The Beginning Of The End
I had no idea that allowing Mr. Charm back into my life was the beginning of the end of us and of me. It was the beginning of the end of us because I began to realize that there was no way that Mr. Charm and me could truly be friends. As a narcissist, Mr. Charm had no regards for me as a friend anyway. I was just a person who he could use as narcissistic supply.
It was the beginning of the end for me because I had no idea that Mr. Charm had been brooding for six months during our time of no-contact. He was angry over things that I said regarding his being controlled by the leaders of his church. In his eyes I had insulted him – giving him a great narcissistic injury. To him, I suppose my comments signified that he was less than a man for allowing himself to be controlled by members of a church.
I had no idea that he was hellbent on my destruction. He wanted to make me pay. Despite my gullibility at times, I was not as gullible as he had hoped me to be. He had failed to realize that I had been there and done that as far as the church he belonged to was concerned on so many levels. I knew what was around the corner for him because I had experienced many of the same things he had complained about. However, he just did not want to hear me on the topic. He wanted me to be so wrong about everything that I experienced to the point that he gaslighted me about it all.
I had no idea that I was reopening the door to Mr. Charm via my own destruction, but I was finally about to see where he and I both really stood with each other in the end. He had come to me with fake sincerity. I had accepted based on my hopes that he had and would change. Everything was fake. Everything was a lie. His charm began to fade before my eyes.
The Sparkle of Charm Begins To Fizzle Out
For a time after Mr. Charm and I reconnected, he seemed to be on his best behavior with me. I noted how he would always come to my home instead of me always going to his home. It was a nice change, but I had no idea that his main purpose was to destroy me from the inside out. Not only was he going to attack me as a person, but he intended to make me feel unsafe in my own home. Essentially, he had come to make war with me.
In due time, his fangs appeared, and I discerned his negative attitude towards me through small bits of his sarcasm. He often began discussions with me as if to provoke arguments. He discussed things that he knew that I would most likely not agree with him on and mentioned issues with his church a lot. He frequently brought up his lady friend in an effort to compare the two of us and make me jealous.
He constantly gaslighted me and subjected me to fits of the silent treatment. Like a five year old unable to get his way, he pouted a lot and had temper tantrums regarding things that made no sense to me. He was never satisfied with my assistance either and always found something about help to complain about. It was to the point that I frequently found myself walking on eggshells in my own house. Looking back, I was always on edge around him and found that I had lost the freedom to be myself and maintain my peace.
The charm and charisma of Mr. Charm began to fizzle out with me fast. I could no longer take his presence at times. His presence actually began to bother me. I began to hate to see him coming. I often had to pull back from the project when he pushed so hard to continue working into the late night. I would frequently mention that I wanted to respect my neighbors, but he did not care. He did not care about how loud his tools were nor how it bothered them. His favorite go to line in response to my comments about respecting my neighbors was that “They’re your neighbors, not mine. I don’t live here. ”
Many times, I would make up pretend appointments and other engagements that I needed to attend to, but he was relentless in making me feel as if he was devoting time to helping me and I was wasting it. If I wanted and desperately needed a break, he would make sure that I would make up for it the next time by extending his stay. Before long, I found that his negative energy was invading my space. He was like an invasive species coming into my territory like a predator to terrorize me before my destruction.
Although we had set a deadline to when we wanted the project completed, I often felt that he manipulated my time by creating reasons to remain in my space. We would begin and end our days from 10 AM to 5 PM. These were times I considered to be respectable times so as not to disturb the waking and relaxing hours of my neighbors. To defy me and my neighbors, he sometimes showed up two hours earlier and left four hours later just because he felt like it.
He frequently omitted the boundaries I set, and when I established one day as off limits because I needed a day of rest, he blasted me for it. He replied that since I was no longer a part of a church and not a true Christian that I really did not need a day of rest, and if I did, I should take Sundays off since that was the day he went to church. Yet, my chosen day of rest was a day I adamantly refused to budge on and put my foot down about. Doing so, incurred his mighty wrath, and into future weeks during the project, he seemed to literally do everything he possibly could to make my life a living hell.
I surely thought that if he was not the devil himself, the devil surely sent him to me. I saw it as uncanny how the tables had turned without really turning from the previous months before our no-contact. Back when I visited his home, I frequently left feeling extremely exhausted and spent. Now, it was the other way around with him leaving my home but me still feeling extremely exhausted and spent. I did not see at the time that it was all a part of his psychological madness in his revenge against me.
The Plan
I had been been wanting to do some remodeling around my house – mainly my deck. I had only mentioned it in light conversation with Mr. Charm when I asked him about different people I could talk to regarding repairs. In the process of seeking out different contacts, Mr. Charm casually mentioned in a conversation with me that he thought it would be better if I had someone I could trust for the remodeling jobs. I took note of how it appeared that he was dropping hints. That should have been a red flag, but I was so naïve to his tactics and just unaware. I figured he had someone he would suggest to me. He did. He suggested himself.
Despite having had a stroke and only being able to use his dominant hand, he was sure that he could help me repair the back area of my deck. He had the skills for sure, but I never considered asking him because I honestly was not sure what he could do having had a stroke and constricted use of his faculties. I had been told by one contractor that my deck needed a lot of work, and although I mentioned this fact to Mr. Charm, he said that he had a plan and his plan would make repairs a piece of cake. I marveled at his confidence.
Nevertheless, he suggested that we both work on the deck together over the course of the summer months. I would be his assistant. Since he only had one dominant hand that worked to be able to do the job, I would need to assist as being the second hand. I knew nothing about building anything despite having watched my dad build cabinetry. However, Mr. Charm did have experience. He said that he would teach me along the way so that it would make his job easier too. Since he had been very successful in construction prior to his stroke, I welcomed his idea. He said that if anything became too difficult, he would stop, and I could call a professional.
According to him, his suggestion came out of concern for me. He did not want to see me taken advantage of by someone else. He also did not want to see me spending an unnecessary amount of money on a job that he referred to as really quite simple. He said that the prices I had been quoted by others seemed ridiculously high, and it would be better for me to buy the materials myself and make the repairs. What sounded like a plausible plan had me hooked because I did want to save money, and I did not want to be tricked into paying huge sums of money for a job that could be done for less. So, of course, I was sold on Mr. Charm’s idea.
Strangely, I trusted a Mr. Charm, someone I had by this time recognized as being a narcissist based on traits he exhibited that matched the DSM criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. I trusted him over others with just as much expertise [if not more] because I did not know if others would do me more harm than good. I had every reason to believe in Mr. Charm’s abilities simply because he told me what his abilities were prior to his stroke. I believed in him, and I wanted to believe in the change that he seemed to demonstrate once we reconnected. So I had made a deal with him, and I agreed to pay for his meals and supplies while he helped me make repairs to my deck. I had no idea what was to come.
The Ruse
According to Mr. Charm, the repairs to my deck would be good for both him and me. For him, he would be able to exercise his dominant hand and do something that he missed from what he called his previous life. For me, he thought it would be good for me to learn how to repair things in case I needed to do something on my own. I cannot say that I did not agree with him. I thought it would actually be well worth my while to do a project around the house and actually complete it to see the finished product. Yet, there was more to this project for Mr. Charm than he let on in the beginning. Over time, I would see a lot!
This project meant we would be spending a lot of time together at my house. That was the first thing I had not bargained for. It was a summer project that I had not anticipated taking up so much of my time. I had also not bargained for giving up so much of myself as an introvert. The more Mr. Charm spent time at my home, the less I began to feel at ease, the less I began to feel energized, and the less I began to feel myself. Over the extended period of time in his presence, my anxiety levels heightened to the point that by my bedtime I would stand in the shower and allow cold water to rain down upon my head for as long as I could stand it so that I could re-center myself.
For the most part, I frequently found myself exposed to the mean side of Mr. Charm’s personality all too often. His mask fell down several times to reveal his mean streak. His behavior actually became far worse this time around than prior to our no-contact. I soon realized he was not just an angry man, but he could also be a very unkind person. Of course, we all have the characteristic of being unkind at times. So I tried to cut him some slack. I took into account that he was essentially repairing and even rebuilding parts of my deck with one hand! This was impressive to say the least, and I was amazed at all that he could do. Yet, my adulation and admiration of his abilities were often not enough to calm his mean streak though.
Despite my tendency to blame his mean streak on many of his physical shortcomings post-stroke when it came to working on the repairs, he was actually mean to ME. I had to repeat to him several times that “I am not a construction worker!” because he barked construction terms at me all the time. He frequently made comments under his breath that he did not believe how someone [me] could be so stupid. Many times, I desperately wanted to comment back, but I did not want to entertain negative energy. I also commented less and less over the course of the project when I realized how his comments made me feel. If I was not already a shell of myself, I certainly found myself inside of a shell by the project’s end. There was no limit to his verbal abuses.
The ruse of it all was that this project was his way of getting his revenge against me. I was not aware of this at the time, however. If I thought his meanness was just the tip of the iceberg, though, I did not truly know what was coming by the project’s end.
My Voice Unchained 