THE NARCISSIST BUILDS A NEW FALSE-SELF!

A CONDITIONED MOVE ONCE MORE, BUT THIS MOVE TURNED OUT TO BE A MUCH MORE USEFUL ONE! POST NO.31/N (A 15 minute read)

If I had thought that it would be a smooth process moving on, it did not turn out like that at all. Once I knew that we had to move and very quickly, I spent my days going round estate agents in the town where we had lived previously. Minus of course, the second one which we had used!!

At last I found something in our established price bracket and whilst it wasn´t brilliant, it did have an outdoor area. That had been high on my list of "must haves" for our new home. It was ground floor and near to the beach; shades of the original plan you might say!

It was all organized and as I mentioned in the last post, my late, elder sister had faxed some of her wage slips to the estate agent´s office and I had been able to pass them off as mine. Next day we arrived in a van with all our gear, me and my nephew both very excited at the prospect of a new home. We hadn´t been unhappy in the last one but we were making the best of a bad situation, that cannot be denied!

On arriving at the estate agent´s office, I was met with dismay as I was told that we could not take the above mentioned apartment. Another agent had already promised it to another couple. "SORRY!" "What else have you got in the same price range?" I asked with great disappointment.

Nothing by the beach, not at that price and so it was that we were shown an apartment in the town area. It had three bedrooms, bathroom, lounge/diner, entrance hall, kitchen, a balcony on the front side and a small gallery on the back side. It was old, it was run down but as we say, "Beggars can´t be choosers!"

And so it was that we moved into this apartment straight away.

LANDING ON YOUR FEET ALWAYS FEELS UPLIFTING!

Having made my decision to take one apartment, I was stymied by the agency but in truth, our new placement turned out to be absolutely IDEAL for my now eight-year-old nephew. We had seen out the end of the summer term at the private English school and were still in the school holiday period. Still owing money to them, I had arranged to pay in dribs and drabs over the summer months.

Once again it FELT like a fresh start. A new opportunity to begin building up and putting the past disasters behind us. No one knew us and we knew no one! A blank canvas you might say! Whoever had lived in this apartment prior to us must have been one of the filthiest people on the planet. There was grease and grime covering the kitchen tiles and the bathroom tiles.

But we set to work, as you do and soon had the place cleaned up. From that point onwards, we found one thing after another that was falling apart or did not work. Sad to say that here in Spain, all of these wear and tear costs fall to the tennant and it was not long before we began what almost became, over the next five years, a complete overhaul!

Initially though we had to make do with the little that was in the apartment and our growing list of possessions. We now had a fridge/freezer and an oven/stove of our own, as well as a new crockery set and cutlery set, along with a set of new saucepans. The kitchen was so small and I can barely believe that I was able to bring out so much that was lovely from such an awful little room.

It was crucial to get installed as quickly as possible and then set about finding a school place for my boy in the September. Here we landed on our feet and found that we had the choice of two out of the three primary schools in that area of the town, both of which were just a ten minute walk from our new home.

I now had a rent contract in my name, a car in my name and a bank account in my name. By total contrast though, the NARCISSIST no longer had a bank account that was operational. His was currently blocked by the tax office! He no longer had a car in his name and he no longer had the responsibility of a rent contract in his name.

The NARCISSIST had slipped off the radar officially speaking and he was to stay undiscovered for the next two years!

PLAYING HAPPY FAMILIES!

The neighbourhood that we had just moved into was made up of four to five floor apartment blocks, many of which were relatively new and these were almost exclusively filled by young families. And YES! It was an IDEAL neighbourhood for the local children.

There were various safe, outdoor areas for children to play, bike, skate, play basketball, etc. as well as the children´s playground. My boy had already begun to make friends with the children living near to us before starting up at his new school and he was settling in very well. I was overjoyed at that!!

In spite of my strong desire to provide my nephew with stability, he was now moving into his eleventh home!!!!! And just eight-years-old!! Is it any wonder that he has become so resilient, just like me? Did he ever get any choice in the matter? NO, of course not! That is the sadness of many children´s lives, isn´t it?

If they had been able to choose, what might they have chosen? Children are always their parents victims, aren´t they? And even though I had his well-being as my priority, I can now see that every decision that was being made, was not being made by free choice. Every decision was conditioned by the one before it!

It is the out of the frying pan and into the fire situation! YES! There is a momentary relief from the agony of the recent turmoil and uncertainty. YES! There is a revival of your hopes that from now on things will begin to move in a forward direction. But you are so wrong sadly!

You are with a NARCISSIST and you are already ENMESHED in his former life which he is avoiding being held ACCOUNTABLE for. There was a change of circumstances though and that was that he began to give his money to me to administer!

At the time I took this to be a sign of him trusting me but of course, that was not the case. He knew that he needed a safe place to live and rebuild his damaged FALSE-SELF. But did he ever give me all his money? That I will never know, though as he has never been honest about anything, I may as well assume that he was leading me to FEEL more secure and that he wanted me to think that he was trusting me more.

That is to say that our relationship was growing, it was progressing, it was moving forward. He will most surely have kept some to himself without my knowledge. If I didn´t know about it, I wouldn´t even know that he had spent it, would I? I would only know about that which he gave me to administer.

All that said, it certainly FELT better to me to be in charge of the finances and the paying of the bills. He literally left everything connected to the home to me from that point on and it continued to be that way until he retired last year. Since then, his money is HIS money and it is not to be used by me of course!!

My nephew and I had another new change of schedule with his new school hours. At this Spanish primary school he started at 9am, stopped for lunch at 12.30pm, he then had to be back for 3pm and would continue until 4.30pm. I am so relieved that the school was only a short walk away as whilst my boy had to do the trek four times a day, I of course doubled up and did eight treks a day!

Though it did mean that he did not have to get up so early and I was able to crawl back into bed for another hour´s sleep between the NARCISSIST leaving at 7am and waking my boy up at 8am. But I did have to organize myself around these new hours which would be soon extended to after school activities too which ended around 6pm.

YES! I, just like most mothers, lived my life around the school timetable. That is inevitable when you have a school age child and I accepted our new routine just as easily as my nephew did. He settled in to his new school very well. Having spent the last three years learning the Spanish language (castellano) and the local language (Catalan) at his former English school, he was already on a par with the native Spanish speaking children.

In fact, to my great pride, he was top of the class in both languages and of course he was top in his native English language too. He really was doing exceptionally well academically. Also he was becoming a very agile basketball player as well as a very competent and strong swimmer. 

Swimming lessons had been part of his life from a very young age and had also been available as part of his school curriculum. He was keen to continue and that was one of his favourite after school activities. He did take his life-saver´s course whilst still at primary and was a receiver of his GOLD life saver´s certificate.

Hand ball and basket ball were the two sports practiced on the school campus. He excelled at both and was promptly made a member of the school teams who played in an inter-school league. So weekend fixtures were a regular thing and I did not miss one match.

He was having a very active day time and in the evenings he would sit and draw, one of his greatest passions. It was also year two of Harry Potter´s life as well and he was to receive each and every new Harry Potter book as soon as they were published. They are absolutely fantastic books for children and I have read them all many times myself too!! 

I SO WANTED TO BE A HAPPY FAMILY!!!! Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash.

 THE NARCISSIST´S NEW FALSE-SELF!

Just as my nephew had to settle in to this new neighbourhood, so too did the NARCISSIST. His first port of call of course, was the nearest bar and aside from this bar which he would use every day, he went nowhere else in the town without me.

So his new FALSE-SELF was largely dependent on who his new audience were. As I mentioned above, the neighbourhood was made up of young families, most of the males and females were around my age, he was one of the older males.

Hence his new FALSE-SELF had to be approvable to these young father types. But who were they? By majority they were actually very much like him. Regular folk, from regular families, who had learnt very little and as such were living little lives. He could by rights, just have been himself, the NARCISSIST but of course, who would have liked him? Who would have approved of him?

Who would have wanted to associate with him? Oh, NO! He was new to the neighbourhood and needed to ingratiate himself with the local males. Meaning that he would have to spend a lot of time with them in the bar, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and giving me many mouthfuls of abuse on finally returning home!

Suddenly he was a happily divorced father of two children! I was his pride and joy according to him. He had escaped one dreadful marriage with an awful woman and in spite of his age, he had struck lucky by meeting me. As I was seen by the local males as the most attractive female around. 

Too right he had struck lucky on meeting me! But by trying to play the part of the family man, he had to be seen to have a wife and children. Me and my nephew fulfilled those roles to perfection for him. Yes we did and quite simply because we were trying our best at all times to become AS a happy family. How sad it makes me to know that he was only pretending. 

None the less, given the copious amounts of alcohol being consumed in the said bar, there were obviously occasions where the NARCISSIST revealed himself to the locals. There were those who seemed to have a dislike for him straight away and he would sense that. They would be his enemies and he would every now and then have to be his REAL SELF.

Therefore, the designer labels meant little to him at that moment in time and he was able to be some of what he actually was. He did not lie about his work or his background but what he was permanently lying about was his role as IDEAL husband and father.

When we were all in public, oh yes, he did appear to be the IDEAL husband and father. It was for his own FALSE-SELF´S sake though. He could fit into this new group by their approval. He just had to copy them, didn´t he? And that is just what he did. I was of course, just following my natural INTUITION and trying to be the best mother that I could be.

Oh, how different though was the SELF that we had at home! Sadly, he never tried to copy my and my nephew´s examples of happy families and real love and affection. He did not need our approval of him as a husband or father, only the approval of those outside the home. Those who would maintain his FALSE-SELF and inflate his ego!

What me and my nephew either thought or FELT, was never of any importance or consequence to him at all. This is what hurts so bitterly. I really believed that he cared about us both. I really believed that I was special to him. But the truth is that he never cared at all about either of us. We were as props to him in his production.

Painful as it is for me to comprehend the mindset of the NARCISSIST, I have to force myself to see the truth. There is no possibility of healing without recognition of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! It is so painful to think that we never mattered at all to him. What we thought of him just did not carry any weight with him!

It is always those closest to the NARCISSIST who receive the worst treatment. WHY? Because they accept his hideous treatment of them and they allow him to HOOVER them. They allow him to get away with his horrendous behaviour, knowing that he was a traumatized child and hoping that with their steadfast care and love, he will heal from his childhood trauma!

He is in DENIAL of his own TRAUMA! That is why he will never be able to heal from it! He, himself DENIES that he is a sick individual. But they do know that they are using people and treating them badly, oh, yes! That is why they want to keep you isolated and invisible! So that you do not have any opportunities of revealing them!

If you have no close friends or contacts, you will never be able to put into words all the abuse which you have suffered at his hands or by his mouth! If he is so afraid of you revealing his REAL-SELF, does that not show in itself, that he does not want anyone to know how badly he treats you?

Therefore, he does know that he is abusing you as a human being, he is perfectly aware that he is treating you as though you were the most despicable creature on earth. But he doesn´t want anyone to know about it. That would contradict the FALSE-SELF´S image altogether, wouldn´t it?

Thank you for your company again today. I hope that life is happier where you are right now. In the next post I will pick up the thread again and continue unravelling the lies that have kept me TRAUMA BONDED to this NARCISSIST for far too long. If you can bear more, please check back in a few days time.