Narc Attacks

A few of my blogger friends are currently under attack from the Narcs in their life and as a result I've spent some time today thinking about and remembering what that felt like.

It's been a long time since I had to endure the full-frontal assaults.  I disconnected long enough ago from the NFOO that we don't have many paths that cross anymore on a regular basis (i.e. I don't work with people who plan BBQs with the N's,) and what brief small town encounters we do have are largely non-events because I could give zero fucks about them.  That's right, you heard that right; how many fucks do I give?  Zero.

 My Narcs are the kind that really don't want to work too hard, you see?  They came at me fast and furious for the first year, but my reactions at that time were soft and shaky and they no doubt knew that if they kept it up long enough, I'd break.  Go back to my lifetime long pattern of giving in.

If they were betting people, I can assure you that that they went all in on my coming crawling back, repentant, to the hearth of the Clan.

Losers, then.

But after it became apparent that I was out, truly out, and that their old bag of tricks wasn't pulling me out of the hat, well.  They quit.  Largely.
A couple of half-hearted attempts were made, primarily when there was an out of the ordinary happening that they felt they could use: NM was hospitalized.  They called.  (And I went, something that I don't regret as it was a complete and total validation of the rightness of my decision to leave in the first place.)  But really, each of the random attempts to reconnect on their part were nothing more than a feeler.  As soon as they realized that I still wasn't going back to the old ways of game playing, well, they quit again.  Which I'm sure works out well for them: I'm a lot easier to blame when I'm not there being all pesky with my truth-telling.

Really, in the last few years, these attempts have seemed laughable to me.  They were pathetic stabs in the dark.  Nothing more.  They wanted the old, usable me.  They didn't want the new and improved version and they were just so fucking befuddled when they finally figured out that the version of Vanci they were looking for didn't exist anymore.  It was like watching the emotional equivalent of a Three Stooges routine where they're trapped in a dark room and trying to find the door.  They trip over everything, especially themselves.

But at the beginning, when every knock on the door, every phone call signaled another assault, I was terrified.  It's scary to have another human being stomp all over your safe places!  Especially when this safe place that you've so carefully created with boundaries and walls and double-chained and barred locked doors has taken you your entire lifetime to build and it's the only safe place you've ever been able to create for yourself.  And it cost buckets of blood just to build it.

And it's confusing to have to go to such lengths to keep out people who've spent their entire lives convincing you that this pain they're delivering on a daily basis isn't actually pain; that you don't know what you feel, that you just need to listen to them because they know what's better for you than you do and that if this thing they're giving you and calling love really feels like awfulness, well that's because there's something wrong with you and it's your fault anyway.

Everyone wants to be loved by their parents.  Everyone.

It's a hard thing to do, realizing that they don't love.  I didn't forget the 'us.'  They don't love. Period.

They spend forever teaching us that we are unlovable, that we are the reason that their love doesn't work, that we are responsible for the bad and never provide the good, that it is our job to provide in the first place and that we have failed before we start.

But it doesn't really have anything to do with us anyway, ever.
It's about them.

They can't love, or they won't love.  Either way, they don't love.

So take heart, dear friends.
In creating safety for ourselves and learning what we need, that we have a right to want it and taking action to ensure it, we are doing right by ourselves.

I've said to my DD's and some of the young ladies that I mentor often that I know this to be absolute truth:  I ALWAYS HAVE A RIGHT TO DEFEND MYSELF.  Always.
And so do you.

Sending lots of pixie dust into the ACoNverse tonight.

Love,
Vanci