And so with the dark tetrad narcissists in my life. They wear masks and greasepaint like clowns or magicians hiding their real selves. To preserve the facade of power and authority. But really just to survive reality. As God shows what's underneath, I see not the terrifying ubermensch, overlords they made themselves out to be. But as Scoob and Shaggy, found, just frail very humans masquerading as omnipotent gods.
Dark tetrad narcissists may run around like Daleks yelling "exterminate!" and thinking they have the power to rule the universe. But inside there's no souped-up, superhuman cyborg. It's only a salt shaker with a sniveling, kind of pathetic weakling hiding inside. It's really quite sad and it doesn't get better. The longer they hide in their salt shaker the more soul-shriveled and decrepit they become.
I wrote recently about aging narcissists and how they go from grandiose to covert. If they can't be the hottest, biggest, most important, most powerful thing in the room they'll be the most pitiful. And aging alone zaps resources when you're not trying to maintain a facade a superiority. When you are, well it's one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
I heard it said well on NarcDaily Youtube channel, that with age, they "disintegrate." I can see why. Being always onstage is wearying. And it's debilitating having to constantly contort yourself into something you're not. The more lies they tell, the less they can keep up with who they told what and when.. The corner they painted themselves in shrinks. And having alienated so many, having burnt so many people and bridges, leaves them alone, friendless and cut off from support.
And all the exploiting, excluding, estrangement, setting up camps, triangulating and scapegoating comes back to bite them too. My narcissist parents (all four) routinely stranded me, pitted me against each other, cut me off from help, cut me out of their family and hung me out to dry. Finally, after 60 years, I decided two could play at that game and I cut the cord. Well, I didn't really have much of a family to pull the plug on. But it's the gesture that counts.
And so with healing comes more healing. It really does get easier. The days get brighter and the light stays longer. You begin going from strength to strength instead of that sickening fail spiral. Which you really weren't in but it sure felt like you were. I've always said I'm dyslexic because I can't plan ahead or see a sequence. It's like I'm blinded and can barely see one step ahead. So I can never see that it will most likely be okay. Now I wonder if it's the chaos forced on me by the people who were supposed to keep me safe, that makes me afraid to proceed.
But good news, For the first time ever maybe in my life, I realized I didn't feel afraid. I actually felt safe to put the other foot down, because I could see the path. For once I didn't experience that sinking dread of the ground being pulled away again and me falling, again, into the abyss. I was able to let my self relax a bit in the protection and security that I think has always surrounded me in my now family, but which childhood trauma has never let me trust.
Thanks be to God.
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