Gutted – Hurts That Crushed My Soul

My former therapist once told me that besides the depression and anxiety I suffered, I also had a terrible case of complicated grief. Complicated grief is actually a persistent complex bereavement disorder. It is much stronger than normal grief and can last anywhere from a few weeks to years.

In my case, my former therapist indicated that I had been struggling with complicated grief for years … since I was a child, and each time I am involved in a relationship with a narcissist, my grief becomes even more complicated. This I can certainly attest to for sure.

Oftentimes, any hurts I received from others – particularly narcissists – would gut me deeply in a way that I did not completely understand. The pain would literally catch me by surprise leaving me gasping for air. Sometimes it felt like my heart was being torn from behind my breastbone, but in a most devastating way.

The pain of being gutted is indescribable, and I can only liken it to experiencing the death of a loved one. I have felt this pain … this hurt … when a bond has been irretrievably broken. It feels like a million punches in my gut but even worse than that. In fact, I do not have the exact words to even begin to describe the feeling of being gutted, but the look and sound on a narcissist’s face when she or he is in the process of gutting me is a look of undeniable satisfaction. That look of satisfaction makes the pain sting even more because I realize the intent is to hurt me on purpose.

The First Hurt That Crushed My Soul

The very first soul crushing hurt that I recall was when I was three. I remember it clearly as if it happened yesterday, but I have grown to be far removed from the then crushing pain. Yet, the film of this past clip from my life is embedded within a compartment within my mind, and each time a narcissist is responsible for imbuing upon me similar pain, I compare the present pain to the original pain that I remember.

As I recall, I was sent into the kitchen by my mother to get a bottle for my baby brother. It was dark. I was a terrified of the dark. My mother knew this. I recall distinctly pleading with her to turn on the light within the connecting room so that I could see to get into the kitchen. She refused and only opened her bedroom door wide enough so that I could see just enough to light my path into the kitchen. For me, that was not enough light. I was still afraid. I was beyond afraid. Darkness was the definition of evil to me.

My mother yelled at me to hurry into the kitchen for the bottle. I was extremely hesitant. Tremendous fear gripped me in a way that if someone did not actually pick me up and carry me into the kitchen, I was not sure how I would manage to get there. Yet, my mother’s voice was bellowing me into the kitchen. So I slowly walked in trembling all the way. I remember walking with the steps of slow precision as if I was going to step on a crack to cause enough noise to awaken the darkness. I was careful but not careful enough.

Once I was in the kitchen, I immediately ran to the stove, stood on a stool, and grabbed the bottle for my brother. The kitchen was dark and the light from my parents’ bedroom cast faint shadows all over the windows in the kitchen. These shadows looked like monsters dancing around, and I was shaken with fear to my core. As I ran around the corner of the kitchen table, I bumped into the table hard enough that I knocked over a pale of water that I remembered being on the table from earlier in the day. I knew it was the pail because of the sound it made when it hit the floor. Water splashed everywhere. I was wet.

At the same time that I heard the pale fall, I heard my mother screaming my name. The sound of her voice was far more frightening that the monstrous shadows on the wall. For a few seconds I remember standing still like a frozen statue not sure whether it was safe for me to move. Would it be better for me to be devoured by the shadows that danced in the dark or would it be better for me to go and face the howling wrath of my mother? I froze because in my mind I thought that remaining with the shadows would hide me from my mother’s wrath.

The anxiety I felt in that moment was so overwhelming I remember hearing the sound of my own heartbeat. In fact, there were so many fascinating events that were happening within that very moment that I stood still to take it all into me. Besides the freeze mode that had me stuck in fear from hearing my mother’s voice, I was captivated by sensory sensations I had not yet experienced before. Then the thought occurred to me to try to clean the water up before my mother came into the room. Still, however, I could not move. Then, suddenly, there was a flash of light.

My mother had come into the kitchen. She saw the water all over the floor. The look in her eyes was menacing. She stared at me and jerked the bottle from my hand with such a strong force that I shrank back to run into the opposite direction. She literally chased me into the bedroom she shared with my dad where I shriveled up into a heap in the corner of the room underneath brand new pictures of my brother hanging above me.

As I cowered into the corner, my mother lashed out with one of her hands and struck me. I shielded to protect myself from the strike as if instinctively. She yelled at me for what seemed like an eternity, and she said a lot, but it was not so much what she said but more how she said it. In my thought processes, her anger seemed far beyond what spilled water should have ignited within her. Her anger was inflamed, and I could feel it. I was mortified. (Looking back, I wonder if she was suffering from postpartum depression because of a new baby. This is not an excuse for her behavior but just a thought.)

My mother yelled that I was obviously a stupid child because I could not do one thing without making a mess. My mind rattled off a list of sentences in response that I dare not utter verbally with my lips. I do recall wondering why she thought I could see in the dark when even she turned on the kitchen light herself just so she could see. I wondered how she thought I would not be hurt in the dark by tripping or falling or worse. She knew I was beyond terrified of the dark but refused to help me. If she wanted it done right in the first place, she should have done it herself. Why treat a three-year-old as a servant?

As she menaced me into the corner, I prayed and waited for her wrath of hand lashes and words of terror to stop. She actually uttered words that stung me deeply. The words she said pierced me in a way that I felt my body could not bear. I cringed and shrunk further into the corner and held my body in a fetal position as she shouted how she wished I had never been born. Here is a mother with a three-year-old and a newborn baby shouting at the top of her lungs about how she wished I was never born (among other mean things) as I crouched into a corner. She was hysterically angry all because I knocked over a large container of water in a dark kitchen where I could hardly see anything but frightening shadows.

My mother’s words cut me very deeply. Her words were like weights that took me down to an abyss. It was the first time I had ever experienced exactly what sadness, woundedness, and shame felt like. It was more than about being sensitive and aware. I felt deep pain that was indescribable. From what I can remember, it took days for that unbearable weight of grief to leave me. I was afraid to tell my dad what happened because my mother had frightened me so bad. It was best to be kept a secret. I remember sucking all of my emotions up like a vacuum sucks up dirt.

My tears and loud cries had provoked my mother’s rage. She told me to “Stop all that crying or I will give you something to cry about”. Although her wrath made me afraid to cry, I could not help it. I felt as if everything inside of me emotionally had broken into very tiny pieces. I remember crying, but I also remember the tears that rolled down my cheeks feeling far lighter than the weight of tears that drowned me within an inner abyss of shame. I dared not to make a sound because I remember how the sound of my crying angered her. I had learned early on within my narcissistic household to silence my cries or to at least muffle them enough to where my parents could not hear them.

After a time of practice, I eventually learned to master the art of crying inside of myself as I allowed the tears that would naturally flow down my face to halt and flow within me instead. I actually became a professional at this type crying within myself to the point that no one ever knew when I was crying. No one ever knew what was wrong with me because I learned to contain the tears within me. If I felt the tears water the surface of my eyes, I knew that I had failed my mission to keep them contained enough. Presently, I still do this and have to fight the urge. I am just in the place where I now practice sitting in my emotions as they come and allowing them to happen.

I failed my mission to keep my emotions contained during that episode with my mother when I was a three-year-old. I had not yet learned how to regulate my emotions. I did not know, then, that there would be times where my emotions were not allowed in the presences of others. I did not know then that my most profound hurts would have to be diminished in presence of others’ emotions. In fact, I had no idea that I was learning the art of walking on eggshells.

That past event in my life at aged three was a most profound hurt. Because of that past life event, I learned to recognize the the characteristics of that soul-crushing hurt from other narcissistic individuals who have been in my life. The feeling of pain is always the same. It is a profound and deep hurt that cuts to the core of my being and shakes me to my depths. It s a pain that sends me reeling into deep and absolute grief. It is the profound pain that resulted in what my former therapist termed complicated grief. It is a complicated grief indeed. It is the feeling of being gutted to my core.