Surviving the mask.
By: Aileen Margot
Tags: Narcissism, Happy Endings, Abuse Survivors, Abuse, Life Stories

Surviving the mask.

I nearly broke my entire being trying to understand my ex, who was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

I never really knew what hit me. In the beginning there were flags, not just red ones. All different coloured flags. I never quite knew where I stood. I never knew why I couldn’t just walk away. Something inside of me felt sorry for this man, and I had this insatiable desire to save him. Save him from being someone I thought was merely a product of his childhood. Boy, was I so very very wrong. This guy didn’t have a bad childhood. In fact, it was probably better than mine. It took time for me to realise that he would literally bad-mouth ANYONE in his life, as long as it gave him attention and the supply he feeds off the most, sympathy.

I became his supply. In the sense that he started manipulating how everyone perceived me. Every single thing he did or said in front of my friends, family, even strangers, was calculated, deliberate and with one intention: to make sure I came across as a monster that poor him was “saddled" with.

This guy moved in with me. He didn’t pay rent. He didn’t buy groceries. I bought all his clothes. I didn’t gain a partner. I unknowingly adopted a child. A child that had such a deep resentment towards every fibre in my being that I started believing that the problem must lie with me. I mean, it had to be me right? No normal human being would stay with someone they treated so terribly unless that person deserved it, right? WRONG!

I’m not even sure where/how/when the constant gaslighting began. But I do remember having to go to hordes of psychiatrists to find out “what was wrong with me". Even when a psychiatrist told me straight to my face that this man is a Narcissist and will destroy my life, my friendships, my support system, I just couldn’t comprehend it. Surely there must be something that I could say or do or if I just showed him endless love, supported his every whim, surely then he would see that life is a good place, people are good and then he would strive to be better. Oh, he did some striving alright, but not in the direction I thought.

People laugh when I tell them what it was like living with this person, the person who put me in hospital several times, the person who I had a child with, the person who ultimately discarded us completely for a new life. Was that enough? No. This same person re-entered our lives, not in the form of a relationship, this person, who had absolute freedom to be with someone else, move on, start fresh, this person who had no logical motive to think that I would be a threat to his new, fabricated life, this person tried to kill me. In front of our child.

This is honestly the shortest possible version I could ever tell. The full story would take me months to write. I would need to go back to therapy to go through everything because I battle to seperate emotion from the memory. But I was silent for long, too long, and it nearly cost me my life, and if this could serve as a warning to anyone else who is in a situation that sounds like this and possibly save them from the destruction it will ultimately crush their life with, then I will be happy. Nobody should ever have to experience this.

He didn’t just target me, he tried to wipe out my daughter from a previous relationship and his own child too. He shoved pills in their birthday cakes, he would leave our toddler in his unlocked car in dangerous areas. He drugged my eldest so that she couldn’t intervene when he attacked me.

The day I nearly lost my life, this person was under the impression that I was unconscious. I was not.

I will never forget the moment the mask fell. The ultimate mask. He had several backup masks through the years. But when that final mask slipped off, I will never forget the way his eyes turned black, his entire face seemed to just…distort. I knew, in that moment I knew, I needed to get as far away from this person as possible, more importantly, I needed to get my children as far away from this person as possible. He was going to kill us.

So we ran. We ran far. But not before he made the ultimate scene at the place I was staying. Not before the police came (for the 8th time I might add) and threatened to arrest ME. He had accused me of stealing his belongings. This final power move ended up being to his own detriment. By this time I had suffered years of abuse. I was ill. I had had a heart attack. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Mallory Weiss Syndrome. I was living with PTSD and Panic Disorder. I was being tested for everything under the sun. I was vomiting blood. I was inflamed. My joints were swollen. I believed I was dying. Neighbours started coming out of the woodwork to tell the police about how he would take our daughter for a walk, and pop in, to tell them all about what a horrible person I was, how abusive I was, how my children were terrified of me. The neighbours saw the truth. At last. Each of them had been told a different story. Nothing added up. I was contacted by a social worker who assessed him, I was told to get as far away from him as possible, that he was incapable of feeling emotion. The police advised the same thing, even though I had an ongoing court case against him for domestic violence, which had been postponed several times while he walked around free to do as he pleased. They told me that I would be stuck there for up to five years, fighting him in court. I did not have any energy left. Our small daughter randomly piped up “why does daddy put poison in mommy’s food?”. This guy, this stranger that I had allowed to come into my home, had TOTALLY overlooked the fact that our child could speak and relay things. He viewed her as an object, nothing more. And he actually told her what he was putting in my food whenever he did dinner, because he literally did not think she would say anything. In his mind she was still the baby that couldn’t communicate. Everything made so much more sense. The decline in my health finally made sense.

A friend of mine helped me escape with the few belongings I had left. She was our angel, our beacon of light. I can honestly say that without this incredible woman, I would not be here today. And worse, my children might not be here either. She has taken care of us. She has listened. She has been our rock. I owe her my life.

I am now on quite the cocktail of medication for my heart, blood pressure, hernia, to name a few. My health is nowhere near what it used to be. But I am here. I am alive. My beautiful children are alive. And we will be okay. As a matter of fact, I refuse to believe that we will be anything less than great.