Just Like My Dad
I loved The Expert, and I considered her to be my best friend. Although I had other friends, The Expert was with whom I shared much of my life experiences. Although I couldn’t share the depths of me with her, I was able to still tell her quite a lot about my life. Unfortunately, as I spent more time in her presence, I learned to share a lot less with her. I was more her friend than she was mine.
Oddly, The Expert reminded me a lot of my dad. Little did I realize just how much until her continuous devaluing of me began to get to me. I literally kept questioning myself regarding who she reminded me of in terms of another person. Then it hit me that she was just like my dad. They literally embodied the same personality. Both are charismatic, supportive, and speak with boldness and candor.
Just like my dad, The Expert was a professional when it came to taking me through devaluation. If she was not pleased with something I’d done or said, she’d be sure to strike me down with words to pierce my heart. My dad was the same way at some points in my life. (He’s very different with me now.) I often wondered how one could be so supportive but still chew me up and spit me out like my feelings didn’t matter.
Like my dad, The Expert could be really mean to me. There seemed to be a need for her to make me feel bad about even existing. Yet, there was also an equal need to make sure that no one else was around when she devalued me. My dad was the same way. There were times that I questioned whether The Expert truly liked me as her friend. I wasn’t always so sure. If I didn’t do things the way she wanted them to be done or if I didn’t say what she expected to hear, she’d give me her silent treatment or she’d ridiculed me for my words and choices.
Choosing Sides
I had not shared a lot about my parents with The Expert. I told her just enough in the same way she shared about her family with me. It angered her that I didn’t have as many good things to say about my mother compared to my father, despite the fact that both of them were emotionally abusive towards me. Nevertheless, The Expert complained about this to me incessantly and embarked on making my mother out to be a saint whenever possible.
Mind you, both my parents are narcissistic, and there are varying times when one could be worse than the other in terms of their narcissistic abuse towards me. However, my mother is a diagnosed narcissist. She has the disorder (among other coexisting disorders). I always experienced narcissistic abuse from both my parents on varying levels. Although both my parents were covert in terms of their abuses against me, when I was a child, my father seemingly supported me a little more. So I was always more stunned when he caused me emotional pain. I knew what to expect with my mother because she moved within a pattern.
However, The Expert always spoke highly of my mother. She always chose my mother’s side even though she’d never met her and even though I’d shared very little of my experiences regarding my mother with her. I thought this was strange because she had met my dad and seemingly behaved as if she thought highly of him in his presence but not when she was alone with me. In fact, with me, she always thought I placed my dad on a pedestal. This often caused me to feel conflicted without knowing exactly why, being that I was somewhat distant with both my parents because of their toxic behaviors towards me.
Anyway, The Expert always reminded me so much of my father when it came to her devaluation of me. The stings of her words compared to the stings I’d experienced with my dad’s words when I was devalued was always the same type of pain, and I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out why that was the case. Perhaps it is because for the longest time, I was in a state of love bombing with both my dad and The Expert that when I was devalued by them, I was stunned into pain, whereas, with my mother, I always knew what to expect.
Exhausted By Narcissistic Abuse
Needless to say, I found that I gained rest whenever I was not around The Expert. Being around her could be so exhausting, and I always questioned and doubted myself. She gaslighted me frequently. She accused me of stealing things from her when that was never the case. I came to realize that she pitted her children against me to the point that they would make rude remarks about me to each other within my presence. In fact, her children went from being my biggest fans to becoming my silent enemies. When I was being devalued by The Expert, her children devalued me too.
Around the time that The Expert became involved in a negative situation to which she attempted to have me bless but I did not approve of, I was contemplating how to end our friendship. I was in an extraordinary amount of emotional pain much of the time regarding our connection to each other, and I found that the more time I had to be around her, the more time I spent wanting out of the friendship.
Although I loved The Expert and her children dearly, I hated the pain I felt in terms of their devaluation of me. I found it often hard to process. So much of their devaluation felt like their extreme hatred of me. I truly didn’t know what to do, and it didn’t help that we attended the same church for a while. So, in terms of walking away from the friendship, I first made strides in choosing to walk away from the church. It was a toxic environment too.
The friendship with The Expert lasted an additional four years because I feared letting go of her. I also believed that maybe she’d change, and I just needed to be patient until that change occurred for her. However, the more time I spent in therapy, the more time I spent talking to the therapist about my friendship regarding The Expert. Doing so exhausted me every session. There was always so much stuff to unpack regarding our friendship.
Over time, it became clear that as I healed and worked through depression and anxiety, I had less tolerance for the narcissistic behaviors The Expert and anyone else always exhibited towards me. In fact, The Expert was frequently a reminder of where I’d been regarding parental behaviors of narcissistic abuse that had affected me all my life. The Expert was also a reminder of where I was trying to get to in an effort to heal from that past.
Our Journeys Were Not The Same
The last four years of the friendship was also during the time that I began studying the topic of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. From a spiritual standpoint, narcissism coincided with my study of the spiritual aspects of what was termed the Jezebel spirit and other cohabitating spirits. I needed answers, and I wanted to understand as many aspects to disorders as I could in an effort to free myself.
Something had to give. Instead of me always giving, something else had to give regarding the situation. I was so exhausted from giving all of myself that I felt completely given out. I gave a lot of myself. Despite my own need to grow up and better myself, I did work very hard on healing myself. I prayed. I fasted. I cried out to God. I read biblical stories and passages that I felt closely aligned with my situation.
I desperately tried to correct my flaws. I tried to change to better my friendship with The Expert, but The Expert was never satisfied with me. The more I tried to improve or even thought I had improved, the more she seemed to devalue me. Her devaluation of me became even worse. It was to the point that I began avoiding her at all costs. I no longer wanted to be in her presence, and even sadder was that I no longer wanted to be in her children’s presence too.
When The Expert became involved in a negative situation which I did not condone but attempted to support her through as a means of being there for her, it was then that I realized that I had changed for the better. It’s hard to explain it except to say that it was during that difficult time in my friendship with The Expert that I realized I had been establishing boundaries with her the healthier I started to become because of my time in therapy.
As a matter of fact, the healthier I became emotionally, the more The Expert lit into me with her devaluation. It actually became more obvious to me that she had lost her control over me. Although there were other situations going on in her life to which she could not control, she could no longer control me either. I said “no” more often. I also chose myself in terms of meeting my own needs more often. It’s as if I drew a line in the sand, and that line became a turning point in my friendship with The Expert.
So, The Expert pulled out all the stops to make sure that I would feel pain for establishing boundaries against her. For her good measure, she increased her devaluation tactics against me. In doing so, she even used her children, her friends, and some of her relatives to rally negative words and negative behaviors against me. It was some of the most loneliest times I’ve felt in my life.
I cried over the person The Expert had become without realizing that was the person she’d always been. There was a desire within me to hold on to her and the friendship at all costs, but there was more of a desire within me to be free at all costs too. For the most part, I felt that my life depended so much more on being free. So, I chose freedom. I chose to walk away, and it was one of the hardest things that I ever had to do regarding someone I felt I loved so much.
I valued what I considered to be my friendship with The Expert. I admired her and loved her dearly, but I had given all that I could give to the friendship. In return, I received a lot of internal pain. It seemed that everything that went wrong in the friendship was always my fault. The Expert never took any responsibility for her faults, and she never apologized to me for her wrongs against me. The friendship exhausted my will to continue into it, and I no longer believed that I had a purpose within her life nor she within mine. So, after much prayerful consideration, I cut the cord of connection away from her.
One evening I announced to The Expert my decision to terminate our friendship. I gave her my reason which was simple and quite clear. “Our journeys are no longer the same. We’re moving in different directions. So it’s time for me to go a different path without you.” To say she was stunned is an understatement, and there were great attempts on her part to steer me clear from my decision, but once my mind is made up, it’s a done deal. There was no doubt that she knew this too. I said my goodbyes, told her I’d always love her, and I wished her well.
Once the friendship was over, I cried a great heaving sigh of relief. I had been set free. I knew I would experience The Expert’s devaluation of me no more, and I could freely move on without such a weighted attachment within my life. Despite the freedom, for nearly a year, I mourned what I considered to be a great friendship. Like the death of a loved one, I felt grief in waves regarding the death of the friendship. It was a hard time.
As I continued to heal, I realized that I was actually mourning the loss of a trauma bond. I missed the highs and the lows of the friendship because the cycle of narcissistic abuse had always been what I was accustomed to in even my familial relationships. I had to release that trauma bond. I had to heal my emotions. It took a spiritual strength for me to do this. I also had to forgive The Expert and myself, and I had to let go of my anger regarding how things occurred for me and for her. It wasn’t an easy road of healing, but it was worth it when it was all done.
The Expert had knowingly and unknowingly taught me a lot. Over the next several years after my break away from The Expert, I’ve run into her quite a few times here and there. Each time, I’ve always felt happy to see her, and sometimes we’ve even hugged each other. Our conversations have even easily fallen back into a familiar place, but I don’t feel quite the same way about her anymore. Nothing is there. There is a final resolution in knowing that I am done.
Although I’ve taken note of a gleam within The Expert’s eyes when we’ve run into each other as if she is searching within my eyes for a spark that she can hoover me, I think she has known with each encounter that I am done with what was once our friendship too. I can never go back, and I don’t want to rekindle. I just wish her and her family well. Our journeys are not the same.
My Voice Unchained 