The Layers of Surviving Narcissist Abuse

When I was a child, I walked around with a dictionary in my hands on a daily basis. While my brother and sister teased me about it over the years, I never found it to be as strange as they did. It helped set a foundation for a future as a published creative writer and gifted me with a passion I couldn’t deny. I never questioned what any of the words in that dictionary meant, but as I woke up to the realities of survival, I experienced a new meaning for the word layer. I didn’t set out to create this concept, but this concept created me, in a sense.

The first layer my mind pulled away was the abuse itself. No matter how much my partner hurt me, it was impossible for me to see he was abusing me. I wanted to protect our relationship at all costs, but I didn’t realize it might have cost me my life. While I was in that abusive relationship, the invisible layer both protected me and hurt me at the same time. This layer emerged within days of our separation, which is when my world turned itself on its side.

Have you ever experienced an intense moment of clarity when an answer to a problem suddenly hits you? Yeah, that’s what it’s like. You’re driving down the road, maybe on your way home from work, and suddenly a thought screams inside your mind as if you are about to die in a five-car pileup. It’s intense and freeing all at the same time.

Something powerful is communicated at this moment; you will not go back from here, because you are forever changed.

Each time this happened, it felt like I stopped existing for one brief moment in time. These thoughts came from nowhere, inspired by nothing, but there they were before me. I didn’t feel peace or pain, I just felt something real and meaningful.

The last layer I felt, I think it happened two weeks ago, was particularly memorable. It not only gave me some insight into the abusive relationship with my ex-partner, but it also showed me a snapshot of how toxic I’d been for myself up until that point. The thought hit me–part of the reason why I was so affected by his abuse was because I had not yet woken up to how abusive I was to myself. And, that’s all it took. One giant leap forward in my journey to become myself again forced me deeper into reality.

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