Time Erodes the Narcissist’s Spell, but the Trauma Response Remains
Emotional memory fades with time while the body remembers forever
I used to write about him. When it first happened, I tentatively placed my trembling hands on the keys and started talking about what happened. I did it for clarity and catharsis. I did it to process and discover and make sense out of the madness that followed the discard. It was early summer 2019. Isn’t that when everything began to go dark?
Some of my first stories went viral (read The Way They Leave You Tells You Everything). I think it was because of the catastrophic pain that I poured into the truth that I so desperately needed to share. Friends and family could not understand what was happening to me and why I was so completely annihilated. They were repulsed at my, epic collapse when they thought I should be celebrating the liberation from such a reckless and dangerous predator. I did not have the words or the knowledge at that time to explain things like trauma bonding and shared fantasies and entrainment and enmeshment. I didn’t know about adrenal failure and trauma induced PTSD and acute panic which became my post discard diagnosis. It was as if I had been in a coma, brainwashed and face down in the Kool-Aid and in desperate need of re-programming and a return to a reality that had moved…
