Yes And …
It can be the best thing that ever happened to you, and it can be the worst. It can be something you’re grateful for, and it can something you regret. You can love him and you can hate him. The trick, my darling, is learning to hold space for both.
Was it good or was it bad? I swim circles around my black or white thinking. I try to make sense of something that will never compute. The person who (allegedly) loved me the most is the person who tried to destroy me.
The good memories are where I get stuck. Laying in bed together on a rainy day. Morning routines with pour-over coffee, fresh-pressed green juice, meditation cushions, overnight oats with crunchy peanut butter. I remember the way he looked into my eyes and made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Then I remember what it was like to wake up next to him when he was punishing me. Cold, cruel, heartless.
The juxtaposition is keeps my mind in a spin cycle. Turning the pieces over and over in a frothy, messy soup. Cognitive dissonance, the official psychological jargon.
With a narcissist, the pendulum swings very quickly. A beautiful day turns into a nightmare. A dream vacation turns into packed bags on the corner outside the hotel. A romantic dinner turns into a heated public display.
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I want him to be one or the other. Not Jekyll and Hyde. Just Jekyll would be easier — you are a monster, period. I would still be hard on myself for choosing you, for missing the signs. But it would feel cleaner. I’ve diagnosed you, sir, and your soul is not pure.
The problem is, I did see you. You’re a scared little boy trapped inside the body of a man. A hurt little kid who didn’t learn to manage your emotions and now they erupt in ways that are destructive and scarring to those you love the most. You’re not a sophisticated, calculating sociopath — you’re not even aware of your own disillusion.
But that compassion ignites a hope in me that will not die. He is not all bad, it says. He could change, it tries to convince me. The wisdom in me shakes my head — sadly, it’s not on the table. But that little fire smolders. It grabs onto the memories and eats them for fuel. It launches a carousel of images in my mind. Wet hair, cooking together, the safe space I curled into night after night. The smell of him a visceral affront to my senses. His eyes piercing the celestial space behind my eyes. Push it down, replace, reframe.
Think of something bad, I reprimand myself. The image of him standing over me, shattered on the kitchen floor. The unimaginable cruelty when he left me, again and again, in puddles of tears. “I can’t help you.”
You betrayed me. You promised to accept me as I am. You swore you loved me as I am, that you would never ask me to change. That day along the coast in Pacific Beach, skipping over rocks. I’m attracted to assholes, I said. Maybe you should have told me then. I wish I would have listened.
