7 weeks after breaking up with a Narcissist …

I feel good.

I’ve been feeling increasingly better.

I’m back to my fulfilling middle class mediocre single life. (Capitalism is amazing in how it just makes everything one does seem not enough, but that’s a topic for another conversation)

A confession, things of course haven’t been as clean as how it is made out to be here. I did sleep with a former lover — the one who is the balm who always knows how to sooth all my wounds — and them told the narcissist that I had gone back to a former lover, so yes, it is 100 percent over. I did this because I wanted to make sure that he would not want to come back to me.

I’m so glad that I’m rid of him. As I mentioned, in the good moments, he knew how to create magic. But the totality of the relationship was about reducing me. The words that he use casually, and the degrading sex. Yes, I’m finally calling a spade a spade. It was degrading. Any act that is not vanilla that is done without consent is an act of degradation and/or abuse.

“If I don’t do it with you, then who else can I do it with?”
“You’re my partner, and I want this with you…”

And then what would follow. His sheer strength would make it impossible for me to overpower him. So then “go along, to get along”, and convince myself that all this was within the realm of making love. Because yes, he told me he loved me.

None of what happened I could have prevented altogether. I’m just glad I fished myself out early — the moment I could smell the smoke. Don’t wait until one is engulfed in flames. The recovery would be so much more painful then …

Don’t seek out agreement from anyone. You may get it, but you may also get people — women — giving you negative comments like “Oh, you’re so much trouble”. Or, they would try to justify his actions, saying “Maybe you didn’t give him clear enough signals that you don’t want it like that”.

Right. Yes, I’ve been told these. In fact, it was said to me at a dinner party not longer than 15 hours ago. I blocked out the voices, stood in my power, and trusted my intuition. Sadly, women — seemingly modern women — are one-half of the keepers of the patriarchy, being complicit in raising these men.

Ultimately, there will be pain. It’s a choice — long term pain, or short term pain.

The long terms pain is to let oneself be engulfed in the flames breathed onto you by another, and to watch yourself eventually be withered away — all for the brief interludes of the highs when he is oh so good to you. The pennies, or bread crumbs flung your way. We all deserve better than this.

The short term pain is to walk away. Like the pain of cauterising a wound. You apply the treatment to yourself, hurting yourself while knowing that you are healing yourself. Knowing that you are ridding yourself of your unwanted part, and you will heal again better and stronger, your agency returned to you, your sanity and clarity of thought will return. The smell of freedom will feel sweeter than it has ever been for you — because this time, you had to fight for it.

Choose the latter.