Allowing me to Grieve

The horrible thing about leaving a Narcissist is the dreadful consequence of Cognitive Dissonance. For many of us survivors, we leave before we are ready - either the Narcissist discards us for new, more exciting supply, and just falls out of love, or we are confronted with irrefutable evidence of their lies or cheating which makes staying impossible. Many of us stay through years of emotional or physical abuse until this happens - we don't often leave simply to save ourselves.

So I left when I could no longer deny his cheating on me. I wasn't ready to go. I loved him with all my heart. But I also am now fully aware of what a lying cheating monster he can be. And, hard to believe, that didn't stop me loving him. It actually made it even harder to go. And MUCH harder to grieve. Because everybody I love will be asking why I would mourn the loss of a monster. How can you grieve the man who cheated on you? Broke your heart? Stole money from you? Lied to you?

So every time I begin to grieve, the logical part of me admonishes myself. "Remember what he has done to you!". "He doesn't deserve the grieving bandwidth".

But I need the grieving bandwidth. I need to grieve the man I loved. I need to find the deep upwelling of unshed tears inside me and let them flow for this loss. The loss I have felt in this love being ripped away from me. Even if he existed only in moments. I found the deepest, most open love I have ever been capable of giving or receiving in my life. I opened myself completely and let him into the deepest and darkest parts of me. We connected in profoundly soulful ways. So many times, when making beautiful and achingly passionate love together I would look into his eyes and cry with joy and love. We would cling together and I would feel so held and safe and loved in his strong arms that I wished for the moment never to end. Just kissing him was a magical and beautiful experience.

I lost myself in him. And it was a blissful loss. Our music together was sweet and rich. We moved with a deep and intuitive connection. Every touch from him was sensuous and magnificent. He inspired me to find my beautiful and deeply sexual instincts and I have never felt more lovely and desired in my life. We went together to such deeply intimate primal places. Gentle. Compassionate. Wild. Soft. Hard. Joyful. Sad. He painted me. Photographed me. Enjoyed me. And I was so deeply drawn to him and mesmerized by him that I cannot even find the words to frame it. Nobody in the world would have been enough to rip my eyes and love away from him. I did feel it. Completed. By him. Intimacy. Joy. Happy abandon. Touch. Love.

We bought a house together early this year. My forever fantasy. A beautiful house on a hill with a view that I imagined sharing with him for decades. I saw us sitting on the mountainside, watching sunrises and sunsets. Making love languidly in the summer afternoons under the trees in the garden. Weekends together there spent loving, sleeping, creating, gardening. Looking out at the world below us together, and holding the world between us in our love and connection. And Sunday mornings. Beautiful Sunday mornings. Loving, sexy snoozing Sunday mornings.

My heart wants to break into a million pieces all over again when I imagine him sharing my forever fantasy with someone not me. The loving and magical space I thought I had finally found in my life, gifted to other women. Not for me. I am devastated by the cruelty of taking other women there when I was not. Sharing that space with them. Making love to them on my couch. On my bed. In my garden. Showing them our beautiful view and spaces. Making them feel that connection. Finding their goddess. Photographing them. Painting them.

Desecrating my forever place.

Forever.