When will I have had enough?

I'm getting irritated with myself.  I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent over the past year researching Narcissists and how they treat their 'Victims'. I know for sure that letting him back into my life in any way will simply line myself up for more harm and more abuse.  I know he is designed to reel me in and then lie and cheat and bully as soon as he is sure of my loyalty, compliance and ongoing Narcissistic supply.

I know that the only way to really protect myself is to go NO CONTACT with him.  I know that every time I choose to interact with him I run the risk of being enticed back in to our abusive dance.  I know that this is very dangerous for me.

I can't even defend my actions.  I am weak.  I miss him. Or the idea of him.  I miss the part of us that I thought we had.  I'm at risk of losing my readers now, I know, because I'm sure you're getting as irritated with me as I am.  We all love a good slam-dunk story: take on your abuser, tell him his fortune, show him the door, and slam it on his way out. Done. Dusted.  He can sob on the outside step for as long as he likes, but I. Am. Done.

Sigh.

Until tomorrow when I start aching and missing him again.  When my heart and body yearn for connection with him even while my logical mind is admonishing me and telling me 'NO CONTACT'.

So even though I know all the right steps, I STILL keep on staying in the dance and getting knee-ed in the stomach every few weeks.

So of course I've spent 24 hours in agony about yesterday's blog that he sent me.  I wish that I had mastered the skill of being able to just let this stuff roll off me and not pay it mind, but I really can't operate like that yet. Instead I couldn't sleep for most of the night going over the words in my head.  At least it gave me the opportunity to sob and weep and grieve some more.  I haven't been doing enough of that.

I feel so undermined and unheard.  And those are such inadequate words for what I feel.

I remember just last week sitting on the balcony of a coffee shop with John (bad mistake, I know), where he seemed to be listening to me so intently, as if he was really really hearing me.  It felt like 10 steps forward: that my voice was finally having some real airtime. At the end of the conversation he said that he had learned so many things just listening to me, and that he was going to write about it and then send it to me.  My heart felt so much lighter.  I had hope.  I let my guard down completely and waited.  He sent nothing.  Of course. For a week at least.  At some stage he sent me a WhatsApp to say he had received an email from Debbie (his cheating partner), still part of his 'Honesty Campaign'.  But when I asked what it was about, he left that question unanswered too. Just left me to wonder.  And fill in the gaps myself.

Then I finally get yesterday's blog emailed to me in retaliation for our email argument.

So the intent listening I was experiencing last week was actually him ticking boxes for this new 'diagnosis' that he has co-created with his shrink.  I shouldn't care what the fuck they think about me based on his twisted descriptions of me to his shrink, but what freaks me out the most is how undermined I feel.  He has clearly taken every abuse he has visited on me, and every painful response I have had where I have tried to explain how damaging his abuse is and the impact on me, and minimised it to the point where he doesn't really have to really take responsibility for his actions.  "Trudy exaggerates" so actually what I've done to her is not so bad.  In fact, she is a Narcissist herself and so has her own arsenal of attack weapons, so now we're even-stevens.

Like I said yesterday - it's like my parents minimising my pain from my broken ankle as a sprain.  And not acknowledging their mistake even when they found out it had been broken. Instead they blamed me for my 'Complaining'.  In their eyes, I created their neglect because I always made such a fuss.  My fault.  The really sad thing is that I believed them.  I'm trying hard not to believe John and his shrink.  I can't wait to get to my own therapy on Tuesday - I really need my own shrink to help me think through the whole thing.  I want to ask her to call John's shrink and tell him the truth. Somehow I feel like I need her to protect me from them. I don't know whether shrinks would ever do that to each other?  But I need something.

So letting my guard down over coffee last week was, once again, clearly a dangerous thing to do.  John has showed me, again, how he has no insight into me at all.  I'm a cardboard cutout of an 'ex-girlfriend'.  The depth that is me is so invisible to him.  And that breaks my heart.  Again.

How many more 'Agains' will I tolerate before I finally walk away for ever?

I so need to be seen.