Envy doesn’t only come straight from the narcissist. Sometimes, it comes from the people the narcissist pulls into their orbit. These are people who are enablers … their flying monkeys. These are the ones a narcissist will triangulate against you, the ones they use as pawns, the ones who slowly start to mimic you until you don’t even recognize who’s who anymore.
I’ve dubbed her as “the most wonderful narc of them all.” She was magnetic. Charismatic. People adored her. She had a way of drawing everyone in, and for a while, I was one of them. But behind that shining mask was someone fragile, insecure, and deeply cruel. Her narcissistic injuries were like landmines – step on one and she would lash out with venom.
The most wonderful narc of them all had a tactic she loved using, and that tactic was triangulation. She constantly tried to pit me against others. And though I never bent to her games, there was on person who did. This woman became her flying monkey. She became insecure in my presence, and the narcissist fed that insecurity by lifting me up in front of her, only to turn around and chip away at me later.
Before long, this flying monkey began copying me in everything:
- She dressed like me.
- She wore jewelry like me.
- She started carrying herself in the same way.
It was like she had taken my reflection and pasted it all over herself, as though becoming me would win her a permanent place in the narcissist’s favor. It was not only weird, it was unnerving to me.
And then came the discard.
The most wonderful narc of them all erased me from her social media. She untagged herself from every single picture we had together, as though I had never existed. She humiliated me in front of everyone who knew us, then filled her feed with photos of her and the mimic. The replacement. The copy of me.
It crushed me. This was someone who had once called me her best friend. But in reality, that was just the love-bombing stage – the mask she wore before the cruelty came out. And all that time I’d been documenting everything about this toxic situation in my journal because I needed it all to make sense. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t crazy.
When I finally had enough, I cut ties. Quietly. No explanations. No closure meeting. No begging to stay in this narcissist’s orbit. I just stopped showing up. She noticed – and sent me a message: “I guess you’re trying to say we’re not friends anymore.”
The irony of it all. The audacity! This narcissist had discarded me long before I discarded her. She threw me away like trash, and I simply decided not to climb back into the wastebasket.
Years later, I ran into this narcissist’s flying monkey. And to my shock, she was still dressed like me. Still styled like me. Still carrying herself in the same way. She had built an identity off of mine and never stopped wearing the mask she’d borrowed.
That’s when it really clicked: Narcissists don’t just drain you directly. They recruit others to help siphon off your light. And those others may mimic you, replace you, or even try to become you – all while the narcissist orchestrates it in the background.
It’s mimicry. It’s envy. And it’s destruction.
But it also taught me one of the most freeing lessons: Closure doesn’t require confrontation. It doesn’t require me to sit across the table and explain why I’m leaving. Sometimes, closure is as simple as walking away and refusing to step back into the trash heap where they threw you.
My Voice Unchained 