Understand the Concept of Love
Narcissistic abuse is recorded as a specifically cruel, emotionally devastating and terrifying phenomenon that millions of children experience and live with; these wounds do not heal without ever being addressed, and for all of the victims currently experiencing it or trying to recover, it’s vital to create and share resources. It’s also vital to provide a space where all of us feel safe to discuss it and out all our abuser’s crimes. To say to these survivors and victims that narcissistic abuse isn’t real, or to not talk about it, is not only gaslighting but implying their entire lives didn’t happen, they imagined their own torture, and to take away the option of recognizing and fighting this type of abuse.
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This is where we come to the goal of these specific attacks on survivors; the point is to stop us from creating and sharing resources because their pool of victims of abuse shrinks once all the signs of abuse are easily recognized and shared. Narcissists don’t like victims realizing they’re being abused, and leaving. They don’t like not having a lot of possible new victims who wont be able to tell they’re predators. They especially don’t like being held accountable for their actions or experiencing any consequences for it. This is why they find it perfectly acceptable for them to attack and threaten into silence survivors of abuse, in my case to the point of violent threats, rape threats, suicide baits and smear campaigns.
Furious Goldfish, Tumblr post, November 26, 2020
This quote from Tumblr is specifically about parental abuse, but it gets at the only real conclusion I can come to for why my last abuser would (dark-hilariously) threaten to sue me in the event I ever spoke about my mental health problems in public. The big problem for them seems to be, if they fail to control the story and exchange of information, it all starts to fall apart.
I don’t know where I would be now, if indeed I would be anywhere, without help from a few of my friends—some of whom kind of tried to warn me for a long time before those final events. but, I was just so used to being wrong about everything. I was so used to giving people the benefit, I couldn’t see it. My imagination wouldn’t stretch that far.
Lately I’ve really begun to understand that one of my key problems is less innately to do with me than it is that for my entire life, starting in my formative years, I’ve been victimized by people who don’t understand the concept of love. People with complete control over me, whom I’ve just accepted for who they are, because why would you not—while they do anything to me. Take out all their insecurities and grievances, project all their problems on the person least able or likely to object—until such a point as it reaches a threshold, something happens, and something snaps. And I’m forced to wall them away for my own protection, all the while still blaming myself for failing to tough it out. If only I could have, if only they would have—
But, you know, not everyone is a monster. Most people aren’t. What I faced, what I learned to expect from others, that’s not healthy. It’s not sane. Nobody should have to live with that. Nobody should accept being treated the way I was treated.
I’ve been set up for so much failure in life, for so much fear, needlessly. I’ve been lied to for decades about what people are like, about what’s normal. And it’s all kind of profane.
And unlike my abusers, I think I do understand love. basically. I know it better than most people, in some ways. From what I see of people, Love is much more of a constant than I had been led to understand. People are kind. People are helpful, affectionate, accepting, concerned. Not everyone, but in general. And—I’m still learning, right, but i think i’m getting better at seeing through all of this. At seeing the world for how it really is.
Bit by bit. all this training that I never received. it’s kind of… i’m sorting it out. slowly.