… Counting …

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In a recent phone conversation, I was very aware of the boredom that I believe we both were experiencing. We were just blah, blah, blah-ing our way through with the same stuff we always talk about. I do not understand why either of us continues with this madness called friendship. I do not understand why we are even friends when it is clear to me that she does not regard me as such. It all rather fascinates me. Yet, when we started out, I thought we were friends until I quickly began to realize that this friend is a narcissist.

I would much rather be discarded and cast to the side without ever having to do or say anything. I want this narcissist to just decide that she is bored with the state of this ridiculous portrait of a friendship. I have no more value to her anyway. We are no longer colleagues. We have not been colleagues for almost a year. I guess this is why I thought maybe we were friends even though I have been terribly bothered for a long time regarding all of her narcissistic traits. I wish she knew that I am okay with her letting me go, but I know that is simply taking the passive way out.

Anyway, I saw earlier red flags in the phone conversation when we first began talking. Why did my heart flutter when this narcissist took a sigh when I attempted to finish a statement I was making when I could hear that she was attempting to also talk at the same time as me? It is that same agitation that I always hear in conversation with any narcissist when they want me to be quiet so that they can control the direction of the conversation. It was the sound of anger that I empathically knew was there even though this narcissist maintained a cool façade of calmness.

I am so clueless to these very subtle cues in phone conversations at times, but then other times I ignore them because I would never be able to add my thoughts to the conversation otherwise. I admit that I continued talking to finish my point. I really did not care that she might have been fuming on the receiving end. I envisioned my arms folded like a child saying within my mind to this narcissist, “You’re not the boss of me! I can talk if I want to. What are you going to do about it?!”

I took note of that first red flag in our phone conversation, but the conversation continued on. Then there was a jab, and I snapped my neck in unison with the narcissist’s jab directed towards me. I needed to make sure that I was hearing correctly. I certainly knew what I felt. My empathic, intuitive, and discernment signals were wide open for some reason. What was happening? … and then came an insult for which I remained silent listening for the narcissist’s silence to help me to determine whether I needed to defend myself against her insult.

That is when I realized that the narcissist was possibly angry about a previous conversation that we had in which I indicated my hurt feelings over losing someone (one of the narcissists that I recently blocked) I considered to be a dear friend. It angered her because that was my focus during that previous conversation. I later apologized to her in text explaining that I was sorry to have monopolized our conversation with my grief. She claimed that she understood, but did she really understand my feelings if she were now throwing jabs and insults my way? I think not.

It soon became clear to me during our phone conversation that this narcissist was paying me back … getting her own brand of revenge by projecting a conversation she claimed to have had with someone else onto me. She was literally using the person she was talking about as a scapegoat, but the entire time I realized that she was actually talking about me. She was blaming me! At first, I did not get this. I did not get this at all. I was blind. I was blind until I began talking to her about a totally different topic (after we had moved on from her projected topic).

While I was in mid-sentence, she interrupted me in such a dramatic way, I instantly felt a sharp pain in my gut. It was such a force that I could only explain it as something supernatural happening in that instant. It was as if her dramatic interruption of shouting was a camouflage for what I really received from her in that moment. Her interruption jarred me in such a way that I literally felt a stab to my emotions … the very soul of who I am, and in that instant I knew that she was stabbing me with rudeness on purpose. She literally wanted me to be quiet … to shut myself up! She wanted me to feel as devalued by her interruption because the interruption proved how irrelevant my conversation was to her.

Her interruption literally penetrated into the sound waves through the phone and hit me somewhere that hurt me emotionally. It was in that instant that I realized that the entire conversation she gave me about a person we both know was really how she felt about me. She was using the mutual person as a mirror to hold up to me as she detailed her frustrations about this person. In other words, this narcissist told me everything she wanted to tell me about myself by using another person as a mirror for me to view my reflection. She was projecting someone else’s issue of rejection onto me because that is how she wanted me to feel. She wanted me to feel rejected!

Yet, I could not see what she wanted me to see until she sent a hurling interruption into my spoken words that had not reached their completed thoughts. Now, I must point out that the person she used to project onto me is in no way comparable to me except that the narcissist obviously perceives me to be clueless as she always calls this mutual person that we know. I am onto this narcissist, however. I am onto her so well … so much so that the feelings I have for her as a friend of mine seems to be fading away. I literally do not want this friendship anymore as I am finding myself miserably longing for great distance.

I want to be able to confront this narcissist, but I already know that this would not be worth my time or energy. I want to be able to express to this narcissist that I know who she is and what she is about, but I know it would not matter to her and that she would simply gaslight me and twist my words and the events that have occurred so that she comes out looking like the victim. Just like every narcissist I know that seems to believe that I cannot see them for who they are, I want to be able to explain to this narcissist that I see clearly. I was born to see because I have lived in a narcissistic family. I see clearly enough to realize that it is time for me to detach myself from her for good, but I must wait.

I must wait for the internal countdown within me that lets me know that it is time to sever the ties that bind. I must wait because I must be careful enough to know when the circumstances have become so dead to me that I no longer care. I must wait for that internal knowing that I am now ready to take on this narcissist’s traits and mirror back to her in a way that she feels and knows that I am done with her … that I will never open my heart for friendship ever again to her. I am waiting, but I am counting too …

… and counting …