The Dark Side of You: I Have Issues, But I am not THE Issue!

His hands would mold

My skin of gold

My spirit, He stole

By His constant drivel

His lips, they brushed

My corpse of dust

Animated in lust

At one time, a riddle

He walked away

Unable to stay

Unwilling to say

Why he rid of Her.

***Trigger Warning: Narcissistic Abuse, Physical Abuse.

We’ve been broken up for almost three years now. It’s been two years since we were last intimate. I’ve had contact with you on and off, still searching for answers and sorting out the reality we shared. I’ll admit, I have issues, but as time and distance brings our past into greater focus, I don’t believe I was THE issue.

Here are some telltale signs that convinced me that it is you who needs help:

1. You continue to “pull me in” only to quickly discard me. This is a power play that Narcs use to maintain control by emotionally manipulating and confusing their victim. You have been upset at me for awhile now because I did not tow the line and instead confronted your games “head on” over and over. When we have reconnected, my intention has been to seek closure, question your sincerity, and define my part in our demise. I am beginning to feel that your intention has been to establish control, seek revenge, and to eventually wound me. I don’t like thinking this way, but it’s a pattern I cannot ignore.
2. You’ve contacted me and overtly flirted while with another woman. You have boasted about your lovemaking to her and how she “thinks the world of you”, while in the same breathe, inviting me down to your home to be intimate with you. I declined. You have built me up, while trash talking your girlfriend, thinking it would win me over, and instead it made me less attracted to you. For nearly three years, you have told me you are “not in love with her” and you are breaking up with her in the near future, and yet you are still with her. Once you even mentioned that she is “so in love with you” and thinks that one day you are going to marry her. It is at this point I began to realize that you are playing her, and in that awareness, I feel as if I have been played as well. You are being dishonest to both of us for the supply you need to feed your fragile ego.
3. You declined therapy over and over again. It was something you had promised that you would do, if needed, in order to get me to move back to the state in which you reside. I moved across the country to be with you and all I received were broken promises.  And you never followed through on your promise to go to therapy with me, when things got tough. I was willing to seek help and I pleaded with you to go to therapy with me to no avail.
4. You stonewalled me, refusing to connect during difficult times in my life. It was during these times, when I was struggling at work, was very sick, and was dealing with difficult family issues, that you would not take calls. If you did, it was to reel me in while you were dating another woman. I began to see your disrespect and disregard for both me and her. These times helped to loosen the hold you had on my heart and my life and let go.

And so, It’s time to truly “let go” now and heal.  You messed with my heart and head so badly that it will more than likely take a couple of years until I am ready to date again. I’ve been single now over a year and have had no desire to date.  In future relationships, I will be very slow to trust and give my heart away. I don’t understand someone who can love me the way you did and then leave.

There were a few times when I “got in your face” and asserted control and you physically asserted your control back by choking me, suffocating me with a pillow, pushing me, etc. These times where infrequent, but they still shake me to my foundation. Over the last few years, I brought up the choking incident on several different occasions: while we were in bed, in e-mails, in texts, in conversations. Each time you laughed it off, saying you were acting and trying to intimidate me, that it “wasn’t real”. I shudder now to think if during one of those times I had questioned you, you had “lost it” again, and this time, mortally wounded me.

At one point last year, you sent me an e-mail stating that you were upset that I was guilting you over the choking incident and you sent links to pictures of what a “real choking” looked like. This was another incidence of you never truly taking accountability. I realize now that I should have left you as soon as it occurred, but I was in shock and unable to process the event. In fact, I am still working on processing it. It may never truly compute that you choked me while threatening to put a bullet through my head. So many things over the years have confused me and have kept me doubting my own reality and sanity. It will take a lot of time and energy to shed light on the past so that I can heal, hopefully to never make those costly mistakes again.

You have stripped me down in doubt and fear. I had issues before I met you. I have even more issues now. I was always one to see my issues and want to improve. I was naive and thought everyone was like me in that way. I feel unraveled and isolated in my experience of us. It seems complex, a riddle that is almost impossible to solve. And yet, I am leaving it behind. I am letting it go. I am healing myself. I am forgiving myself and shedding the shame that surrounds us.

I will pray for light. I will pray for the heaviness to dissipate. I will pray for the lightness to return in my step and laughter to release in joy from my lips. I will write it away, sing it away, travel it away, and hike it away. And as I shed you from my skin, I’ll release the shame and the guilt that is binding me from my freedom. My story isn’t over and I am in the midst of great change. I don’t want to be that “chained up little person still in love with you” (Gloria Gaynor, I will Survive). I still have life and love inside me and it’s not going to wait anymore. I’m grateful for the lesson you gave me in self-love. Had I not been gaslighted so badly, perhaps I would have never searched my heart so much. Thanks to the depth of your continual scrutiny and rejection, I’ve had stake out my own self worth and esteem. In the end, you will have been a catalyst for my “Greatest Love of All” (Whitney Houston), self-love! And, I don’t know of any other gift that one can receive in this lifetime that is more valuable than the gift of loving oneself, fully and completely! The gift was mine!