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Finding the Courage to Walk Away
I was binging on Netflix and just chilling when a comment I heard in a movie struck me. I had watched the movie for a first time run-through and was analyzing my own emotions to many of the scenes in the movie. I had become so overwhelmingly emotional, and I sought to understand the reason(s).
There were so many complexities to the movie that I thought that I was just empathizing with the main character who was struggling to come to terms with being an emotionally abused girlfriend. It took a second time to watch the movie for me to truly connect with what the message of the movie meant to me in my own personal life. The second time I watched the movie, I got it! I got the message that I was supposed to hear, and I took action.
The message: Walking way from an abusive relationship takes courage. Walking away from a narcissistically abusive relationship takes courage. Walking away at all takes courage. Period. Yet, the longer one stays in an abusive relationship, the harder it becomes to walk away. The longer one stays in an abusive relationship, the more courage one will likely need to walk away from it.
It was the latter message that rang true to me from the movie I watched regarding emotional abuse. Although I have heard it said many times before and even read the message in print, it took the power of hearing the message to penetrate me to the core of my heart. My heart was pricked with conviction that I need to do something to relieve myself of narcissistic abuse. I should not just continue to take it and accept it.
In the movie, one of the characters explained how it usually takes a victim of abuse seven times to leave an abusive relationship. The normal process is for the victim to find the courage to leave an abusive relationship but only return to if sometime after leaving. After some point in this cycle, the victim comes to a final resolution and leaves the abusive relationship for good. So it has been with me.
In Retrospect
In retrospect, I realize that this has been the process with me in narcissistically abusive relationships … to continue to stay when there are so many signs for me to leave. It has taken me a multitude of times to leave narcissistically abusive relationships. I would even say it has taken me as many as seven times even though I traditionally have never counted to see.
Yet, I find myself always wavering not wanting to leave narcissistically abusive relationships because I cannot always pinpoint the abuse or even prove that the abuse exists even when I am experiencing it. Narcissistic abuse can be so subtle. It is much like a mind game. There are so many illusive components to narcissistic abuse – gaslighting, manipulation, control, etc. For too long, I have just suffered numbly through the abuse and wished it away.
Plus, I hold to always having a strong connection to and care about these people. I also second-guess myself by numbing myself to the fact that narcissists are not always so bad. Yet, at some point, I come to the realization that narcissists never change. They never change. Their narcissistic abuses never relent. Over time, it has become an unfortunate truth that narcissists are evil, Their true intent is to destroy their victims. They literally seek me out to destroy me, and they stop at nothing until they do just that.
So … I leave. I find courage that I did not even consider that I had, and I leave. I walk away. I find the strength and the willpower to walk away from the narcissistic abuse and the narcissistic hold that narcissists wield over me. I come to my senses. I realize that as much as I care about narcissists because I want to see their “humanness”, they do not care about me at all. So, I leave.
I come to realize that I am only as good to narcissists as anyone else who is their narcissistic supply. I come to learn that I am only as good to narcissists wherever I am with them in their narcissistic cycle of abuse against me. I leave when I come to the often crushing realization that the abusive cycle is never-ending. After all, it is a cycle, and cycles generally do not end, and when they do, they only end for a time to then restart again.
Finding the Courage to Walk Away
No matter what, I know that in circumstances of any type of abuse, I must find the courage within me to walk away. Walking away is for my own sanity and peace of mind. Walking way is for my safety. Walking way keeps me from continuing to experience the abuse. Walking way builds my courage even more so that I can continue on the journey to healing and becoming more whole. Finding the courage to walk away from narcissistic abuse is the only way to restart and rebuild my life from the shattered pieces that narcissists often leave behind.
Finding the courage to walk away is courage. So … I choose this day to continue the journey of walking away from narcissistic abuse.
My Voice Unchained 