Narcissistic Abuse Survival

The day has come, all of your stuff is packed in boxes, you have a basic written agreement about child sharing, you’ve spoken to your child about the separation and upcoming divorce, people are lined up to help you move, and you’re prepared to start off on your new life without the narcissist. That’s all there is to it… right?

I have a feeling that most of you who have left your narcissist have had these same feelings. That you’re finally free from all of it… the emotional, mental, and psychological damage will stop and you can finally heal and you won’t have to deal with it ever again. I wish this was the case.

The day I left was in fact one of the best days of my life, but on that day I had no idea what was to come. The thing is, when you leave a narcissist, you hurt them, you make them angry. They are revenge seekers, and their mission in life is to make it so you don’t have a life, or at least to make it so the life you do have is completely miserable to the point that you want to end it.

The very odd thing about the day I left was the fact that he helped… My uncle came over with his truck and trailer, and everything I owned wouldn’t fit. So, good ol’ Sly said “I’ll pack up the rest of the stuff in my truck and trailer, and I’ll follow you”. Okay. I thought he was being nice. Rule number one when dealing with a narcissist…. NEVER trust them. This was one of the MANY times he would make it look like he was the nice, helpful one. After all, they have an image to uphold.

We got everything unpacked in my mother’s living room that evening, and over the next few days I periodically took things to my storage unit, and also invested quite a bit of my time for over two weeks helping my mother “fix up” her house. This is part of the story, and the “flying monkeys” part…. so just remember this for later. Years ago my dad started to remodel and fix up the house. He put in tile and laminate flooring, had contractors remodel the entire kitchen, and purchased flooring for the bedrooms and bathroom, but never got around to completing it all before he passed. In both spare rooms there were bare, concrete floors, and quite a bit of “stuff”. I told my mother that I would help with the costs of finishing the projects, along with the bathroom. She agreed. This way my daughter and I would have adequate space to live comfortably, and my mother would get the house that she’d always wanted, and those projects my dad started so many years before would finally be completed.

The next couple of months would give me an introduction to the rest of my life… There were things he brought up, name calling, and just the basic statements and actions trying to make me look like the reason the marriage fell apart and that I was in the wrong on literally everything. This was the start of the REAL mental anguish.

Thanksgiving was celebrated with family on the weekend prior to, and my daughter was with me. Since my daughter will be brought up several times, we need a name for her, so for this blog she shall be named Chloe. Thanksgiving day she was with Sly, as agreed to. The Friday after Thanksgiving is when I started talking to the most wonderful man, who we shall call Jake, who I would end up marrying later on. Christmas photos were taken for the first time with just her and I. Child sharing was agreed upon easily with a 50/50 share time. The divorce process was started, I had my attorney and Sly had his. Christmas went as planned… I spent Christmas eve at my uncle’s house with family and Jake, and the next morning I spent Christmas morning at Sly’s house with just him and Chloe…. for her. Afterwards I packed up Chloe, the Barbie dreamhouse and her bicycle and made our way to my mother’s house where we would finish spending Christmas with my family. Into the new year we went, and it was pretty smooth sailing.

January is a new, fresh start to the year. However, this entire month would be when the proverbial shit hits the fan.

In the beginning of January, it was clear we needed to decide who was claiming Chloe on their taxes as Sly was unwilling to file jointly, and the mediation for the divorce was still months, if not a year away. His withholding was set up in a way that we always had to pay in hundreds, if not thousands every year. I told him I’d claim her and was simply willing to work something out so we could both benefit. His solution, was for us to prepare both ways (singly and jointly) to see who gets the most back, and either way, he’d keep 75% of the return, and I’d get 25%. So, taking a break here, who can tell me how this math adds up? (You can leave a comment) He did make more money, but paid less in taxes. He goes on to say that he gets to keep more because of a tax deduction he gets for paying child support. Even if this were true, he hadn’t paid me a dime to this point. So, when I received all of my tax documents, I filed and claimed Chloe. I gave my attorney full disclosure of this, and it was included in the mediation. Sly took advantage of my niceness, and tried to fight it to just have the control. I am sure this set it up more for him to be angry, as he was losing more and more control. But I was done doing things for him to just get beat up in the end.

Soon arguments would be had over time sharing as there was no parenting plan in place. Sly traveled for work, and usually told me the day of that he had to leave town, which in reality screwed everything up, mainly for Chloe. Mind you, he was and always has been, the one who makes his own schedule and sets the days when he is out of town. In one text he says to me “my schedule just changed 45 minutes ago, I was going to tell you, but I can’t get Chloe tonight”. I voiced my frustration stating that Chloe was expecting to see him, and asked when he planned on telling me, and that this last minute business was not acceptable. He replied with “My shit is work, yours is hanging out with a retard (who let’s be honest [guy he used to work with] makes look good. I can’t change my plans”. I said to him “I don’t have plans. The point is you changing things around all the time neglecting your daughter”. Of course he has a response for everything… And the next texts were very rude and crude going from “I can have her tomorrow through Monday morning if that helps you get your freak on with the motorcycle gang” to “Please, every female associated with a motorcycle gang puts out to all in said club.” to “go ahead keep whoring yourself out to them”. The last one of that evening to me was “accept responsibility as a parent and let dickface know you can’t see him for a few more days. Get off your phone and go be a parent. If I am ever jealous of someone like that, I will commit myself to a mental institution. I don’t want my daughter thinking someone like him is acceptable as a mate.”

Truth be told…he knew nothing about my life, or anything about who was in it. If you’ve ever known a narcissist, they name call constantly and put others down. It makes them feel superior. It’s what they do. The next day those texts continued. The name calling, the belittling, his superiority complex. Calling me a whore, Jake an oompa loompa, and saying that tattoos are the mark of trash. And then the threats. It started with him threatening me that he was going to pull my phone and email records to be used in court, and that he still had the pictures of my journal entries to use against me. Yes, before I left he went through my journals and took photos, and then tried to convince everyone that I cheated on him. He was simply grasping at straws to get to me. In part, it did make me angry, but at the same time a family law attorney will not request or subpoena phone records to “prove” that someone is cheating. He also threatened me on several occasions that he was going to get full custody of Chloe because I was an unfit mother because I was “mentally unstable”. This is one of those times when they use personal information against you. In this case, he used my anxiety against me constantly, saying I needed to be medicated and that I was mentally unstable. If you know anything about a narcissist, they will push you until you react, and sometimes that reaction is their “proof” that you are insane.

There were always disputes about money. He tried to get me to pay half of a $360 vet bill for the two dogs that he refused to let me take. However, he refused to pay any parts of Chloe’s eye doctor visit bill or her physician visit bill when she was sick. Along with all of that, I had to purchase a new nebulizer for her because he kept the one insurance paid for and refused to share it.

On several occasions I was told “your dad would be so embarrassed and disappointed in you”. Funny story is that when my dad was in the hospital dying, Sly promised him he’d take care of me. I brought that up and was told “I only failed because of you. I did the best I could”.

Then my birthday rolls around. It’s the same day every year, however, this year Sly actually remembered it. I got a text first thing in the morning saying Happy Birthday to me, and that he was sorry he didn’t have Chloe call me that moring. When I asked why he was telling me that now, after all these years he replied with “I’ve always remembered it, and I’m sorry if it seemed like I didn’t”. I simply asked why he was all of a sudden being nice… Remember those narcissistic terms that we won’t delve into? What he was doing is what is sometimes referred to as hoovering. He was trying to bring me back in… He said he had been an idiot, and he dealt with things incorrectly. That day, my birthday, he typed up a letter and dropped it off at my mother’s house so I would see it when I got there later in the day. It wasn’t sealed in an envelope, and he told my mother to read it as well. I’ve blocked out what most of it said, even though I still have it with all sorts of other documents in a storage box. His point in doing this on my birthday was for me to remember it. One of a narcissist’s main goals in life is to ruin holidays or special events. But, it basically stated that if I was willing to work out my problems, he’d be willing to go to counseling so we could get back together. He made demands, but in a non direct way. There were things that also insinuated that the problems where only the fault of me, and again my “mental state” was referenced and it was suggested that I go on medication for my anxiety. At the end of the letter it stated to not call him unless I was willing to work things out. I really had a good chuckle out of the letter… and I called him anyway to just laugh at him and ask him what he was thinking. This did not go over so well with him, and he stated to me “if you didn’t want to work on you to save us, then you could have just texted me”.

Then there was Chloe’s birthday party that I had for her that disrupted the entire universe all over again… Sly questioned her about the party and about who was there. She told him Jake and his son were there. And shortly thereafter my phone lit up like the 4th of July. All of a sudden, I am being called despicable, a lying sack of shit, that Chloe shouldn’t be meeting my rebound fling. There was a verbal agreement that he proposed before I left, that (in his opinion) we should not date anyone for at least a year, and once we were dating someone Chloe was not to meet them until at least a year after that. Also she was not going to be permitted to call anyone else ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ or anything close to it. I never agreed to this because it was honestly quite ridiculous. Again, he’s mad because I am moving on with my life.

Usually this is the part where I feel like I have to explain to quite a few people why it seems as though I moved on so quickly. Please keep in mind that I was married to this person for 9 years. The last 3 years or so I slept in the guest room, and just acted the part. We never spoke, and acted like less than roommates. I had dreamt for years what it would be like to actually be with someone who loved and respected me. Truth be told, I could have been looking for some sort of validation, but mostly someone to acknowledge my existence and to love me. So, there’s that….

For at least the next year he would do anything he could to argue and control me. Unfortunately Chloe was, and still is, his pawn. There were arguments about medications. There was a day he wanted to leave her medicine in the mailbox all day until I would be able to drive by and pick it up, all because he didn’t want to see me face to face. A few days after that he’d come to my office to pick up medication from me (while I was alone in the office), get mad at something I asked, pushed me, screamed at me and then left. Thankfully the attorney next door heard everything…

He watched everything I did, and questioned Chloe on everything. There was one day that my mother took her to her dance class, because I was getting her party ready and he demanded to know why. He was never present at any of her classes, so it was completely irrelevant.

Sly is extremely controlling, and he only allows Chloe to do participate in activities if it suits his agenda. Dance was never approved of. However, he signed her up for piano lessons at four years old, and decided to tell me the night before her first class… the day I was supposed to pick her up. I stated “I don’t remember having a conversation about that and we don’t have any kind of an agreement.” He responded with “We discussed it plenty in the past about getting her lessons”. He claimed that we agreed to this, but not dance, that Chloe didn’t have a clue what dance was but really wanted to play the piano, which was not true. It turned into an all night argument, which went into the next few days. He then set her up for twice a week, including the same time frame on Saturdays in which she had dance. Chloe cried the next Wednesday when I picked her up because she didn’t want to go to her lessons. I called the piano teacher and he explained to me that she really was too young to take lessons and that we should reach out again in another year or so. Well, as you can imagine this sparked another argument. Also, his idea of a legitimate piano teacher was someone he found on Craig’s list who “looked trustworthy” and never offered up his last name. But he claimed to have gone to Yale, so that’s good enough, right? A four year old being taken to a man’s house for “piano lessons”, based on an ad found on Craig’s list. Would you guys feel comfortable with this?

I’ve been asked everything from “are you taking your prescribed medication for your mental illness. Just because you haven’t taken it in years doesn’t make your psychosis go away.” to “why are you making up like again like [brother’s ex wife] did to your dead brother? You are [brother’s ex wife]. Probably worse”.

During the week leading up to mediation, Sly was on his best behavior. That March, mediation was an all afternoon affair. But, at the end of the day I felt, again, like it was all over. I was done with him, and now it was legal. Albeit, the documents still needed to be signed by the judge and get filed with the court, and there would be one last hearing to finalize it. But, it was still legal and everything would be okay, right?