Making connections

A strange thing happened last night. A little background:

New information. Recently I contacted the last living person who would know anything about my mother (I know little). Turns out she treated me as a competitor, a sibling, withholding attention, taking food off my plate because I had more than she. She was diagnosed postpartum psychosis and institutionalized when I was 5-6.

She was the youngest in a large family, born a few years after the youngest sibling. I could see how I was a competitor. So, that added some detail t the mystery. She could have been spoiled, narcissistic. If she cracked due to childbirth (hormones and/or psychological stress) I could see how her being special as a child would connect to having a child.

Two weeks ago. Out of nowhere I wondered: What would that have looked like to me as a child? Immediately I realized: the same way I looked to my ex (who started me on this awakening).

I thought that was a significant realization, that I "channel" my mother as a coping mechanism.

Last night. I was taking inventory. For example, how I should feel fortunate to know what I do. Things turned out well considering me and my "narrative monkey."

Which caused me to consider how my view of myself has changed over the past year. E.g., I always thought my core fear was "abandonment/rejection." Now I see it more specifically as fear of losing stability, security, predictability, control. Apparently, I always confused fear of abandonment with fear of how someone would touch those core fears. I grappled with wanting someone, but not someone who would add instability, insecurity, etc. (This explains why I've always thought the idea of life-like robots as partners would be a huge improvement. Which caused me to think I was schizoid. But, now I understand.).

Similar to two weeks ago, out of nowhere the question arrived: What would have been the worst thing that could have happened to me? What bullet did I dodge? Immediately I realized: the same thing I did to my ex.

Like so many of these moments over the past two years, I was flooded with ironies and questions. (I'll reply about that later.). The weirdest thing was: I stopped feeling something at that moment.

Back to two years ago: I shattered to such an extent I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. That's how bad I realized I was/am. (It was also narcissistic injury. I was probably overreacting.). The past two years have been painful due to digging into myself.

Last night was (unless there's more to come) what I think I've been looking. Everything came together. And I didn't feel much of anything. A wave of emotion came over me, a tear fell, and nothing more. Nothing like what I felt for two years trying to find this.

Those two years were terrible. As I dug I thought what I felt was empathy for what I did to my ex. But, the way it stopped last night, I'm positive it was narcissistic injury. I think I faced the pain that I never wanted to face from childhood. When I got to the final answer, there was nothing left to feel.

It felt weird too. It was like the first time I isolated the false self and narrative, and I felt like I was in an empty room. But, the room didn't feel as empty this time. I woke up this morning and the first thing I recognized was how I felt different. Then I remembered what happened last night.

I didn't realize how habituated I was to the pain I'd been feeling the past two years. It really feels like the false self and the narrative are toned way down. I thought I had accepted who I was with those things. But, now I feel like I know who I am without those things. I know they're still there. But, something feels palpably different.

I hope this lasts.

But...

This makes me more aware of what I did to my ex. Even though the pain I thought I felt for her wasn't for her, I now value her even more than I thought I did when I thought I was feeling terrific pain for her.

What I mean: I abandoned her without leaving her. I left it up to her to abandon me. You guys know how Ns will pull back and give the silent treatment. Due to her own nature, she rolled with it. She lived abandoned under the same roof. No fighting. No pulling at me. No passions to confuse what was happening. It was all me. My narrative spun like never before. For months. Just me and narrative. No re-casting the narrative (delusion) based upon the latest fight, or bi-weekly push/pull. Just the same delusion.

Months after she left we spoke. I tried to hoover her (when I realized she had a new boyfriend. I didn't know then it was hoovering.). She told me how I hurt her during those months, and how she needed me badly then. That was when I shattered. I'd been waiting to hear that the whole time. And now it was too late. The narrative wasn't prepared for this. It was all me. I couldn't spin it any other way.

She accepted updates from me over the next two years. I took that as opportunities to tell her how sorry I was, based upon what more I knew. And it was tremendous pain each time. I now realize the pain was narcissistic injury. Talk to her was therapy.

Nobody else would have stayed as long as she did. Nobody would have told me as honestly as she did (absent attack or anger) how I made her feel. And nobody would have patiently accepted my updates, being my therapist, when I had no idea what I was even feeling or saying.

That's what's weird.

I feel like I "un-shattered" last night the same way I shattered. It was front-loaded with pain, back-loaded with data. I got the answer, the pain is gone, and I'm left wondering what I felt for her when everything I felt wasn't about her.

And then I realize she was one of a million and I never knew it.

Her nature (character, traits, whatever) allowed for the perfect storm for me to face myself. I never valued that nature because I was wrapped up in myself. I showed that nature the mother who warped me. I tortured that nature with the things I feared most. And I used that nature as my psychologist.

All that came to me last night! At the very same time the feelings I thought I had for her disappeared.

I don't know what to feel. It's like a loss, the value of which I didn't recognize. I feel shame or regret for treating not just anyone the way I did -- but the only one who was uniquely qualified to do what she did -- and what I needed.

I would normally feel heartbroken with all this "match made in heaven" coincidence. (My mind may be habituated into making reality fit that narrative. Maybe I'm expressing it the way I would normally try to make it sound.). It would normally play into the "abandonment/rejection" narrative. But it's not. Probably because I realized that wasn't my core fear.

It's weird because this is nothing like how I normally feel. And not knowing how to feel is made stranger when I consider how what I lost was more valuable than what I knew.

The whole two years has been like playing a song backwards. I think it's been this Beatles song:

The deeper you go, the higher you fly
The higher you fly, the deeper you go
Your inside is out, and your outside is in
Your outside is in, and your inside is out
Everybody's got something to hide -- except for me and my monkey

(PS. I know that was long. Remember: I could have been borderline. One solid paragraph. ).

Now the weird stuff.

Is it normal to take two weeks to make the connection I made? When I realized I treated my ex the way my mother treated me (when I was an infant/young child), why did it take two weeks for me to realize I affected my ex in the same areas as my core fears (which come from how my mother treated me)?

And then, how could I affect someone in the areas which are my core fears without feeling what they feel?

And, how could I feel overwhelming, chronic emotional pain for what I was learning about myself, and nothing for the person I affected and who sent me down this path in such a perfect manner that the chances of me being here right now, knowing what I do about myself, are something like 1:1,000,000.

I think it just became clear to me what not having empathy means. I've always understood it in little things. But this is stuff that comes back to me Karma-like.

The past two years has been ironies like this over and over.

Like, realizing she wanted me the whole time my narrative was spinning into enormous proportions.

Or, how I she didn't give into my expressions of pain -- and if she had, I wouldn't have reached this point.

There's more. I can't think of them at the moment.

I'm sure the silence has nothing to do with the content of what I said. And yet I sit here hitting refresh every 30 seconds.

Hello! You're not talking to yourself, we're reading your posts! I haven't had a chance to really read them in depth yet. It is crap when nobody answers, though, but it doesn't mean that no-one is relating or finding them interesting.

Take that beak off, it's so last season.

bitty wrote:Take that beak off, it's so last season.

A post as you've written, requires a considered response, it will come, mine will come later.

I would love to help you out and give a response to help you the way that you helped me.
However I am new to this condition and I don't understand the complexities of it. What you have written is like reading a different language and I wouldn't know how to give a adequate response.
Either it is just to intelligent for me or it needs to be made more simple and clearer. I hope that comment doesn't offend you.

In terms of the narrative about your ex, I really wish to understand because I hurt somebody very badly as well. And the whole empathy thing bothers me as well so It is a post I would like to engage with.

Truth, so have I got this right? You completely realised and appreciated all that your ex had done for you, and enabled you to do for yourself, but in the same moment you also realised that you didn't care about her, and couldn't feel her emotional pain, only your own? (No judgement there at all.)

I know what you mean about hitting that 'real' realisation of the lack of empathy. I had a moment of that absolute realisation, once. Unlike you, though, it didn't take me on to anything else.

But you seem to have progressed well beyond that. It sounds as though you've faced the space inside yourself, and been able to step away from your narcissism. That must be peaceful for you, and perhaps it's something that can last for you now that it's happened.

Your experience sounds like a very good thing for you, and something for you to build on.

TTL,

Man, that must have been a full moon last night alright, lol. <<HOW-OWL-oooooh>>

It took a while to digest that long post.

It doesn't matter how long or how quickly one can connect the dots. Your brain has been making these connections on a subconscious level for the last two years because it's been so focused on the key issue of your core fears. It's just that you didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle until recently. It took the last piece, the recent info about your mother, to suddenly make all the other pieces fall into place.

Sometimes a major realization can seem anti-climactic emotionally. Now that things make sense, one can move on in a way.

My 2 cents' worth here, if you want 'em. Your ex must have known or seen something in you, maybe your True Self? along with the front you presented on a daily basis. She must have also sensed what your demons were and knew you were strong enough to grapple with them, something that not a lot of ppl, disordered or not, are willing to face down.

The empty room in your mind opens up possibilities that the inner narrative didn't permit all those years.

Possibilities, wow.