(*Refer to previous posts about my so-called friendship with Rain – an extroverted narcissist.)
The Rain Drops That Broke Me
Rain broke me. She broke me on purpose. That is what narcissists do. They break people for their destruction. They break hearts. They break spirits. They break down their targets into becoming former shells of themselves.
On numerous occasions, I had attempted to have a heart-to-heart conversation with Rain. I was never able to do so. In fact, I was never able to talk to Rain about any of my problems or any of her problems for that matter. I was never able to vent. I was never able to share much about myself to her on my terms at all.
Anything I did share with Rain was because Rain asked me out of curiosity. She really knew nothing about me. She did not seem to want to know me … only in as much as how I related to her. I knew more about her than she ever knew about me. At some point I began to wonder if she truly considered me as a person worth knowing.
Rain only gathered information about me to later use against me when she wanted to gaslight me, minimize my accomplishments, deter me, or ridicule me. She did not get to know me for me. She never knew me as a person. She knew me as her I related to her in narcissistic supply. For her, I believe I was Grade A supply. She claimed that I was her best friend, but I began to realize that I was just her “best narcissistic supply”.
Crushed
I was so crushed by her denial to want to know anything about my problems when I called her one morning on the phone. Often she was unreachable, and I was foolish for not figuring out sooner that she was just too busy for me. She never returned a text or a phone call. I never noticed until I actually needed her that she never responded to me.
So when she answered her phone on the morning that I called her, I believed it was a good sign. I just did not realize that she probably answered because I was the only “friend” who was willing to give up my time to help her with moving. I do not believe there was any other reason for her to respond to me except for the fact that I was really the only person helping her.
Anyway, I called her because I really needed a friend, and I expressed this to her. I was battling a downward spiral of depression. At first, she seemed to be listening to me until I started to explained how I felt emotionally. I did not know at the time that narcissists cannot regulate their own emotions let alone deal with even listening to someone else talk about their emotions. I had made a grave mistake in opening myself up to her.
Rain lost it. She literally flipped out over the phone with me. She actually yelled into the phone that she did not have time for my behavior. She admonished me for not truly dealing with my issues in therapy. She believed that I was not getting my money’s worth out of therapy if I was still having issues with depression. I was stunned into silence. My heart dropped, and I felt an even more crushing weight of her rejection.
She explained that she was sick and tired of my thought processes and believed that I did too much thinking. She brought up how much she hated that I even had to process my thoughts in order to answer a simple question. For someone who was supposedly philosophical about life, I was surprised that she lacked what I perceived to be common knowledge about introverts.
Did she not consider that the nature of most introverts is to take the time to process what is being said to them? As an introvert, I process inwardly before speaking outwardly. If she really knew me, she would know that. Yet, I suppose she knew me enough to know this because this was a part of my personality that she hated about me.
All in the matter of moments during that phone call with her, I felt a literal slash to my heart. I felt something in a spiritual sense rip into my gut and tear it apart. It was a piercing pain, and I have experienced this pain many times before from different narcissists when they have torn into the very heart of who I am as a person. I felt something had been uprooted within me, and I was reminded by her that I was simply damaged goods.
I was so stunned and hurt by her words that I lost my words. I lost my breath. I literally could not even breathe for a moment. It was as if everything stopped, and I felt myself become motionless. I could not even form the words to talk. I felt myself crumple into a heap on the inside as if my spirit man had lost the will to live. With her carefully crafted words, Rain had annihilated me, and in some strange way, I discerned that she took pleasure in the hurt her words had caused me.
Without even thinking, I hung up the phone on her. I cut her off while she was still speaking. I then fell onto the floor and sobbed loudly. It was a painful sob that uplifted from my gut. A wellspring erupted from within me and overtook my entire body, and I just cried and cried and cried. I felt devastated and shaken. I was so overwhelmed by devastation that I could not stop crying no matter how hard I tried to in that moment.
As much as I attempted to understand, I lacked the capacity to understand why I hurt so deeply and why I felt so devastated by her words. Just as soon as I was able to gather myself, I heard the phone ringing. I could not answer. I saw on the phone screen that it was Rain. She called me back, but I did not answer. I let the call go to my answering machine.
Backtracking To Save Herself
Rain called back several times, but I could not even pick myself up from the floor. In her messages, she did not apologize at all for her words. Instead of apologizing, she actually scolded me for giving her the silent treatment! She deflected and projected onto me that I needed to be the bigger person and not throw a tantrum. I thought, “Lady, what?!???” I was in utter disbelief! I stopped crying just to gather myself to think about what I had just heard her say.
Because I would not answer the phone, she texted me. Her devaluing from the phone conversation quickly became love bombing comments to win me back. She tried everything to get me to respond by admonishing me to think about the good times we had as the best of friends. Then she talked about HER stress. She blamed her response to me on her stresses … particularly the stress of moving.
After I calmed down a bit to clear the tears away from my eyes, I reasoned with myself that something must have been wrong with me and that maybe I had made more of a big deal about her comments to me than there needed to be. So the next time she called me, I answered. I listened to her, but I never said a word to her in response.
She seemed to readily admit to me that she was selfish. She literally said that she only cared about herself at that moment because she was the one who had the stress of moving. She said that I was selfish by bringing up my problems to her during a stressful time in her life. She gave absolutely no apology and no remorse. All she did was cast and project blame. If she was at fault, then I had to be at fault too [and more so].
What she was more concerned about, however, was whether I was going to help her begin the process of moving the next day. She had two days left in her apartment. She said that I could not give up on her now when everyone else had let her down. Because I had agreed to help her, I told her that I would, but I was emotionally spent and hung up the phone with her last words being that she “loved me”.
Rain had only backtracked with her words to save herself. It was still all about her. I ended up feeling more depressed than when I first called her. My heart felt broken. I wondered how she was really my friend. I did not realize at the time that a narcissist is a friend to no one. Friendship with a narcissist is all an illusion.
The Day After The Rain
That episode with Rain left me completely drained and broken at heart. I cried into the night, and I fought back a faucet of tears the next day. I had promised to assist Rain with some last minute errands in regards to her move, but I was simply not desiring to even be near her. My heart, my spirit, and my soul were crushed. My eyes were literally swollen from crying so hard and for so long.
My head was still spinning from all that had transpired in conversation regarding all the things that Rain had said to me. Her actions were unthinkable to me because I was supposed to be her friend. How could a friend break down another friend’s spirit on purpose? I did not understand, but I did not have time to understand because I had promised her I would assist her with her moving.
On my drive to her apartment, I could not stop crying. I still felt such deep, deep hurt. I did not want to face Rain at all. In fact, I could only describe my emotions as me being in a state of post traumatic stress. The thought of interacting with her terrified me. I was going to be in the presence of someone who had annihilated me with a grenade of damaging words. I could not just pretend that I was okay.
When I showed up to Rain’s apartment to pick up a few items, she was literally hanging out by the pool with two of her neighbors. I thought, “So much for being stressed about moving.” She did not appear to be stressed at all. She and the two neighbors were just lounging on chairs with drinks by their sides. She did not seem to have a care in the world – not even a “I need to be packing because I am moving” care.
As I walked up on her and her neighbors, I felt like I was disturbing a moment. When Rain saw me, she introduced me as her friend to her neighbors. I cut into the small talk and asked to gather the items she needed me to take with me. I was in no mood to socialize. I actually had no energy to do so. The wind had been knocked from underneath my sails the day before. My mindset was to be short and to the point.
At first, Rain proceeded to ignore me as if I had not said a word. I realized that she was stonewalling me because she could not face me. I felt that she was using her neighbors as a buffer against having a confrontation with me. I suppose she thought I had things to say to her about our previous phone call, but I was too tired to deal with her.
I did not have the energy to discuss anything with her. I just wanted gather the things I needed from her and then go. So I told her I would just go to her apartment and wait for a few moments before I decided to leave. My response to her her seemed to baffle her. I had reacted to her in a very robotic and cold way. I was not my normal jovial self.
When she finally reached her apartment as I waited, neither of us said a word to each other regarding the episode the day before. Instead, she nervously gathered her things. She did small chit chat which I did not respond to at all. I remained quiet. I was so internally hurt that I was unable to interact with her. I did not intend to deliberately grey-rock her in the moment, but that is what happened because I was extremely limited with my responses to her.
I immediately recognized that her giving me items she found among the things she was throwing away as a weak attempt to apologize to me for her actions without actually saying that she was sorry. I politely replied “thanks”. I did not know at the time that short responses to a narcissists was a method victims and targets of narcissistic abuse used to minimize conversation. Yet, my responses were only limited because my heart was broken inside. I sincerely could not have responded in the normal way.
All while Rain was gathering and boxing other items she expressed that she wished that I could understand how stressed she was about moving. My lack of engagement in her one-sided dialogue indicated to her that I was not interested in conversation. As she gave me the boxed items, I turned to leave the apartment without responding. Her last words to me were “I hope I can count on you for tomorrow’s moving day.” I simply responded “yup” and never looked back at her as I walked out and shut the door.
My Voice Unchained 