I took a detour down memory lane. This detour was supposedly my way of checking in to see what is going on in the world that I might be missing, but truly it was an indication of my desire to see how well the narcissists of my past are getting along without me. That was a wrong move and the detour that I should not have taken simply because I already know that life moves on … even for narcissists.
A word of advice … It is never a good idea to do this to yourself. It is a waste of time. I will admit, however, that my curiosity got the better of me, and I could not resist. The only place to find all of the narcissists, flying monkeys, enablers and other toxic personalities of my past in one place is Facebook. So I headed to the site under the premise that I was finally going to delete my account for good since deactivation never really deactivates it.
Upon my arrival to the site, I was inundated with a slew of messages and notifications. I had messages from a host of flying monkeys and a few narcissists including my family, but I did not open them. My friends’ lists was noticeably smaller. I have not been active on the site in nearly two years. I checked around the site, and everything on the site itself regarding what I would normally see on my timeline appeared the same.
All in all, it was the same people posting the same stuff as if life remains the same even while moving forward. The only news that I was struck by was seeing that a former supervisor from my former place of employment had died a few weeks ago. Since I am no longer friends with anyone in the world of work, I would never have known this news even though I had several unopened messages from several people in my inbox.
Needless to say, I read a few posts in dedication to this former supervisor, and I felt distant as if I were peering through a window from the outside looking in even though this was probably one of the nicest supervisors I had the pleasure of knowing. Although there was a sadness that I felt about this former supervisor’s loss of life because he was indeed a empathic person with a great heart, I felt detached from having lived that experience as if it was so far away and such a long time ago.
I feel like I am currently in another zone in life. I have begun more than a new chapter; I am attempting to begin a new book. New books cannot begin when I am still attempting to recapture moments from the last pages of the book of my old life. Essentially, that is what this all boils down to now. Facebook represents my old life. There is no one really on the site that I can even call a true friend to me. They are all attached to narcissists that I have opted to cut out of my life. So I cut them out too.
Anyway, I made my progression through reading different posts in my timeline until I came upon posts by three narcissists I had cut out of my life within succession of each other nearly a year ago. Seeing their posts and pictures brought a level of grief to my eyes that I did not completely understand at that moment. I say my eyes because I could feel tears well up within my eyes without feeling an inner sensation of sadness. It was strange, but I allowed myself to experience the moment.
I looked at the pictures of these narcissists and wondered how such a seemingly short passage of time that has not even been a complete year could have created so much visible change. Each of these narcissists appeared to be aging in some of their pictures while others showed them to be smiling, happy, and having the time of their lives. Yet, the closer I looked at some pictures, the more I realized that I was seeing some of their pictures beyond the masks they wore in other pictures.
These narcissists have aged tremendously to the point that I looked at myself in the mirror wondering if time has not been as kind to me either. In fact, each of these narcissists appeared tired and even sad. For whatever reason, I felt immediate grief. It was not the type of grief that overcomes me when I miss a person; however, it was the type of grief I feel when I realize that the life I had with the person was nothing more than a lie.
Yet, painfully, I felt even a bit of grief for each of them because of the things that I know about them personally. They have etchings of secrets that I could have had the ammunition to use against them if I was anything like them, but instead are secrets about them that I held within my core and carried around with me attempting to pray for, absolve, and alleviate on their behalf in an attempt to understand and help them. I was grieved more or less because I realized that I still love these people even though I chose to walk away.
Yet, like what I have known about other narcissists in my life, they have no real love for me. The concept of the word love itself is incomprehensible even to the vast majority of people whether mental health issues and disorders affect their lives or not. Like my mother, these narcissists echoed something to me in their posts that I could not help but be painfully aware of in the moment. I was immediately struck by the fact that there was never any indication that either of them ever had a true friendship with me aside from the fact that we are in each other’s friendship lists on a site and aside from the fact that they were once in my life.
I went through post after post, and there was no mention of me as if I had never been a part of their lives. There was no liking of my comments to them or responses back to me in kind. I seemed to have been responded to less than the people they claimed to dislike. Although I had acknowledged them on their special days – birthdays, anniversaries, and recognitions, none of them ever gave me any such acknowledgements on any of my special days. In fact, they rarely even liked the bulk of my posts. It made me wonder how I was even their friend.
Even though I had noticed this lack of involvement with me in the past with them and other former frenemy narcissists on the site, it did not penetrate me as much as it did in this particular moment. I was overwhelmed with an unspeakable grief as if there was some profound truth that I needed to face. Thus, I concluded that just as life goes on, life also goes on for narcissists even when a certain narcissistic supply is no longer in the picture. These narcissists moved on because I was never in the picture in the first place.
So my absence is not an absence to anyone in their social media lives except for their immediate friends and family members who knew me as being a part of their lives. It would best be to explain my absence by simply not acknowledging it so there is never any indication to anyone that I am actually missing. But those are my thoughts which does not mean that this is how it really is for them. I do not know one way or the other. I just know what I saw, and what I saw spoke volumes to me in the harshest way, but I know that even in this there was a purpose for me to understand.
These narcissists have all moved on, and I am no longer in remembrance, and even if I am, it does not matter. In their eyes, my worth was only valuable to them as I provided them with endless narcissistic supply. Once the supply is gone, so is my worth to these narcissists. Because they masked their true intentions towards me throughout their so-called friendships to me, I never really saw my true value in their eyes.
Narcissists have no object permanence. Out of sight for narcissists also means out of their minds. I would like to believe and ponder over whether I had any relevance to their lives in meaning, but I know this crazy thinking is time wasted and means more time creating for myself additional heartache. The reality is that narcissists move on and so does life. It was all evident within their posts from the time I exited their lives until their current posts. They have always given the appearances of happy lives, and this ruse continues on in their posts. I was never mentioned or even pictured like their other “friends” or narcissistic suppliers.
Yet, I would have believed myself to be these narcissists’ most prized possession of narcissistic supply the way they all came after me when they suspected I was going no-contact. When I made it personally known to them that I was shutting them out of my life for good, all but one attempted a hoover. So I believed myself to personally mean something to them, but today I faced the truth that this is not the case. Narcissists only hoover because they believe their targets are stupid enough to allow these narcissists back into their lives to continue the damage and ultimately finish them off for further devastation.
The truth of the matter is that narcissists continue to live their lives, gather upon themselves flying monkeys, enablers, and other sources of narcissistic supply. Even if I was prime supply, I was still replaceable. I was always replaceable. They triangulate for the purpose of letting targets know they are replaceable. Narcissists keep as much supply around them as possible not because of the targets’ choice to leave but because of the narcissists’ choice to discard.
I believe narcissists are always on guard and ready when any narcissistic supply leaves them because they are always networking for additional supply at all times. I was no one special, and perhaps that is the sad realization for me. I was no one special … and as I repeat this over and over to myself after scrolling through their pages seeing that there had never been a shred of moments where I even existed, I know that life moves on, and so do narcissists. So I must move on too.
It is time I delete my account for good.
My Voice Unchained 