Hoover Me … Hoover No More

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I came across a lost message from an ex-friend. I severed ties with her five years ago. I had just begun to study narcissistic personality disorder more extensively along with other mental health disorders months into meeting this friend. This friend is a narcissist (narc). This narc is a friend no more.

The message this narc sent five years ago was an attempt to hoover me back in. I am so thankful I never responded to her then. Looking through previous messages before that, I reminded myself why severing ties was necessary because she had never bothered to respond to a message that I had sent to her seven years prior to the one she sent me five years ago. Wow!

As I recall, it had been seven months after beginning of that year that had I decided to go no-contact from her. I stopped talking to her altogether. No texts. No phone calls. No meetups. No anything. I did not even communicate with mutual friends. This also means I had skipped celebrating her: her birthday, her wedding, and her induction ceremony. Not being there for her was a difficult challenge though. Severing ties with her was even more difficult. In fact, it was downright emotionally painful. I mourned for several months. I was her friend.

So when I received her message in my inbox at that time five years ago, I recall my surprise. I actually recall having several emotions all at once – including an overall anxiety with a sense of panic. I figured that on her end it was “good riddance” to me because I had essentially made her discarding me a far easier process. She had already devalued and discarded me to limited contact by end of the friendship. So, when she did contact me, I already knew it was only because she wanted something.

What good was I as a friend if I was not treated like the very people she trashed to me behind their backs? Yet, those were ones she would gladly shout out on social media as her “best friends” with pictures of them all together feigning smiles of joy and happiness. Yet, with me, there was never any acknowledgment with the exception of a few crumbs she would throw my way to keep me hanging on so that I would not become too suspicious about the absence of my presence in these displays.

I remember the heart-sinking feeling the first time I had ever posted a picture of us together along with other friends on my social media page. Within seconds of me posting the picture, she immediately untagged herself. Immediately! Yet, with all of her other friends, tags would remain even with friends she frequently complained about to me. Based on her social media content and the pictures on her page, I was surprised that anyone even knew we were friends. There were neither pictures nor mentions of me at all. I did not exist. I did not exist in her world. Yet, I was supposedly her best friend … the best friend she ever had since her childhood.

I remember how confused her behavior always made me feel, but here she was in my inbox five years ago with a message that evoked emotions so strong, I fell into mourning the loss of her all over again. This time, however, mourning commenced into the reality of her person. I mourned a friend who is a narcissist. The other reality was that I was being hoovered to come back into a farce of a friendship. Her seriously over the top message was a love-bombing letter with the purpose of hoovering back to accept my place as an idealized, devalued, and discarded friend all at once. Was she crazy? No. Not crazy. She is narcissistic though.

Her attempt to hoover me was just like the purpose of a hoover vacuum. She wanted to suck me back into the bag where I would stay trapped inside with all of her debris. Not this time though. Not that time. I received her message five years ago, read it, and journaled it. I even wrote a response to her every single sentence. With each response, I detailed what being her friend meant to me versus what her demonstration of my friendship meant to her based on her actions and words towards and against me. I cried all the way through my response process to her, and I felt so much better for it.

By the end of my response to her message/letter, I waited to see if I would ever desire to send it to her just as I had written it. I even allowed my therapist to read it, and she was stunned into her own realm of thoughtful silence by not just how eloquently I had written it but by how transparently and honestly I had addressed every issue. In no way did I ever address the narcissist with the intent to hurt her or garner from her any negative emotion, but I am sure if she had read it, she would have felt pain anyway. She would have found some way to blame me for the pain she caused me.

In the end, though, I chose not to send my response to her message. I knew that my response would have only opened a door I wanted to remain shut. There was no going back for me. I did not wish things to be the way they once were because I realized that it was all an illusion anyway. We were not friends. We were never friends. Of course, I thought we were friends only until I began to realize that we were not. I was not her best friend … at least not in the way she said it. For the time I was in her life, I was just her best narcissistic supply … perhaps the best supply she ever had, and that is all she missed about me.

Looking back on that time, I realize that she knows that I read her message. She knows that I both read it and did not respond to it. Just as I am with people who show up to my home unannounced, I did the same with her message back then. I peered at the door to see who it was, and I took one look and decided not to answer. I left the door closed because I decided that my peace and privacy were much too important to me to let go of in that moment. In that moment, five years ago, I decided the same thing. It is not worth me going back to something that never was and never will be. It is over. The door of that faux friendship is forever closed.

Hoover me … hoover no more.