The Beauty And The Narcissist
Tags: Life Lessons, Relationships, Narcissism, Psychology, Love

Part 1: The Truly Uncomfortable Introduction

How do I start this? Hello..?

I guess I’ll just stumble through this, like most things these days.

My name is Lauren, but I prefer Lo. That’s about all I’m 100% sure of these days.

Here are some things that have been told to me or that I observe with my crooked mind:

I have a rather entertaining combination of personality disorder traits I am 29 years old as of 2/27 I have naturally brown hair and brown eyes (currently have blue in my hair) I live in Pennsylvania I have little to no sense of self I generally have extremely toxic relationships I have a dog named Prince and a cat named Max I think walking barefoot in the rain is better than therapy I got Gastric Bypass in March 2019 I think I hate myself…

As I’m getting ready to explain the events, its kind of sinking in how ridiculous I have allowed life to get. Whatever. Here it goes..

I started writing this on Thanksgiving, 2020. Due to a worldwide pandemic, life is far from normal and these holidays are especially lonely. To be completely honest, my brother and my dad died 12 days apart in 2019 and I don’t even care for the holidays anymore. I spent last year’s holidays in a depression fog and this year I’m conveniently dating someone that has what seems like a compulsion to ruin everything with any kind of importance to it.

The Build Up

My current significant other is not a bad guy, he’s just not really in this reality all the time. I know that we should never diagnose someone, not that we could anyway, but I was just looking for something that explained his behaviors. I can be very emotional, but I also have the ability to make sense of almost anything. So, if I can’t make sense of it then there’s either no logic behind it, or it’s completely void of emotion — that is what pushed me to look into my boyfriend’s behavior. I’ll explain more about that later; I’m trying to write about my experiences with him in-depth, but it’s so freaking emotionally trying that I have to take frequent breaks.

So, what does that all have to do with Today? I’m glad I pretended you asked. We had planned on spending the holiday together. I was to cook at my apartment and bring everything over to his apartment, where he was supposed to have decorated for us, and eat with him. Sounds really freaking cute, right? I thought so, too. His job was supposed to provide the turkey and he was also going to get the desserts. To really contribute to this ‘Build Up’ I need to go back a few days. Well, about a week ago my tire started to lose air. I was avoiding getting it fixed so I would just put air in it every other day. On the Monday before Thanksgiving, my boyfriend decided to take it to get repaired. He did not tell me where he was going, just asked to borrow my car for an hour. I said okay, and 5 hours later he came back saying they could only fix one of the holes?????? I’m sorry, what?! How many holes were there? Well, not just that, but now because they could not patch both holes, I’m told I need all 4 tires replaced as they never replace just 1 tire on an all-wheel-drive car. Fucking great.

I was really annoyed with him, because I know if I disappeared with his car for that long and didn’t even handle what I was supposedly handling he would lose his mind; he often “loses his mind” over nothing anyway, so given a reason and I’d never hear the end of it. Continuing on — he asked me to go to his house after my shift was done at 11 pm, I happily agreed even though it is really inconvenient to go there when I have animals here. However, he usually gets his way — at least with me. I know! I’m really a pushover these days.. BUT! I swear if you knew me last year, this would shock you. Where were we? Oh! Right.. Heading to the humble abode of my unrequited love. He got there a short while before I did as he left before my shift was over and I needed to shower. I come in behind him and we just hung out for a little bit because he had to leave for work at 3 am. We did some of our typical upper-drugs and performed my typical sexual act on him without getting anything in return — also typical. By 3 am, we parted ways in the parking lot, and, also typical, I did not get a kiss goodbye.

Setting the stage for the petty hellcat that I often am, I decided to speed away from his apartment to make him think about where I could actually be going if I took a different exit. BACKFIRE! My car was driving very weird. I ended up going to a local gas station to just check the air in my tire.. Wait for it… Keep waiting… FLAT! That sucker was at 6 PSI while my other tires were at an uncomfortable 42 PSI (Cold weather suggestion was between 33–36). I was furious. WHERE DID HE ACTUALLY TAKE MY CAR!? Well, he called me while I was fixing my tire and I missed the call twice. Double backfire. He’s now annoyed because he doesn’t know what I’m doing AND I’m not answering. I’m sure you can imagine this call went well. I expressed my discomfort about my tire — he acts even more furious than I am. He swears he will handle it — he will be back from work tomorrow and he. Will. Handle. It. I informed my enraged beau that I could handle this on my own as I wanted to just call first thing in the morning.

I came home and was preparing to fold my laundry when he decided to video chat me and tell me that he knows someone is over my apartment and that I’m a sneak and a whore and a scumbag. I did a video tour of my apartment and sent him all the videos from my security cameras — not enough. Those upper drugs really make him crazy any more. He continued to tell me how much of a scumbag I was so I just ignored him after a while and went to bed.

The next day I woke up and decided I was going to go food shopping on my own and get everything I needed for Thanksgiving. A friend of mine went with me, helped pay for it, carried most of it up to my apartment, and helped me put it away. We sat here and talked for a little bit until she had to go to save face with her own emotion wrecker.

My terror of a man took me through a few ups and downs that day. He never apologized for his behavior the night before — typical. He did think it was a good idea to ask me to be his girlfriend again — not typical. I was so angry that he didn’t even apologize that I blew him off and we fought again. He got back from his work trip around 10 pm and went right home instead of stopping here to get his laundry. He asked me to go to him like I always do. However, my tire was still messed up and I had no way of putting my spare on so I told him no. He eventually showed up at my apartment around midnight, unannounced. It took him about 45 seconds of being in my apartment to notice s blunt end in my ashtray.. “Who did you smoke with, Lauren!?” I told him I didn’t smoke, that my friend did. He immediately wanted to see the videos of said interaction. Well, I saw this as a golden opportunity.

The deal was that I would show him any videos he wanted to see if he admitted to the other things he had been keeping from me for months. I’ll go into more detail about that in Part 3 of this emotional circus. He initially demanded I show him videos or he wasn’t showing me anything — this actually went on for hours. After an entire night and then the whole next day he denied there being anything to tell me. It was after 10 pm on Wednesday that he walked into my apartment(He had taken my spare keys out of my car on Monday and used them to get in my apartment unannounced). He had spent the last hour or so on video chat with me telling me I had someone over so he just had to barge in to prove it — there was no one here. I was working. Ultimately, he caved and told me he racked his brain and was able to think of something he hadn’t told me, but that it really wasn’t a big deal. The thing was about a girl I asked him about already. A common theme here will be my just casually sitting here, minding my business when I’m overcome by a feeling. This particular experience was about a woman from his past that has resurfaced a few times in our relationship. The feeling was that he met up with her behind my back. I confronted him and he assured me he had not seen her in years. Fast forward to our hostile parody of Deal or No Deal, and he was suddenly remembering that on Halloween she contacted him saying she wanted to meet up and he asked her to come over 8x. The confession went like this: He offered to let me read the conversation, refused to let me hold his phone, refused to let me scroll on my own through the conversation, I told him to leave, he sat outside my door begging to come back in for about 20 minutes and was clearly deleting things, I let him back in under the promise that I could go through his whole phone, he complained a few minutes into me looking and took his phone back, agreed to show me a video he had kept from me since April, showed me said video, gave me the phone back, took it back within a few minutes again, never let me really look, proclaimed he no longer had an interest in seeing the videos from when my friend was over, he apologized to me, professed love to me, and I finished my work shift.

We actually fell asleep after my shift was done, and when I woke up I got a shower and woke him up — he told me he left something on his stove. When I tried to wake him up, he didn’t want to go and swore it didn’t matter. What actually happened is that he lied to try to get me over to his house, and after he fell asleep and was comfortable he didn’t want to go anymore but didn’t want to confess that he lied. So, I forced him up and we went. Once we got there I quickly realized the lie and manipulation, but he drove me there so I had no choice but to stay. We stayed up all night until about 7am, it was Thanksgiving morning.

He woke me up at about 130pm like this, “Yoo! Get up!! It’s getting late.” I woke up in a panic and started rushing around. I was hoping to be cooking by then. He didn’t want to take me to the store or to my house, so he told me to take his car. He had an attitude already, but I was trying to ignore it and just wanted to get started cooking. I went to the store for desserts and some other odd ends. By the time I got home, it was 3 pm. I realized that my friend grabbed a 20lb turkey, not at 13lb turkey like I asked and it was still partially frozen. I still hadn’t heard from my Black Knight in deceit stained armor, it was about 330pm before I did hear from him. I told him how stressed I was because the turkey was bigger than I realized, and his response was the ever so supportive “Of course.” This kicked off a pretty nasty argument.

Regrettably, even though he did try to apologize, later on, I would not accept it. I was floored by his attitude and disrespect. I was exhausted over how many times he thought it was a good idea to be ignorant to me when I expressed how stressed I was. I just didn’t really want to deal with his shit anymore. I was done being the punching bag. He decided not to Uber over, I even tried to get him around 630pm but he didn’t respond until almost 8 pm. I didn’t finish cooking until almost 10 pm, and by that point, I was so fed up I just packed everything up and cleaned my apartment. I drove his car back to him around midnight and requested that he drive me home so I didn’t have to pay $45.00 for an Uber, and he refused. He demanded I leave his apartment and he became so enraged that he charged at me. By this point I lost my control, I started screaming at him and saying a lot of things I really wish I hadn’t. He proceeded to smack me in the face, punch me in the head, and spit on me. I told him I would leave once my Uber driver got there as he lived in a really bad neighborhood and it was almost 1 am. This was not acceptable and he told me to leave. I sat in the parking lot for 20 minutes before the driver got there, most of the time my protagonist was texting me telling me to come back in while denying that he ever hit me. He even said, “If you don’t come back in now, we are done.” As if we weren’t already. I know he wouldn’t have taken me home any time soon if at all and I was not subjecting myself to another minute of that. I also needed to go home to take care of my dog.

When I got home, I took my dog for a walk, sat and cried for a bit, and decided to pour my mind out here.

Welcome to the insanity that is my life anymore, and please buckle up for the most ridiculous chapter in the story of my life to date. In the next part I will detail the ways my heart was so full it was busting at the seams.