I guess you could say I’m a victim of my own terminal naivety and hopefulness, even when none is warranted. How else could you explain my repeated attempts to make peace, even after everything that has been done to me? Is there any other way to explain why I would try to even co-exist with people who actively and with malice aforethought planned harm on me?
I’m generally not a stupid person. Truly. But when you are trying to move forward in positivity, it becomes easy to convince yourself that a positive outlook requires forgiveness and ease between all involved. Forgiveness, of course, is a very good thing. But co-existence, peace, ease … You can’t have this with everyone. You just can’t. Some people are simply evil, and opening yourself up to them invites nothing but pain.
I’m ashamed to say I did this. It was for all the right reasons: moving on, closure, a positive outlook … Whatever label you’d like to slap on it, they all mean the same. But I overlooked one major detail: you can’t make nice with people with no heart, no empathy, nothing inside.
I have spent months crying to my therapist that I keep hitting a wall in my healing and telling her how frustrated I am by the memories that keep surfacing. I begged her to help me figure out why I’m caught in a loop. The answer is not only painfully clear but comes courtesy of the one who deliberately caused all my pain, for no other reason than their own amusement.
See, that’s what narcissists do. They play with their victims, take what they will, and then leave them twisting in the wind. Mine went above and beyond, by fracturing my family. I have to continue to deal with them until my children grow up since they wormed their way inside my marriage and took my ex-spouse. The children were one of my reasons for trying to at least be civil.
But the narcissist will never stop if they have an opening. So my attempts at peace just opened the door for more abuse, more reminders, more pain both new and old. And when I finally reach my limit and react, and I have a few times, the narcissist points the finger at me and tells me I’m the one at fault. But this time, they did so with a quote that inadvertently unlocked the chains I had unwittingly put back on myself:
“I don’t see how we can talk. My real friends don’t say such things to me.”
“Such things” being that I had the audacity to remind the narcissist of what they had done to me.
But, you know what?
That’s some true wisdom.
Real friends don’t try to cause harm.
Real friends don’t steal spouses.
Real friends don’t fracture families for their own amusement.
Real friends don’t play God with others’ lives to cure their own terminal boredom.
Real friends don’t lie repeatedly.
Real friends don’t gaslight.
I could go on and on.
But mostly, real friends don’t do what you did.
But that’s because you were never a real friend. So thank you for the truth bomb you didn’t realize you were giving me.
I’m now set free from my imagined obligation to keep the peace with someone who deserves no peace from me.
momswhokeepsecrets 