I know everyone’s experience is going to be different, and I just wanted to express my gratitude over the life I have now. It’s not even been a year, but its been limited contact for over 6 months. It is so refreshing, like your brain resets and all the fog has lifted. They made you question your sanity for the entirety of your time with them, slowly challenging everything you said, felt, heard. You just don’t know what clarity is until that toxicity is removed entirely. Almost entirely, if you have a children with them like I do you will never be free. I’m pretty damn close though.
I was just hanging out in my backyard with my friend the other day, also a survivor from a toxic psychotic narcissist. I remarked how little things affect me so much now and I am so grateful to have my life back. To know that financially everything that I make now or work towards is mine and only mine, how wonderful. To be able to take those moments to myself when my ex has my daughter on every other weekend that he never allowed me to have because he was never an equal partner, makes me feel more myself than I have in a long time. He did not only rob me of my time, money, sanity. He took away my identity. Slowly and I would not even realize all that I had sacrificed if I was not completely out of his hold.
I think if I tried to coparent with him by trying to maintain a relationship, he would have sucked me back in not romantically but through manipulation to continue to suck away my positivity and life force. That’s how they break you, they make you forget who you were before them. They are attracted to you for a reason, and they want to break all those things down so no one else will ever want you and you will be a broken shell that will be under their control forever.
When you limit the contact, their voice is not constantly in your head anymore, making you doubt everything about yourself down to your self worth. Then you must learn to trust yourself again. You lived your life fine without them, and you will thrive so much more when you can free yourself. The strength you will have gained through this traumatic abuse will only further strengthen your love and empathy for others, but also give you a great filter to the bullshit. No more bullshit, no more Prince Charming. If it seems fake, it probably is.
If you’re still in the midst of the suffering, it will get so much better to the point where you can’t believe at one point you were at your lowest. You might tell yourself you love and miss them, but the person you love and miss is yourself before all this. See you on the other side
~D
Narc Recovery Project 