I wrote the following nine months after the p formerly in my life was arrested. I was asked on another thread, was there a moment you ‘knew’? Knew that you would be okay. Knew it was okay to let him go.
Yes and no. In those first heady days of freedom, every moment was filled with knowing I was okay. And every moment was filled with the fear I would never get through the pain to find the light of love within me. I had to make a choice. Had to decide — what do I want more of. Lies and deciet. Truth and harmony.
I wanted to share this piece with you because it speaks to the power of one word to release us from fearing life without them so that we can surrender and fall in love with life within us.
As night settled into its soggy wet blanket, the pooch and I went for a walk. The rain beat a sibilant hiss upon the shiny black road, the streetlights glowed iridescently, casting golden orbs of light, punctuating holes into the dark shadows of the night. I was wrapped in the misty blanket of a rainy evening, my skin moistened by the water-laden air, my breath a frosty vapor leading me silently forward. The pooch pranced happily by my side, her tail a constant metronome displaying the tempo of her happiness as we journeyed forth into the dark.
It was a mystical, magical evening. A night for quiet thoughts that drifted through my mind as effortlessly as the raindrops falling one-by-one from the pearl clad branches all around me.
I thought of love found and love lost and moving on. Of new relationships and old. New found love and love that never fulfills its promise of growing old beside me. Of promises made and promises broken. Journeys taken and voyages lost because the voyageur could not see by the light of the moon and lost his way among the stars. And I thought of my brother to whom I had never said good-bye and the P to whom good-bye was just another word for the door is always open until I say so.
For such a little word, good-bye carries a mighty wallop.
Good-bye can mean, see you in a while, or see you in a year. It can carry us into the night on the hope of tomorrow or it can sweep all hope away as we look back and see there will never be a next time, another day, or a new tomorrow.
For those who have journeyed into the valley of the S or P or N, good-bye is a word fraught with the fear that once spoken it can never be returned. It lays frozen upon our tongues, our minds numb in the fear it might slide out on a breath of air and change our lives forever. Terrified we might slip, we pack our hopes and dreams into that one little word and stuff our pride and dignity into the cracks of our pain seeping in beneath the door held fast against our fear that he will leave before tomorrow ever dawns. And all the while, we search for the perfect last words that will either make it all right or make him hear us, just this once, before he slithers off into the dark from whence he came.
And as we flounder in the depths of empty words and promises, we pray that there will never be a time to say good-bye but rather, welcome back, I’ve missed you. Spiraling into the darkness of the painfully long good-bye they began when they said, hello, we silently hold onto the word that will set us free and stumble through the words of begging them to please not say it.
But in the land of lies, the door we thought we held so firmly closed is always open, no matter how hard we push against it. Eventually, when we have worn ourselves out upon the welcome mat of our desire to be all they will ever need, we must face the reality that we will never have the chance to say our fond farewells. They have already left. Gone in search of new tomorrows. Of some other happily ever after which we never saw coming.
In their passing, we are left holding the shreds of our battered hearts in the basket of our dreams, frozen in time. Alone, forlorn, we whisper, good-bye, into the empty space that lays before us, hoping they will hear the soft promise of our hopes they will find out there, that which they could never find in us. We peer into the darkness of the lengthening shadows, our tears puddling around our feet, forming a river into which we fall, in fear of drowning as we cry out for one last chance to say good-bye.
Good-bye. It’s such a little word but it keeps us stuck on the dream of wanting them back so that we can have the last word that will close forever the door to our hearts they so easily open.
In the end, the best good-bye is the quiet hello we whisper within our hearts as we pick at the scab of our wounds that never seem to heal as long as they keep walking through the door to our dreams. Good-bye lies. Hello truth. Welcome back to me.
In our good-byes that are never spoken we will never find the key that will unlock the secret door to their understanding. It resides somewhere in the dark, beyond the edges of the light. But, beneath the scabby, jagged-edge scar of our disbelief, new skin is forming with our welcome home. If we leave it alone long enough to heal from the inside out, we will understand that he could never hear our good-bye. He could never cherish our hearts because he was always and forever, a figment of our imaginations. He was never true.
In our awakening to the light of a new tomorrow without him we discover, it was only the darkness of being without him we feared. And without him, we have nothing to fear.
In seeing the gift of his departure in the light of a new day dawning, we lift our heads and see, the sun is shining. As it beckons, we step into the light of finally knowing, the only way to say good- bye to what never was, is to accept it never will be.
slimone – We are on the same page…you get exactly what I am saying….down to a T.
shabby we didnt know a different way then. I believe surviving our past and learning the truth will set us on a whole new realm. We know alot more than most people will ever know – we have been vaccinated~!
Thank you,
I think the lack of “good-bye” was a killer. Just more to prove I meant nothing to him. It is nice to know I am not the only one who feels this way.
I have to comment on this goodbye talk.
After I separated from the LIE (2 yrs ago … I was devastated and a mess which left the door open for him to walk back in after a yr of leaving me on my own), I met a man online in the UK who I believe was a P also. I must have been alert to it by then because I remember thinking ‘something isn’t right here’.
He flipped out one day when I typed Goodbye. I asked what was wrong with it. He said ‘It is too final – it means that is it forever and you will never come back. So say see ya later instead. Or ciao. Or catch you later but never say goodbye until you mean it.’
I had never heard of this association before so it confused the heck out of me. I did end up saying a very definite goodbye a few weeks later when he tried pressuring me for cam sex (Ha! As if! I am a lights out gal at the best of times – there is no way I want a digital record of that non spectator sport floating around the web for posterity!!) It struck me as really strange though – the whole association of goodbye meaning forever.
I was reading a book entitled ‘Live the life you love and stop just getting by’ and read the following quote (at least I THINK it came from this book! Yes it did 🙂
“When considering whether or not you will regret or not regret something, don’t bother considering whether other people will approve or not. You only need to worry about one opinion – YIFY> Yourself in Five Years. If you say yes – what will yourself in five years say? Will you be happy about the decision or kicking your own backside?”
It really struck me – that question. I think if I were asked it back then I would perhaps have cut my losses a little earlier. A LOT earlier had I known how long it would take to get out. But maybe I would have made excuses for his behaviour. Maybe I would have betted on potential rather than the truth I could see in front of me. Maybe I would have still had my rose coloured glasses on. This is an innoculation I could have done without. I have a sensitive constitution at the best of times and this just knocked the hell out of me after a lifetime of others kicking my soul around. I was well primed for his arrival and devouring of me.
polly, I have also read similar concepts to the YIFY, it’s a great idea, I’m glad you brought it up – because I had forgotten about it. I was always trying to just get through each day, not really looking at myself and what I was doing… or what my goals were.
This is a beautifully written, gut-wrenchingly true article.
Not long ago I discovered Lovefraud, and I am astounded every single day when I read the articles on here. I have been living in this 30 year hell (which is ending in divorce, finally) with a Narcissistic S husband. I have always felt so utterly ALONE, like NO ONE could possibly understand what I am going through, there is no one to talk to, no one who will understand, this is so abnormal, what is wrong with me, what is happening, etc etc etc. Then I found Lovefraud, and this article, as well as SO many others, explain EXACTLY what I am feeling and have gone through, all these people who are blogging have gone through the same horrible feelings, everyone is sharing and learning, and I am so thankful for this site and for all these outstanding articles and people who have survived and are reaching out to each other. It is astonishing to me how many people have been through all these things, I thought I was alone, and I am not. Thank you for this article, it just hits home and says what I have never been able to put into words.
First, thank you, Louise, for a beautiful and inspiring post.
Like some of us, for me, goodbye was not clearly about lies and truth. It was about how will I survive without him? He was a leach, and a misery to deal with. But part of me “believed” this was a great love relationship. Even while part of me knew that I was being used and abused. (And of course, he was no help in sorting it out. He made an art form of confusing answers to direct questions.)
Yesterday, looking for a lost file, I stumbled on the history of our relationship I wrote in book form. There was a section in it about the early period, when I talked about feeling like I was different when I was with him. Usually my thinking was dominated by concern for other people’s feelings. But with him, I became incisive and logical, able to see into the future and build clear plans. I also became more adventurous, less bogged down in responsibilities. I felt as though the lights came on in a formerly dark part of my brain.
And I think that this was part of my addiction to him — that he made me feel like I had characteristics that I was formerly weak in. It was exhilarating. I felt like we were two super-people. Of course, there was the other side of the relationship. When I acted or felt in my more typical fashion — the girly girl who loved her Prince Charming — he rejected me and my feelings with contempt. Or if I tried to use the same mentality that he did to arrange our relationship to suit me, instead of just rolling over when he rearranged my life to suit himself, he punished me. So it was all very confusing and painful.
But for a person who always positioned herself as the acquiescent dependent in relationships (even though I was usually paying the bills and managing all the practical details for my husbands and partners), this illumination of the dark side of my brain, however occasional and fleeting, was something that was intoxicating and seemingly something I could only do when he gave me a certain type of attention. Without that attention, I was not only the way I had been before — bogged down in emotional and other types of commitments, desperate for acknowledgment and acceptance — but I was also disoriented about this “new” me and whether it was bad, good or even “allowed.”
In other words, I was unmoored. And he became my anchor, who only showed up to ground me when he happened to be in the mood, or when I could give him something fabulous enough to earn a little bit of positive attention.
I’ve always been attracted to larger-than-life characters. I’ve also played around with the idea that, if I appreciated their characteristics, I must also have those characteristics buried somewhere inside me. Otherwise, how could I recognize them? So somewhere in me, I was funny, tough-minded, concerned about my own interests before anyone else’s, able to make big plans and carry them out, etc. I thought that, but I never seemed to find my partners’ characteristics contagious.
What I did catch from the ex sociopath was his dark emotional spectrum. The resentment, the anger, the depression, the self-hatred, the inability to climb out of that hole (unless I was willing to use harder drugs than overwork, chocolate and shopping). His techniques for avoiding that hole were out of the question. I wasn’t going to recruit new sex partners weekly. Or find someone to beat up to make myself feel like less of a failure. Or going around telling self-aggrandizing stories to prey on the credulity of fools who would believe them. Or amuse myself by seeing what I could rip off, or who I could cheat, or whether I could really mess with someone’s head.
It was out of the question, because what he left me with was the knowledge that I wasn’t a super-person. In fact, I was less than I thought I was before I met him. My self-esteem had just drained away, like someone had opened a spiget in my head. I was hopeless, useless. It was like I was paying for that brief illumination on the dark side of my brain with a brown-out across the whole thing.
Saying goodbye to him meant saying good-bye to that stubborn hope that had endured for five miserable years that that the magic could happen again. That we would connect as two larger-than-life people and walk the earth together as masters of the universe. And he encouraged that hopeful grandiosity with shared fantasies of how we would live someday.
I should be embarrassed to admit all this. And I would have been a couple of years ago. But now — except for some regrets about dreadful things I did in the thrall of these dreams — it just looks sort of cute. Because miserable as most of it was, and rotten a surrogate parent as he was, I regard it now as the toddler stage of growing up, at least on that dark side of my character. I call it dark, but it really was just unilluminated, unused. I wasn’t tough-minded. I wasn’t self-interested in any conscious way. I certainly wasn’t very funny, except for the ability to laugh at myself because I was such a klutz. No irony. No cynicism. No ability to judge the quality of what was going on around me, except whether it gave me the acceptance and emotional safety I needed.
So for me, saying goodbye to this man has been a long process of developing that side of me, so I don’t need him or anyone like him ever again. Until fairly recently (and it’s been more than five years since he’s gone), I would have attacks of missing him desperately. And then I realized that those attacks always happened when I was stressed and in over my head with responsibilities. I missed having someone stronger and smarter than me to cut through the self-created chaos in my life. Figuring that out helped a lot.
Now when he comes to mind, I see if there’s some bit of wisdom I’m looking for (because he did say some very smart things), or if it’s just a visitation from the last person I loved. Because I haven’t exercised that capacity in a romantic sense since him. And I think sometimes that mental muscle just flexes to let me know it’s still there and that I still have the capacity for intimacy. But not with him, not anymore. I find myself saying to the air, “I don’t need you anymore.”
And increasingly, that’s true. Earlier this month, it was my birthday, 11 years since I met him, 5 1/2 years since I got him out of my life. When I met him I was a super-nice, very usable woman drowning in responsibilities to take care of everyone in my world. When I threw him out, I was drained and suicidal, no longer even able to take care of myself. Now, well now, I’m changed beyond recognition.
Yesterday, one of my clients said, “We want you to do this thing.” And I responded, “I don’t work that way. It will cost you four time more to do what you’re suggesting, but you’ll get something a lot better.” They said, “No we want you to do it the way we’re asking.” I said, “Sorry, I don’t work like that.” Today, they told me “Do it your way.”
Never would have happened before. Just the thought of it would have made me a quivering mass of “Oh, no, what will they think of me? They won’t like me anymore.” Did I thank the ex-S? Nah. It was in me all the time. I just had to go through all that misery with him, and the fascinating work of getting over him, to turn the lights on myself. Not to make me a super-person, just to make me whole, something I never was before.
For me, that’s when I say goodbye. That’s when I think I don’t need him anymore.
Kathleen,
I love how you admit to your inner-P. I think you are a super-person, just not a P because you feel empathy.
I’m the same way, but I think part of it is adrenalin addiction.
Today and yesterday I had chocolate. It makes me feel euphoric. But it doesn’t change reality, once I come down I still have to face my life.
Please continue to inspire us with your inspirations. I want to grow up.
Heavenbound,
You write of him needing to leave you… I used to wish for that everyday… wish I’d wake up and he’d be gone — because I couldn’t do it or at least do it for long… I’d break-up or throw him out only to bring him back… but 2 weeks ago he left…(I have nothing left for him to take) and I haven’t spoken to him…. But I’m still fighting my need of him…
Kathleen,
OMG… some of the things you write about like the things you did… the things I did to “please” him make me sick…
Then you said this: “When I met him I was a super-nice, very usable woman drowning in responsibilities to take care of everyone in my world. When I threw him out, I was drained and suicidal, no longer even able to take care of myself.”
That is me… but it hasn’t been 5 years it’s been 2 weeks and I feel totally worthless and I have lost everything in my life. How did you pull through? How did you rebuild? I just want to disappear and fade away…
Heavenbound,
You wrote “I feel totally worthless and I have lost everything in my life. How did you pull through? How did you rebuild? I just want to disappear and fade away””
If you’re only two weeks into this, the first big challenge is to understand what happened (that you were targeted by a predator) and then to acknowledge your feelings and your right to feel that way.
That doesn’t happen overnight. The earliest part of recovery is the worst, and that’s where you are right now. So if you feel like total crap — in pain, hating yourself, unable to figure out the meaning of any of it, depressed, immobilized, unable to stop thinking about it — that’s normal for this stage. This person has been messing with your life, and more importantly, your head.
So maybe, it might help to understand that you’re in process. And where you are right now is part of a big learning that will leave you stronger, more aware, more able, mentally healthier, more joyous and creative than you’ve ever been in your life. It’s a path and you’re at the beginning of it. But you’re taking steps. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to heal and take back your life.
If you want my perspective on healing, click on my name on the column on the left hand side of this page, and you’ll see the articles I’ve written about the path. Reading the first few might be helpful to you now, just to get some perspective on what you’re going through.
But there are lots of great articles here. Wander around the archive. Read whatever looks interesting, and don’t bother with all the comments below right now.
And just talk with us. Tell your story. Talk about how you feel, and what’s going on in your life now. Don’t worry about what you sound like, or whether you should be different than you are. We all go through the same stuff. There are people here who are at every stage of healing. You’ll get support and, if you want it, advice. This is a fantastic community, and we’re all about one thing. Getting through this recovery process and taking our lives back.
Congratulations on his being gone. Whether you threw him out or he walked away. It’s a really good thing. And now you’re going to start getting better.
A big hug —
Kathy