as promised, placing these here. but i admit, i do not want to remember this anymore.
On 1/5/07, ****** wrote:
Ooof. Now that does make sense. And I daresay that he’s not the only one in ******, to be frank, from what I’ve seen in that crowd. How… sad.
It is sad. And it was very hard indeed to let him go, because it is always hard to see someone who truly wants to be a better person but… just… can’t… manage it.
I’m thankful and happy to know he has found work that he enjoys and can maintain an equilibrium in… and feel very thankful to the universe that he has at least that one area in which his peculiarities do not impede him. It is more than many people receive in life and I can’t imagine he’d otherwise survive, in truth.
Most of the blood trail that was the first half of 2006 is documented at the blog, but only occasionally do I mention him by name. As I said, it took me nearly the entire year to come to grips with the reality that something was REALLY not right there… and I fought it to the very last. But, eventually, I just could not take his complete self-absorption and inability to see others or in any way feel remorse or regret for the many hurts he so artlessly deals others.
In all honesty, it is the first time in my life I have encountered someone who is NPD and believe me, I will run screaming from the next one at the first hint of the behavior. I am still shuddering from the pure cruelty and disregard. But what made it hardest was how he used Buddhism and the notion of connection to hook people and draw them in.
Really… very sick stuff.
[unrelated personal information about the other correspondent removed here]
it does not look like, from reading the description of NPD, that there’s really much of a treatment for it, partially because those suffering from it are unlikely to ever perceive themselves as needing treatment and that really is sad….
Precisely. To this day, I’m “mentally unbalanced and a stalker and filled with evil intent to do him harm”.
Which would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that this is what he gives as ‘truth’ to others. In reality, I ended contact with him in August after receiving what is very likely the most hateful and accusatory email I’ve ever received. Well, it was until December, when, out of the blue, he sent another that was worse.
It’s a long story, but as I said, it’s all blogged. Basically, I made the mistake of thinking I could give him one, final gesture of peace and good will before leaving it all behind. But no good deed goes unpunished with him. As I quickly discovered.
[unrelated personal information of the correspondent removed]
Please don’t get me wrong… I know for a fact he really wants to be better. Many was the time he just broke down for despair of not being able to manage it. But he simply will not admit he needs help, let alone that anyone else could possibly be trying to help
I think he very likely does just fine at distance, which is likely why the internet and such are so enjoyable for him. But to my knowledge, he doesn’t have many ‘face to face’ friends other than those he can keep at arm’s length and I recall many nights when he would despair for this as well. I think M is likely the only one in direct proximity or closeness, and in truth, the boy is such an unmitigated snake that I strongly suspect they just feed off of and enable the worst in one another. Kind of like some bizarre double binary black hole.
I know M does everything he can to nourish his paranoia and he is, in large part, responsible for the actual bannings… though I also suspect it is yet another demonstration of their odd dynamic… he freaks out, M enjoys thinking he is some kind of cosmic guardian, and takes it upon himself to be a parental figure… which, of course, is gratefully allowed by him because it means he doesn’t have to do anything or actually step up and face or deal with the results of his own choices and actions.
Bleh. I’m rambling, of course… but in all frankness, by the time I finally broke clean of it, I was almost convinced it was me. Which was just stupidity… as the entire year had been me sacrificing time, money, and attention on his behalf, leaping to catch him when he stumbled (emotionally, etc) and generally forgetting completely about myself to try and help him… because he was forever floundering in an ocean of anxiety, fear, and despair.
In the final analysis, for all the pain he dealt me, it still had some benefit, as it gave me a very pointed example of all the things I never want to be and never want to do to others. I wrote about that lately as well.
I think the thing that hurt most of him was that as soon as things picked up and he didn’t need that level of support anymore… he basically dumped me on the ground like a used napkin. The shock of it was… profound. Three days before my birthday. Just… ‘go away’.
Like I was nothing. Like I never had been. All he could speak of, even then, was ‘his needs’, and ‘his goals’, and ‘his boundaries’ (which was ironic to me in that moment, as before, he made such a point of talking about how he had none).
I had made the mistake early in 2006 (March) of telling him I loved him. Needless to say, that was a mistake. By May, I knew I could never permit him to be more than a friend… and I told him that as well… only to find myself thereafter constantly accused of trying to ‘entrap him’. Silly me, how could I possibly think trying to offer help would ever be considered other than a ‘plot to ensnare him’? (Yes, that was how it went. Repeatedly. Constant, the accusations and distrust and suspicion and then, countered by demands to ‘be gentle’ with him as he would advance with a razor to start the cutting all over again.)
By August, I was worn out and more than happy to stop talking to him.
In fact, when that horrible email arrived, I didn’t even bother replying or trying to deny it anymore. I just thanked him for all the things he showed me in it and wished him well.
I had started a project in May to archive all his online ‘life’… something he had often despaired over never doing for himself. I continued that even after giving up on him personally… thinking it would be a final olive branch before I closed the door.
Knowing how annoyed he was over not having the domains, I purchased the domains in November, after having spent the previous six months carefully cataloging his work and tracing the rather jagged paths online to find it all (well over 500 links, almost as many media files from 1990ish through today).
The intent was to install a content management system, carefully tag and organize them all, and in June of 2007, present it to him as a birthday gift with a gentle farewell and my sincerest best wishes for all good things to find him.
December 5, 2006, out of nowhere, he sent me what was the last straw.
This amazingly paranoid, fearful, accusatory email wherein he again called me a stalker, accused me of trying to cause him mental anguish, and revealed that he (and probably M, though he doesn’t mention it) had been doing very exactly to me the things of which he was accusing me… to wit, tracing my IP address, logging and tracing my email IPs, and tracking my online presence.
Apparently, he noticed me cataloging for the project and naturally, since he is unable to see me as ever having good intentions, concluded I was stalking him.
That amazing cluster fuck of a mess is archived here.
But even then, I tried to do the right thing… I tried to just hand him those two domains and get away clean, without any more blood loss.
Of course, that was impossible. He found another opening to throw accusations at me, and told me he wouldn’t take the gift, it was “a poisoned offering” and told me to just go away.
My last reply, given as much in relief as anger was simply, “Happily. Utterly. Finally.”
And so it was. And is.
It is impossible for me to think of him without an immediate shudder of revulsion and disgust. And I’m still working through the legitimate anger for the heaping abuse of it all. Even as the Buddhist in me acknowledges this is just ego and pride.
It may well be ego and pride, but such treatment as he has given was and is wrong.
Undeserved. Totally. In every moment. In every way. And I’m not yet more than human… and stars forgive me, but I absolutely despise him for murdering what was a beautiful and pure thing in me, for him.
In many ways, that is how I see him in this moment… a cold, callous, uncaring, thoughtless, selfish, brutalizing, beast of a person, someone who can, without any concern whatever, slaughter the softest, best things I would ever try to set before another.
So, as you can see, I am still somewhat conflicted. On the one hand, I hurt for how I know he hurts. Even as he forever blusters and makes loud noises about how carefree he is. And, on the other, I hate him so deeply and completely that I simply cannot imagine there will ever come a day when I will be able to remember him or any of it without immediately wanting to vomit and wishing it were possible to get a selective lobotomy.
I suppose I will post this to my blog as well. I made a promise to a friend, my lama, and to myself that I wasn’t going to hold it back anymore… and that anything that comes from this I would place there as a reminder and also to learn from… but it is sometimes hard. This one, in particular, will be hard to set there. Not so much for learning, but for memory.
I do not want to remember him. I want to forget I ever knew his name.
I want to forget such predatory perverseness is possible in another being.
And someday, I want to find the way to rid myself of the poison he set in me. I have never hated anyone in my life. I am ashamed to do so now. But I just can’t help it yet.
Damn him. Damn him to everlasting, blackest, deepest, and most solitary hell.