It’s been eighty eight days since my XNarc shattered my world. I have shed many many tears, engaged in many different types of alternative therapy and truly know I will not only survive this, I will be better for it in the end. So WHY, WHY do I still have some nights, or moments in the day that I can’t stop thinking about him or feeling like I am missing him. It is so frustrating.
As I sat in my hot tub tonight and thought about this, I remember a parable my friend told me. She said imagine your XNarc is a shark and you are trying to get the shark not to eat you. The longer you stay in the water, the more likely he is to eat you. No amount of love will make him not eat you. That is what they are programmed to do.
EarthSky.Org describes a shark like this:
“Sharks do communicate, by twisting their bodies into certain positions. They act differently from day to day, depending on how much food they've eaten or how cold the water is. But those are probably behaviors, not emotions. And even though a shark's body is made of flexible cartilage, its jaws are rigid and calcified.”
Thinking about Mike in this image makes me realize, no amount of trying to help him to heal, or love me was ever going to work. I was nothing more than a meal to him. He (as most narcs) do not have emotions. They will behave in what ever manner they need to be able to feed on you. Nothing more, nothing less.
We are just fuel, and as it states above, he did act differently each day depending on how much fuel he needed from me. There would be a few days every now and again he would be really nice to me. I did not know this was him circling for the feeding he needed. When he was full and needed nothing from me, he turned his attention to his all consuming tennis passion or his online chess. Both things that required him to focus and be in his own world. He just surfaced for feedings.
I can even see the twisting and turning of his body when trying to communicate with me. It was as if he was in actual physical pain to have to try to carry on any type of meaningful conversation, unless it was about tennis or chess or lure me in for a feeding. And like above, his body was very flexible, but his jaw was rigid from not wanting to talk, and from keeping the permanent scowl on his face. OMG she was right – he is a shark!
If I hold this image in my heart instead of the fantasy I created, it will be much easier to realize, you cannot make a shark love you. You cannot ask a shark not to eat you. All you are and ever will be is food for them to feed on. Years of genetic programming have turned the odds of your surviving an encounter with a shark against you.
So how about we get out of the water now~