I Was The Frog

I used to hear stories of these kinds of men; these abusers and I used to think “Wow, that woman must have been really insecure to put up with that”.

It’s not the right thing to think I realize, but it was always my first thought.  I know now that many are probably wondering the same about me. 

I would hear of these people who purposefully come into your life with bad intentions.  They purposefully come in to steal a piece of your soul and then leave.  I have always made sure my walls were high and my guards were up; my resolve solid.  After losing a parent to suicide and two failed marriages which included infidelity I was quite confident in my ability to keep this type of person away from me.

They are cunning.

He used to tell me how connected he felt to me.  How he had never in his entire life met a man or a woman that he could tell his whole story to; a person who would accept him fully for who he was. He used to say he was drawn to me like a moth to a flame.  That no matter what even if he tried that attraction was too great.

He had become my best friend.

During the devaluation phase I heard him speaking about another woman he felt this connection with. She was this very young girl who was going through a separation, but 20 years his junior.  I remember saying to him “Do you not realize that going on and on to people about this magical connection you had with this little girl you just met is weird?”  That made him incredibly agitated with me, but I distinctly remember it now.  This was my replacement; his new supply.  This woman is young and beautiful and needy and can stroke his ego in all of the ways he needs it stroked; until she can’t.

I try to understand how I let him in.  I think it’s partly because I struggled with who I am as a person, especially after losing my identity at the end of my marriage.  I still try to learn who I am; in fact I blog about it, but I think this ‘not knowing’ made me the perfect victim for his abuse.

In trying to heal I find what’s most difficult to resolve is how the last two years of my life have actually been a lie.  It is hard to reconcile the cruelty bestowed upon me between the person he is and the person that I thought he was.

With every article I read on the narcissist, two things happen.  One, I feel less alone.  I feel like this might be the closure I need (a narcissist will never give you closure).  In reading these articles I think “Wow, okay this makes sense now.  The second thing that happens however is this sick and empty feeling somewhere in the hollows of my core.  I feel sick and nauseous.  I feel like I’m having a panic attack and like an elephant is sitting on my chest.  I hold my breath through every article hanging on every sad and awful fact reminding myself that I must breathe.

That closure that you might be looking for can only come from within.  At the end of the discard you are left confused, lost and looking for answers.  You wonder why? You want to understand what happened.  You love them and you want them to act like they did in the idolization phase, and you convince yourself that maybe they will.  You convince yourself that maybe they are hurting right now. 

People have been asking me; why didn’t you leave him then? After you officially broke up why didn’t you move on?  My only answer to this is that you never really know if the relationship is actually over or not.  You have so much self-blame.  You have been manipulated and deceived to the point that you don’t actually know what is real anymore.

As recent as a few months ago when I had not yet realized I was a victim of abuse but clearly in the depths of the devaluation stage, I wrote a blog about on-line dating.  I actually don’t on-line date but at the prompting of my friends to move on and in my own desperate attempt to move on I had set up several profiles, always deleting them days later.  I never met any of these men, I just wanted to see what was out there.  Clearly I was not ready to move on though, I was still in love with him.

The point of telling you about this on-line dating blog is because it was just a cog in the wheel.  I now look back to when the devaluation started and it is clear to me that it started when I stopped idolizing him.  He was no longer getting his ego supplied sufficiently from me.

I had played darts with a man in a bar in front of him, what did I do with men when he wasn’t around?

I had done a blog about on-line dating, how disrespectful of me; how could I deliberately hurt him?

I started to see him as this childlike man with all of these unhealed issues from his past, especially his estrangement from his father.  He was always seeking approval from people.  Did they think he was smart? Did they think he was cool? Did they think he was good?  Did they think he was amazing? Did they think he was a great leader?  I started to notice that the only people he enjoyed having around him were people who were enamoured with him.  The approval that he needed was constant.

He used to tell me this fable about a Scorpio and a Frog.  At first I thought he referred to me as the Scorpio but he always corrected me and told me that he was the Scorpio in this situation.  I had assumed I was because my sun sign is Scorpio but truthfully I didn’t really read the fable until recently.  Now as I lay here in the wreckage he has left behind I see that I am the frog.

When I pulled this fable out to read the other day it left me feeling sad, afraid and angry all at once.  It made me shudder to think that someone could be so cold and calculating. After reading this fable I was convinced more than ever that he knew what he was doing from the very beginning.

The fable is long but it’s about a Scorpion who decided that he needs a change and so he feels that he would like to live on the other side of this river.  He sees a frog and convinces this frog that if she carries him to other side of the river he would not kill her.  She asks him over and over if he promises he won’t kill her and he replies “Why would I kill you? You’re doing me a favour and if I kill you, then I would die also as I cannot swim”.  The frog is convinced then that he is telling the truth and lets him climb upon her back.  Halfway through the journey he bites her and before her death she screams “Why did you do that?  Now we are both going to die!” and the Scorpion replied “I could not help myself, it is in my nature”.

True to the fable his discard of me and the realization of the fallacy of the last two years have felt very much like a death, however it was only the death of the person I was then; I will come back stronger and better than ever.