Narcissists

I like to call him, “my final narcissist.” He was the last boyfriend I ever had. He courted me for a year and I let him because he said he wanted to be my friend. 

I had begun learning about narcissism and codependency by the time he called to express his desire to spend a weekend with me, I asked him, “are you an alcoholic or a narcissist to be this drawn to me, because I’m solidly codependent and that’s how this works.” He said that he might be a bit of an alcoholic, but he didn’t think he was a narcissist (though he admitted some people had called him that.) 

The next few weeks we were together. I really liked him because he was my age, and that’s what I had previously considered was the problem with the other two boyfriends I’d had since my divorce. 

The relationship was beautiful in its ugliness. He didn’t smell good and he mansplained everything like it was going out of style. There wasn’t really much good about him, and I’m ashamed to say that I loved him because of how much he liked me. Time with him in my world was mostly okay, but his world was dank and smelled like stale weed and mildew and his closest friends were drinking buddies who sat around drinking and smoking weed on comfy couches or the floor. 

His entire life was shit, and he was looking for an out. They call it “hobosexual” and joke that nobody falls in love faster than a narcissist who needs a place to live. Within two months of dating he told me that he’d quit his job and was coming to live with me for the entire month of March. 

I told him no, and that was the beginning of the end for us. He became critical and vulgar. His volatility amused me at the time because I’d been reading about narcissism, and it was obvious he was projecting his shit onto me. 

I know we like to throw the label “narcissist” around like it’s a run of the mill insult, and it is. It can be a label for anyone who’s self absorbed (I’m looking at myself now). But narcissistic personality disorder- true narcissism- has some very unique behaviors. 

He asked me if I wanted to know his biggest secret. I said no because I was worried that he, too, might be a murderer. He told me anyway, it was too good to keep secret. He was a GOD, sometimes. 

The god had been abused as a child. He had sought solace in a world that he’d invented, where he felt safe, far from reality. This is how narcissists are born- a reality too horrible to face brings them to create a false reality, in which they are the god, the creator. 

On the night we finally broke up, I’d been too busy to talk to him the night before because my friend and I had taken my son and his friend to see Panic! At the Disco in Oakland and we were busy eating grilled cheese sandwiches. The next night, my final night, I went to see a friend’s film premiere at the mystic theatre in Petaluma. 

I wound up hanging out with the wonderful bartender, Kat, drinking shots of Fernet and when he called me at nine, I was still out. It infuriated him that I was still out, truly enjoying life two nights in a row without him. 

I was home by midnight, but he accused me of having abandoned my son (a teenager, whom I’d left home with his favorite Indian food and who was asleep by eight because he was tired from the concert the night before). He was projecting. He’d abandoned his son on the east coast and come out west to be a private chef for a basketball player.

So I added it up and realized that the god complex, the projecting, the inability to respect boundaries, the need for control, the love bombing, him trying to move in with me so suddenly, the fact that he truly believed that every woman he knew was secretly in love with him (I knew some of these women and they assured me this was not the case) and the fact that I couldn’t stand to be around him sober were good enough reasons to run away. 

He told me that he loved me and he wanted me to change so that we could be together and be happy, because we were soul mates. This change included never going anywhere without him. 

I blocked him on everything, and returned all of his belongings that he’d left at my house via mail the next day. I knew that he would have a new girlfriend soon, and she would be his soul mate, and I would be forgotten. Narcissists can’t be single. 

I was soon coupled again too, with a therapist I’d found while sitting in the parking lot outside hopmonk in the rain. It was no coincidence that I had attracted this shell of a man. It was time for me to stop blaming the alcoholics and narcissists for taking over my life and start working on myself. 

I embarked on a two year journey, the first of which I vowed to remain single, the second of which I vowed to stay single and sober.  This is the third year, and I’ve stepped it up to single, sober, and self love. 

A narcissist will try to blame everything on you and they’re half right. All of the horrible things they do are their responsibility, but it’s really all your fault for allowing it. I should have walked away from my final narcissist when he was hours late for our first date. I should have broken up with him after the road rage accident the next day. There were so many red flags that I chose to ignore. This will be my final murderer, narcissist, addict or alcoholic, either because I’ll learn to do better, or because I’ll be just fine on my own.