Adventures In Space & Time

I wake up every day to find her back again
Screaming my name through the astral plane
And in this catalogue town she takes me down
Down through the platinum spires
Down through the telephone wires
And we shake it around in the underground
And like a new generation rise

- Suede, New Generation

Sometimes people ask me if everything I’ve written or told them about my experience with emotional abuse is true. “No way” is what I often hear when I say yes, especially when discussing the premeditated Machiavellian nature of it or the death threats or the bizarre twisted false reality I believed I existed in. The truth is that there was much more; I had no idea people like this existed so close to me, carrying the power to hurt others with impunity. Unchecked.

These words are my way of taking that power away — processing it. Transforming it into something more gentle, less like a knife edge. Publishing these stories goes against much of the common advice around how to deal with an abuser of the type that I was exposed to. It isn’t what I would recommend; it can be lonely, isolating, and scary.

Don’t feed their disorder: just get away.

Professor Sam Vaknin shared my last Medium post across his socials. Thank you, Mr. Vaknin. Your insight into malignant narcissistic behavior, sociopathy, and psychopathy helped me find a way through this nightmare.

To others who have suffered or are suffering at the hands of an abuser: you aren’t alone. There is help.

This essay is a fever dream. It’s about the weird details and how it feels to forget yourself.

Setup

She loved everything I did.

She loved the music I played. She loved the art I created; the weird electrical projects I worked on; she didn’t complain at the smell of solder or sweat.

In return, I accepted whatever she gave me.

I loved everything she did.

Together, we built a shared fantasy in which she was my source of truth and morality. Without me noticing, my entire personality shifted to be something that served her.

But she hated museums; hated philosophy; didn’t understand art when it wasn’t a commodity. How many episodes of Seinfeld did I watch? Jesus fucking Christ, who am I?

When it was over, I was left holding her wants and desires. Some of them may have once belonged to me, but they were distorted and unfamiliar; most were completely foreign. A cognitive dissonance set in as the bridge between who I was and what I wanted was destroyed. My sense of self and personality was twisted; I was lost. I was her.

Execution

I woke up to find my best friend wanted me dead.

Well, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as that. Maybe she didn’t want me dead, she just wanted me gone.

And it didn’t happen all at once.

By degrees, the woman I loved drove a wedge between me and the people I had loved before her. She told me stories about them; poisonous little tales of lies and deceit. She told me stories about so many people she knew — shared secrets that I could never reveal, but that colored my vision. Blinded me.

She was my truth. Who was I to doubt that she was being anything but honest? She had told me she was honest to a fault; that her memory was perfect. So I let her memory overwrite my own, because it somehow felt safe.

One day she told me that maybe I was a little autistic. Maybe my memory issues were a symptom of my age. I was really losing it, wasn’t I?

The coroner’s office near my father’s home called me. It was 2:30am over there, so the office was closed when I tried returning the call. I called back and back and back. Was my dad dead? That was the only reason I could imagine they’d be calling me. He must be dead. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I called my dad.

He was asleep, and seemed confused when I told him I loved him.

It turned out the call I had received was spoofed — someone was trying to scare me. They called my girlfriend from another coroner’s office close to where her dad lived — someone was trying to scare both of us. Someone who knew a lot about us and wanted us gone. Was it my best friend? My girlfriend thought so. I guess things were more serious than I thought with them.

But it was ok, because my girlfriend would make sure everything was taken care of. We’d be ok.

Together.

“Once someone has been traumatized again and again by someone who claimed to love them, once an abuser has warped the victim’s reality and caused him or her to mistrust their perceptions through gaslighting, once a victim has been made to believe he or she is worthless, they are already traumatically bonded to their abusers. It takes a great deal of professional support, validation and resources in order for victims to detach from their abusers and begin to heal.”

― Shahida Arabi

Chaos

My world splintered and fractured.

I sat amongst some of my closests friends one night after dinner telling them about the death threat, and all the events surrounding it. Gleefully, in their words.

I remember bouncing around the apartment in suburban Los Angeles, drinking heavily; my girlfriend was out somewhere working, and I was filled with trust and confidence in her. My life had taken a turn towards something a little dark and dangerous, but manageable. I felt energized and inspired; a ball of controlled chaos.

I’d later find out my friends had been concerned. Deeply and justifiably.

That period of my life — just weeks, really — is still hard to recall with accuracy, but it felt strangely serene to me. The arguments, the uncertainty, even the days or nights when she would disappear, a dot floating vaguely on a map on my phone somewhere in the hills, all seemed ok as soon as she explained why I was wrong, why I was overreacting, and how much she loved me.

A pause in the conversation, maybe a stunned silence, and someone asks me, “are you sure about all of this, Greg?”

Of course I’m sure. As sure as I am that “embrace the chaos” is a slogan on some shitty wall art you can buy on Etsy.

I had been unsure for so long, but a switch had flipped, and I had never wanted anything more than the life her and I were building.

Crisis

Who am I? I am me, when I am with her.

I’m sorry if I don’t remember your name. I meet a lot of people. My memory isn’t so good; I think it’s my age.

The nights out blend together. The bars, clubs, house parties, sunrises and sunsets. I can’t remember a single conversation we had with all those people we met; all those chemically blasted brains trying to connect with each other just long enough to exchange a number, make a plan, never meet again. The faces fade into each other, and then fade altogether.

My girlfriend told me she’d been followed while she was out walking her dog. Now I was scanning the cars outside my apartment to make sure nobody was surveilling us. Every day on my run I would be watching for something unusual.

Somewhere during all of this was when we had our first breakup. I pushed back. I broke down. I was hoovered back up. I tried to kill myself.

We got back together, but she said we couldn’t be affectionate in public. She said it was because my former best friend was dangerous; that it was safer for them to think we weren’t together. She said she was protecting me, but somehow I felt so exposed, especially when we were out together at a bar.

“Don’t touch me!” she barked when I put my hand on her. I was shrugged off as a friend swept her across the dance floor to her favorite song, all smiles and laughs. I danced alone. And then I left.

A text from her: “Where are you?”

My reply: “Walking. Getting a car.”

“Why?”

“Because this is so uncomfortable”

“Come back.”

“OK.”

It’s 2am. We’re the last people in the place.

She tries to convince me to go to an afterparty without her. Why? No.

I can’t remember the car ride home with her, but when we got out, there was a man sitting on a portable chair at the corner of our street. A big man with a bandana over the bottom half of his face. Staring at us.

He looked almost comical on that chair, as he asked us for a cigarette. “No, we don’t smoke.”

Inside my house she seemed panicked. Nervous. I tried to convince her the guy was there coincidentally; she thinks he was there for us. She went next door to her apartment.

That was the last time I had a kitchen knife. I didn’t even notice it was gone until a week later when I saw it in her apartment, “oh I took that for protection that night”. Only after seeing that knife on her counter, covered in bits of lime or lemon, did I realize I had stopped cooking at home for weeks.

I had stopped eating. I think we both had.

Reality blinked out.

“Discovering that your life was built on falsehoods and that a narcissist exploited you is a profoundly painful experience. It transcends a typical breakup, as narcissists employ vicious deceptions to shatter their victims emotionally.”

― Tracy Malone

Refocus

Shortly after things came crashing down, I moved myself into another house until my ex had to leave my building; I was paying her rent. I went no contact.

Focus started to return to my world and I escaped from the fantasy I had been living in.

You may be curious why my best friend would have wanted to hurt me. The short answer is that they didn’t — that I even thought it was a possibility is confusing to me still. They had tried to warn me, but I refused to listen, and by the time I realized what was going on, so much damage had been done.

Rebuilding the relationships I had will take time.

Trust will take time.

I’m only just starting to eat again.