Acceptance: The Key to Being Free of a Narcissistic Relationship
I sit cross-legged on my therapist’s couch, my arms tightly crossed against my chest guarding myself against the vulnerability threatening to spill out of me. This time feels different from all the other times — instead of sitting there strong, clear-headed, and confident, I feel small — so small and so vulnerable and it scares me. I hear all of the cracks in my voice as I speak trying to blink away the tears welling up in my eyes as I feel the heat rise within my body, struggling to contain the pain and confusion that has been building up within me, bubbling, ready for eruption.
“I just can’t stop replaying everything over and over again in my head, I just want it to stop”, I say through broken sobs as I feel my breath getting shallower as the heat behind my eyes is almost too unbearable. “What are you trying to find by replaying it?” she asks with a look on her face which tells me that she already knows what I’m about to say. I look at her desperate as I pause, too afraid to say the words aloud, too afraid to get her validation that my worst fears are indeed true. “I think I just need to find something in all of the mess that tells me that it wasn’t all a lie.” At that moment, in those words, I didn’t need her confirmation of my worst fears, I had just confirmed my worst fears as I felt my heart sink at the realization that absolutely none of it was real, and that no matter how many times I replayed every episode on repeat in my head, I won’t be able to unsee the holes and the cracks, and I won’t be able to rewrite a story that was permanently etched in the history books of my life.
I can still recall the torturous yet glorious twist of fate that brought his curtain crashing down, leaving me staring into the distorted face of the unmasked actor behind the perfect façade, illuminating truths that would have otherwise never have become known. The truth closed in on me as I crumbled to the floor, the clothes on my back feeling like the weight of the world as I gasped trying to catch my breath. The truth spiraled in and around me ripping down the walls of my fantasy world leaving me exposed, unable to hide from the truth that I had chosen to ignore. The light was so bright that I couldn’t help but turn my gaze away, trying so desperately to put the curtain back up in a feeble attempt to conceal what I couldn’t bear to see, searching for a band-aid to hold us together although we were far beyond repair. No matter how hard I tried, there was no escaping the truth as everywhere I turned the light illuminated the brokenness and the ugliness that I had redecorated in my mind as a means to survive.
It’s a unique sense of grief, the loss of a narcissistic relationship — it’s almost indescribable. There are some days where the grief creeps up on me like a thief in the night, shattering the pieces of myself that I have slowly started to collect and put back together. Sometimes I wake up with my heart pounding and my mind racing as missing pieces of the puzzle come together to depict the truth behind all of his closeted lies. Those nights I lay there for what feels like an eternity, staring at the clock watching my time tick by, wondering when it will all stop.
Struggling to escape the smoke that blinded me and the mirrors that reflected back what he wanted me to see, the flashbacks and echoes lurk at every corner like ghosts that can’t be exorcised.
Like a song stuck on repeat, my mind doesn’t stop replaying every moment of our relationship over and over again while I remain paused, suspended in a daze of disillusionment trying to bridge the gap between what was real and what was nothing more than my own twisted fantasy. The brighter the light becomes, the more questions remain unanswered as gaping holes in the puzzle and gaping holes in his façade are all that I can see, but I fear what I do not know, I fear the extent of the truth which lurks in the shadows threatening to shatter the last pieces of me which remain intact.
As the battle drew to a close he walked off unscathed, unphased, and with pieces of me that he took, destroyed, and callously discarded. Like a soldier returning from battle, I am left scarred, weak, and forever changed, consumed by the gaping hole where trust, hope, and innocence once lived. I have nothing but distorted memories as I silently mourn the loss of a relationship that was nothing more than a captivating illusion, the reconciliation the hardest part of the battle as I grieve the love lost to a version of a person that never truly existed.
The truth felt like a pebble that sent ripples across the surface of my seemingly still lake, the disturbance unsettling every aspect of my being, invalidating my entire experience. When the calm that followed the storm had been restored, clarity enveloped me — I may have been just another supporting character in his ever-revolving masquerade, but that doesn’t mean that I was living a lie. I loved him, I may look back one day and decide that it wasn’t love, but for now, it is my truth. I saw the beauty in him even when he made it difficult for me to see any beauty at all. I gave that relationship every piece of me even when I felt as if the last bit of life was being squeezed out of me. Despite the darkness, I had hope. Despite the pain, I showed up and I fought for us. Despite the disappointment, I loved. It wasn’t a lie for me even if the relationship itself was built upon nothing other than smoke and mirrors.
As I lay in the covers of darkness, listening to the ticking of the clock, I count my fingers to remind myself that this is only but a dream.
In the moments where it feels as if the weight of the truth is suffocating me, I silently whisper to myself, “I accept, I accept, I accept”, as a reminder that no amount of rumination will undo the past. Acceptance being the only key to being free, slowly, little by little I feel the shackles loosen as I release the self-imposed imprisonment keeping me stuck in a world that keeps on turning while I remain paused.
“I accept, I accept, I accept”, remains my mantra as the flashbacks and echoes drift in and out of my awareness. I cannot change the past but I don’t have to allow it to define my future. What has happened has happened, but what I have learned from those things is pure gold. There are days when my mind and my heart long for closure, the dark days when the ghosts haunt me as I struggle to focus on anything other than the masquerade that stole my innocence, but closure is an internal journey that requires no outside participation. The truth lies only in actions, not in the bottomless pit of empty words. There will be things that I will never know, there will be truths that will forever remain hidden, and it feels as if I will struggle with the disillusionment of reality versus fantasy for the rest of eternity; but there is no carefully constructed answer that could justify the unjustifiable, heal the scars that the eye cannot see, or return the innocence that was ripped out of me. “I accept, I accept, I accept”, I silently whisper as the sun beams down, returning warmth to the stillness of my frozen body.
In the darkest days of the struggle, it seems as if there is no justice at all as I sit in my sadness and pain trying to make sense of the tornado that destroyed me. It seems unfair as he walks off to a new life while I try to pick up the pieces of mine, but justice comes not as you imagine it to. Justice comes in the form of that which we take for granted. Justice looks like everything that the narcissist will spend their lifetime trying to feel and have, but always feeling as if it is just outside of their reach. Justice is our ability to empathize, love and feel. Justice is our ability to heal, grow and change. Justice is our ability to trust and to honor the sacredness of life and the people that we share our lives with. These are the things that the narcissist will spend a lifetime chasing, and a lifetime of never achieving. Happiness will forever be just outside of their reach as they live a life of never enough. They will destroy every chance at love and true happiness, and they will spend a lifetime living within an illusion, trying to escape themselves blaming everyone and the entire world for all of the pain that they feel but pretend doesn’t exist. Justice comes not in the form expected, but in a form much more surreal as acceptance frees us from the illusion that captivated us.
Knowing the truth doesn’t make accepting it any easier. The derangement of such an experience left me questioning my own sanity as I faced the demons that haunted me and kept me in captivity. I was willing to carry the weight of the relationship for an eternity, but the behavior of another is not a reflection of me, just an illumination of their struggles and ominously dark inner worlds which is their burden alone to bear. As I allowed myself to release the burden of responsibility that weighed me down, it was as if I was jolted back to life, finally able to breathe freely as I became unpaused in a world that seemed to have meaning and hope again.
Healing is a journey with no real destination, but it is the biggest commitment to self that I can ever make as I shed the shackles that bound me to cycles that only imprisoned me. There is a silent strength in walking away and taking a stand in saying no more. In that moment of standing up and being willing to throw it all away, I made the greatest pledge of all, which is to always, above all else choose myself knowing that I am inherently worthy and that there is nothing in this world that can take that away from me unless I allow it to.
