It’s Not You, It’s Me

One thing I have learned during my journey of recovery from narcissistic abuse is that after we do all of our research on the narcissist, their personality, their behaviors, and what motivates them to behave the way they do, we then have to take a long hard look at ourselves, preferably in therapy, to understand why we were the targets of a narcissist.

I started out thinking I was going to be writing about all of the horrible things my narcissistic ex-husband did to me. Things like, “Look how bad my life was”, and how it was all his fault. He did this to me and he did that to me, can you believe what I went through? I was a victim in every sense of the word. But then I realized that it really wasn’t about him at all. In fact, it was ALL about me. My incessant desire to fulfill my dream of having a night and shining armor come to save me instead of the reality that no one could save me but me. My unresolved issues with being molested as a child and looking for a man to rescue me and make me whole. My need for attention that I didn’t get from a mother who didn’t like to be touched by her daughter. My lack of understanding of who I was and looking for someone else to validate my sheer existence. Instead, I had to face the hard cold truth: that I put myself through all of this. I did this to myself. I allowed this to happen to me. And most importantly, that I am not a victim.

Like many women, all I ever wanted was to be the best mother and wife that I could be. It was all I dreamt about as a child because that’s the home environment that I grew up in. My parents were married for 30 years until my father died of cancer. I wanted to marry a loving man and raise a family together, just like my mother and father. But no one told me what the cost would be of giving all of me to the point of losing sight (that is if I ever had sight in the first place) of who I really was. Well, I am finally learning that now, who I really am, that is. Looking back I wouldn’t change a thing believe it or not. I now know that my experiences are what brought me to where I am today.

My favorite saying was, “It’s my turn now!” But no matter how many times I repeated it, it wasn’t manifesting. I started saying it after we sent our first of three boys off to college. One down, three to go, I thought. However, I quickly learned that children never “leave”. They may graduate, move out, get a job and a girlfriend, but they never stop being children who need their mother in more ways than we could ever imagine. From the precious bundles of joy that we bring home from the hospital to the beautiful young people that we dote over with pride, we may never be prepared for what life will bring in between. On top of that, marriage was no walk in the park. Marriage is HARD work. Of course, I would have never believed it even if someone had told me that before hand. “How can it be hard work to spend the rest of my life with the man of my dreams?” I would have rebutted. Especially since I met the love of my life just before I turned 18 during my freshman year of college. I immediately fell head over heels for this tall, handsome basketball player. He was a perfect match to the man of my dreams that I had envisioned my entire young life. For that reason, no obstacle was too big, no mountain was too high, no sacrifice was too risky if it meant turning my fantasy into reality. I was determined for him to be THE ONE. And from that point on, I fell into the trap of living in a fantasy world. My dream was more important than my reality. And the reality was, I was blinded by love and didn’t realize that I was setting myself up for a long hard fall back down to earth.

But today, I can finally say, It’s my turn!! I finally realize what that actually means. It’s my turn to make myself whole. It’s my turn to fill the voids that were created in my childhood that I thought were someone else’s problem to solve. It’s my turn to be the person that God intended for me to be. And it starts with me. I realized that going forward I had to own my choices, to face my insecurities and my faults. There is no one left to please but God. After all, HE brought me through the mess of a life that I had created. That is the least I could do. It is time to be bold, deliberate, in finding my peace and protecting it. Time to make up for lost time. No time for pussyfooting around, as my dad used to say. Go big or go home. And as Morris Day and the Time said so eloquently, “You ain’t gotta go home but you gotta get the hell outta here!”

I made big moves and fast! It felt so exhilarating, and scary as hell. But it just felt right, like God was leading me the entire way. Leading me out of my storm and into the light. Stepping out on faith was a phrase I never really understood until I actually did it. Of course, I always said that I was “stepping out on faith”, like when I got married I prayed, “Lord, I’m stepping out on faith, please bless this marriage.” But internally what I was really saying was, “Lord, this is who I am going to marry whether you like it or not, so please don’t ruin it for me.” I know, sounds horrible, but if I’m going to own my faults, that would be the first one. How many times do we pray to God for his blessing when in reality we are praying for him to just give us what we want, not what HE wants for us. Well, that was me. And there were many ore of those prayer to come. Lord, please let all of the obstacles that you are making clear to me disappear. Lord, please let me change him so that we can live happily ever after. Lord, please let me do all of these horrible sinful things to keep my marriage and bless me for doing it in the end. Well, if I would have really been listening to God, I would have heard all of the NO’s that he responded with. But that wasn’t an option. I wanted it my way, not His way. “How did that turn out for me?” I ask myself. All I can say is: Hindsight is 20/20.

But thank GOD that He did not give up on me! He waited patiently for me to try to do it my way. That was probably so hard for Him, but what was He going to do? I guess He knew I would come around some day. But boy, I sure wished I had come around sooner. Damn that free will! But my time has finally come! I have arrived! And I can honestly say that I am thankful for everything I went through that brought me he today. As another familiar saying goes, you don’t know how far you’ve come unless you know where you have been.

Now that I know how far I have come, I’m so excited about where I am going. And to make sure I get there, wherever that is, I wanted to arrive in style. So in true spontaneously-me fashion, I cut off all my hair, left everything and moved to another state and drum roll please… I bought a convertible! Hey, in case you haven’t noticed by now I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl. Don’t get me wrong, the exterior things are the easiest to change. Of course, it’s just a car and it’s just a new hairstyle. But they all represent the new me, at least the beginning of who I truly believe I was meant to be. The beginning of freedom of choice, my choice to be me. It represents freedom. Freedom to let my hair fly wildly in the wind and to take things as fast or slow as I please. It represents healing. Healing from giving more of myself than I had to give and getting little in return. Healing from the disappointment that my dream was not my reality. And the reclaiming of my “self”. And this time singing, Jesus take the Wheel!