A Good Life

As I wrote once, life becomes a big project of coping with daily-basis problems if you have mental health issues. It's not easy, for it requires changing your mindset - which is an ongoing process with countless failures - and if you come from a toxic environment, e.g., a narcissistic family, like me, you need to undertake serious actions to protect your well-being, sometimes, even in legal aspects.

The most challenging task for me (and the most crucial at the same time) was to find out ways of fighting suicidal thoughts. How to find a reason for living? Where shall I search for my motivation? I was prepared that my resignation notions would never fade or go away. At least, I successfully fought delusions about it.

Sometimes, I just need to let go. Retreat. Give up. I do it because mental health is more important than anything else. Besides, these so 'important' things at that moment usually turn out to be a noisy background only.

Nevertheless, I had this one delusion that improving my accommodation would make me feel better mentally. So I did everything I could to provide myself all those basic things most people don't even think about as they are so obvious: home, good healthcare, nutritious food, proper clothes, vacation... I have even adopted a dog - my big child's dream - and befriended many friendly people. The list of things I delivered is imposing. Yet, at some point, I realized that my mental health was precisely where I started my journey. 

"Wow!" I thought to myself. "Just wow! Nothing has changed, so what's the point of all these efforts?"

Well, there is one. Very expensive psychotherapy taught me that struggling with severe trauma requires having good 'items' I can turn to so that I can rest for a moment before I start another battle. Without them, I am exposed to being re-traumatized. Ergo - I have one more broken Russian Doll to deal with.

The Russian Doll

It's trauma in trauma in another trauma that is hidden in yet another trauma. Getting the first wound or the root cause of your deplorable emotional state reminds you of excavating works ripping off layer after layer. 

The biggest problem is that you must include all these layers and address each one. 

I know everything started with the unsuccessful abortion my non-mother tried to execute on me. I survived it just as I survived a very traumatic birth and her post-partum craziness. However, this knowledge does not let me omit the following ordeal I was subjected to. Every part must be unpacked and treated as if I was taking care of the Russian doll containing many more miniature dolls. I only need to embrace the fact that all of them are broken. 

My current existence is far from imperfect, but my broken Russian dolls make it unbearable as they keep me frozen in the past. The paradox is the better the life, the stronger the trauma affects it. Why? Because my internal self knows this is the safe place and time to start healing.

We, Suicidals

 We are a different species. Nobody can actually understand us; others can only accept we exist, that's it. But honestly, it's enough as lack of acceptance is one of the factors that kill us in the first place.

I don't know how it is to want to live. I just don't. If I had ever known, I forgot when I was five or six.

Why? What for? For this pain? For never-ending torment?

I can never predict when it will hit me. But it's easier to function being aware I'm not free from this burden. It is part of me; it's me, and I cannot decline myself. That's what the costly therapy taught me. 

The very first baby step: accept and love all your parts, even if no one in this world would do that. Sorry - especially when no one would do that. 

I was so tired of searching for the will of life in me that this effort has been consuming strength's remnants I had left. So, I stopped. I simply live the life as it is - day by day.

Real-life Squid Game

If you happened to watch the second episode of the Netflix series "Squid Game," what did you make of the decision of the people who came back to the game? 

I thought: "Losers!"

...and only a few weeks later, I did precisely the same.

Two months ago, I got seriously sick. It was Friday, and I attended an online meeting with two colleagues when I felt un lucid. To make the story short - for the first time in my life, I was SURE I would die, and when I realized I may get better somehow, I didn't expect to recover any soon. Yet, after only eight weeks, I am here again, working, meeting with the very same colleagues, and delivering the documentation. 

When I discovered I got a very high fever, I knew, I was entirely sure that the real reason for my sickness - the result of the immune system's collapse - was my work, the environment I found myself in. And, for the most time, I had promised myself I would never return there. But when they called saying they were waiting, I automatically, as if I was some brainless robot, answered, "OK, I'll be there soon." 

I know this game is dangerous; it can even kill me. But I need money as I will surely die without it. 

So, the "Squid Game" series is about many of us - people who have no choice or whose choices lead them inevitably to a sad end. Because no matter what, the game we play is rigged. 

Meghan, the Queen of narcs

I have been observing this drama for perhaps six or so months. I only started my research regarding Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and everything related to this topic interested me very much. I don't know what was first exactly: some blog posts, or maybe I was checking specific hashtags on Twitter. Nevertheless, I've learned that some people find Meghan Markle an NPD person. So, since I was regularly updated, current events didn't shock me, not as much as they shocked most of the population. I didn't expect she would realize her vicious, though evident for rational-thinking people, plans so soon. Well, I suppose she was simply annoyed by pretending. 

This woman gives me a creep. Sometimes, she makes the exact facial expressions my narc-non-mother did. Yet, such a story helps me with my own past. Why? Because if you witness with your own eyes as one narcissistic wench destroys the monarchy lasting for nearly a Millenium, you are less eager to underestimate the person who was bulldozing your life for decades. 

Every narc has an agenda. Always! You may think that MM planned to become the biggest star in this world, and the British monarchy was just a trampoline to achieve this goal. Probably, she feels the same. Or maybe we are wrong in this matter, and the aim is in a completely different place. 

NPDs (just like suicides, people with anorexia, or people who hurt themselves with sharp objects) don't have a sense of control over their own lives. So, they control others. Imagine how insecure Markle must have been since she needed to take control of one of the most powerful families in the world. Her 'dependency mode' reached the highest level of all, as high as the one of Martin Luter's who dared to confront the Catholic Church, the most potent organization back then. 

And you know what? She feels hurt by fate; she suffers and must recover what she has lost. Many people believe she's calculating, but there wouldn't be a rush if so. Calculating people, e.g., psychopaths, are cold, while MM has a fever. How can I tell that? Well, I was 'raised' by one of her kind.

This story helped me understand two things. First, I finally faced the music and apprehended, vague up to this point, suspicions that my non-mother always had an agenda, and I always knew what it was. Everything was calculated to make me a personal servant for life. Every word, gesture, and decision was supposed to keep me with her. She had been using many tools to accomplish her plan, but the most wicked were guilt, anxiety, playing the victim card, and isolation. Second, I realized there was something else hidden, just as in the case of MM. Non-mother, too, felt mistreated by fate's current, and she also craved proper compensation. But foremost, this was an act of revenge on my non-father for not loving her and showing me affection instead.

I can only add one thing - poor Archie...

Judgement Day

Dependency mode I wrote about stands on a stable conviction that whatever I do or say must be assessed by someone else. Only some other people can give us the right to undertake specific actions and, worse, to live in general. We seldom ask who gave them this right and rarely ask why we gave it away. But these are the fundamental issues of ours. 

It is a matter of mindset - we are led by thoughts that impact our bodies, emotions, and decision processes, yet we are unaware of them. Significant people and authorities had imprinted these thoughts a long time ago at that time, and there is no surprise that their interest was to make us obedient puppets. In plain words, we were taught what to think, not how to think. 

Dependency mode causes we are afraid of being judged and condemned. The more we are scared, the bigger the risk of becoming a developed narc or a suicide (the latter, more likely), for we do not belong to ourselves. Never! And for many of us, there comes the day when this one wrong assessment is too much to handle. 

I lie so I am right

Narcs lie for one reason - to create the reality in which all their deeds are justified.

They don't know one thing, though. They cannot comprehend their faults and sins because of pain that devours them from inside, as if admitting they did something wrong might cause even more hurt. Of course, that's not the truth. 

I am far from defending people with NPD, for most of them are who they became as adults due to their own choices (or lack of options). But I perfectly understand that the pain they live with is unbearable, and no one who did not experience it has the right to assess that he or she would behave differently if he or she were in a narc's shoes. No, you have no idea what you would do, feeling what they feel. 

Unfortunately, the problem is these individuals have yet to learn what they feel. They are as far as possible from their own interiors. And by denying wrong deeds, they are even further. It is hard to convince most people that confessing sins may help because, according to current social discourse, flaws, and weaknesses indicate we are less, and no one wants to be less, especially narcs. 

It took me lots of time to solve this problem: why does denying hurt us? But it's simple. To deny the truth, we usually use cognitive dissonance. By doing so, we became personal adversaries of our bodies; and started getting crazy. 

Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. Lying, treacherous, deadly bitch. Only, in the case of people with NPD, it is a total game-changer, to be exact - brain-changer. Narcs believe that what they feel at the moment and what they think is the one righteous judgment in the Universe. I was raised by the narcissistic witch; thus, I know exactly how it looks in practice. 

"I go to church, and I am a catholic, but, in this case, I think I didn't do anything wrong because I feel so. Yeah, having an affair with a married man, having a baby with him, and not telling him about the pregnancy sounds not right, but not in my situation, for my situation is different and extraordinary, and you must accustom my beliefs, not the doctrine of the Church".

You look at this person when she says something like this and think nothing can help her. She is lost since she has no hint that things can be otherwise. And even if she's your own mother, in most cases, it is better to run from her to heal wounds she caused within years.