A Discard Short-Lived
Discarded for three months. No contact. Phone call. I grey-rocked. Discarded for three more months. No contact. Unexpected visit. Boom! Mr. Charm was back!
Springtime Hoover
It was March. I was sitting on my deck taking in the fresh springtime air, the beauty of nature, and the calmness of silence. I had a week off from my online graduate coursework. It was spring break. It was a rare occasion that I could actually breathe in peace. No narcissists were bothering me. Life was good.
Yet, life could never be good for long though. Narcissists seem to always sniff out when life is good for their targets. Just like that my life changed with one surprise phone call from a narcissist who had discarded me. Mr. Charm was back!
Long before I screened the phone calls of unidentified numbers, I answered them without thinking. Sometimes answering might have garnered the attention of an annoying telemarketer. This time around when I answered the phone, I was surprised to hear the voice of Mr. Charm on the other end.
I was literally caught off guard. For me, being caught off guard was a clear sign that I had moved on from the toxicity of this so-called friendship because I was not even thinking about him. I was busy living my life. Plus, there were two other narcissists at the time who were causing me problems. A call from Mr. Charm was not something I was looking for at all.
Nevertheless, Mr. Charm called me. He claimed he just happened to be in my neighborhood and really needed to talk to me. He sounded serious and even pensive. I was baffled because I could not think of any reason he would just happen to be in my neighborhood. I pondered over who he might have known in my area, but I could not think of anyone.
Instantaneously upon hearing he was in my neighborhood, however, I felt backed into a corner. His being in my neighborhood did not come as good news to me. Instead, I felt that he was making up an excuse just to force himself into my space. He seemed rather aggressive about it but in a desperate “need to talk” kind of way that made his situation seem like such an emergency.
One thing is for sure, he might have not known anything about my past or anything about me at all, but he knew that I was a rather guarded person in terms of my personal space. In all the times during my helping him during his stroke recovery, he had not once ever come to my home. It never seem to come across his mind to ever visit me for any reason even with an invitation. That was a period of at least eight months.
According to him, it was just easier to be in his own space. So, for him to suddenly have the urge to stop by because he just happened to be in my neighborhood seemed suspicious to me. Although I was happy to hear his voice, I quickly felt annoyed with the sudden sense of his intrusion upon me. Either he was oblivious to his own invasion of my space, or he simply did not care. I would say the latter was more the case.
More than anything, I hate when someone has spontaneous plans that include me without talking to me first. I do not like being caught off guard. I do not like being told, “oh I’m in the neighborhood and would like to stop by”. I do not like feeling pressured to open up my home for anyone’s visits. Over the phone, I felt pressured to make a decision. Yet, Mr. Charm was not even asking me if he could even come over. He was letting me know he was planning to “invade” my space, and I vehemently dislike being intruded upon.
My Home Is My Sanctuary
My home is my sacred place of peace. I do not like my peace disturbed at all. If I am letting a person into my space, the person has earned that place in my life. That person knows me well enough to know that I do not tolerate unannounced or spontaneous visits unless I feel freedom in the relationship to be that open with myself. That is when I have developed enough trust to let my guard down, but even then, I may still be somewhat guarded if there are elements of the relationship I still do not trust.
Plus, when I feel my internal battery dying with a person’s visit, I will gladly assist the person to the door for an exit. I may not directly kick them out, but I will let them know indirectly that their time is up based on what I am going to do which does not ever include them. Those are my boundaries for remaining safe within myself and keeping my energy from being drained in my own home.
Needless to say, despite knowing these aspects of my personality, Mr. Charm still planned to drop by. He seemed determined to tell me what was happening in his life. He was adamant that I needed to know at that moment. Although I hate unannounced visits or being given short notice to prepare myself for visits, I felt coerced by his matter-of-fact and serious sounding way of expressing himself.
So I gave in to his proposed visit. He literally gave himself a self-invitation to my home. He did not ask me if he could stop by. He simply told me he was in the neighborhood, and somehow, I felt I could not say no even though “no” was warranted in that occasion. There was absolutely no regard for the fact that maybe I did not even want his company. So I already had my guard up about what his visit would entail.
Although I welcomed his visit in the end, I was skeptical of what might be the outcome. Upon further thought, I found that I was quickly aware of the depths of my fatigue for this entire situation. I was exhausted. This so-called friendship had drained me tremendously, and I simply did not have the energy to continue on with it if there was going to be more excessive drama.
In those moments before he arrived to my home, I felt the same lack-of-energy come upon me that I had felt three months prior when he had called me out of blue only for me to find a reason to abruptly end the conversation. I realized in that moment that my inner peace was dissolving fast. This was not good.
Hindsight and Hope
Looking back, I should have just told him he could not come visit me, but I did not want to be rude. At the time, I had the hope that he had come to his senses about his negative behaviors. I hoped that he realized that he needed help even if he could not completely articulate this need. If he did not come to the conclusion that he needed help, I hoped that he at least came to his senses and decided to leave the church to which he was a member.
I saw that church as being a place that clouded his ability to recognize his true issues. Instead of recognizing the truth, I saw him as completely brainwashed by the church. I hoped that he was coming to my home to tell me that he had realized this fact. I hoped that the penance that I heard within his voice was true sorrow that he would have only received from self-insight since the church he was a member of did not seem to practice true sorrow.
Nonetheless, I had the hope. That hope is what kept me bound to this so-called friendship. That hope is what caused me to let my guard down and allow him to visit my home. He obviously must have known that I would cave into him since he attempts at calling me and making posts on social media over the past months had failed to influence me to respond to him.
He knew me enough to know that I was a good friend who did not always set firm boundaries, because on some level, I was afraid to do so. I had been conditioned all of my life to be such an accepting, loving, giving, and caring person – putting the needs of others above my own needs. So he surely had hopes too. His hope was that he could get back in for a springtime hoover.
Basically, I had the belief and hope that as his friend I could help him. I thought that the more I learned about narcissistic personality disorder, the more I would be able to help him and assist him in seeing the need for change. Yet, this had proven time and again not to be the result of my studies at all.
Up to that point, I had not been able to help him see that he had a problem, but I just did not want to give up even when all the signs were clearly there that I needed to do just that. All of the studying on this personality disorder that I had done did not even scathe the surface of change that needed to occur in this situation. I just did not know then, however, that the information that I had gathered was not really to help him at all. It would be for me.
An Apology Or Just Regrets?
When Mr. Charm showed up, he seemed to search my eyes. My discernment told me that he searched my eyes to see if I would be easy prey to his games, but my heart wanted to believe there was hope. On the surface, his eyes actually seemed apologetic without words. However, this time, I wanted to actually hear his apologetic words as well as see the actions of a changed person in place. So I watched him closely and carefully while scanning his tone, his movements, and his energy. I wanted to see the hope I had in him.
When we walked into the den, he reached out and gave me an awkward side hug. The hug felt hollow and without emotion, but I assumed that maybe my own emotions were dead inside. After all, I had a deep fatigue within me regarding this situation and thought that I might have been guarded by his visit after not speaking to him for so long.
Even so, I took note that his hug seemed to require great effort from him as if to be a part of some script he had memorized before coming over. His words to me, however, were a mismatch to the hollowness of the hug I felt. He said, “I missed my friend.” When I heard him, I watched his lips and desired to feel the energy and truth behind his words, but I did not.
In the past, Mr. Charm had never spoken in such a sentimental way to me before. In the moment his words felt odd to me. Although I replied that I missed him too, my mind logged a huge notation of the discrepancies within his actions, words, and vocal tone. I was not completely sold on any changes with him. I was simply going to have to believe in the hope I had at the moment.
While standing next to me, he positioned himself in front of me and took a deep sigh. He said that he had a lot to tell me … a lot to get off of his chest. Because I had been enjoying time outside, I requested that we move the heavy conversation outside. Internally, I knew that I did not want to feel any negative energy inside of my house especially as it related to his church drama.
Once out on the deck, Mr. Charm poured his heart out to me about the past six months. We had literally not spoken to each other except for one time during the course of that six months. As I listened to him talk about various occurrences while we were apart, I realized that it had been almost half a year since I had seen him.
He had physically changed a lot for the better, and I could see visible improvements with his body that had been affected by the stroke. He was walking better, standing taller, and almost seemed back to his previous self pre-stroke. Although his left arm was still curled into a tight position, he had a little more mobility with that arm than before. I was inwardly happy to see these changes; my heart even smiled.
While thoroughly scanning him over as he talked, I realized that although I missed him during the time we were apart, I had not missed him as much as he claimed to have missed me. I surely did not miss any of his drama. In fact, he was one less narcissist I needed to be concerned about. My life was just a bit freer without him.
I actually realized that I had not really missed him at all. I just missed the idea of him and what I thought I had with him. What I realized that I had with him was really nothing at all. I had been more a friend to him than he had ever been to me. He did not even know me. In fact, he only knew what others said about me and seemed to base that information along with his opinions about me.
Did I really want to engage in another round of his madness? My mind was thinking thoughts upon thoughts to the point that even my thoughts were pondering thoughts, but his unfolding story of drama jarred me awake and back into the present moment. I searched around him to center myself before resting my gaze back onto him. I looked at the leaves on the trees behind him, the railings on the deck near his side, the crucifix around his neck, and then his face.
I was almost certain that in the midst of his narrative that he would apologize to me for his negative behavior towards me during our last encounter. He had said horrible things about me to me. Yet, what came out as what seemed like an apology was actually a mixture of his projection and blame on others regarding that situation.
He said he felt bad for the way he had reacted to me [but not how he actually treated me]. He was more so angry about the situation with the leader’s son at the church he attended than he was angry with me. He remarked on how the leader’s son had made him feel and that he simply reacted to everyone around him instead of reacting to the leader’s son.
According to him, I only made him angry because I constantly reminded him of the situation at the church. Yet, I recall only ever commenting on his church troubles when he brought them up. It turns out, however, that he was focused on the last thing that I had said to him in terms of being controlled by others. It had really bothered him that I said he was controlled He claimed that he had stopped speaking to me because he needed that time to reflect on all that I had said to him.
Although I believed him about needing to take time to reflect, somewhere deep within me, I sensed there was another reason he had returned to me. There was nothing more final that brought our so-called friendship to a close than what took place within the next three months.
Stay tuned because I just could not fit it all in this post.
My Voice Unchained 