The Box

Unfortunately both my emotional and professional lives have been loaded with betrayals. Some were so horrific that they scarred me forever. I don't think I will ever understand why people I loved & cared about or people I worked hard for - decided I was the one to rip to shreds.

Never.

I will never understand ever what I did in my life to deserve the horrific abusive treatment I have received.

But I do know I need to tell the truth in order to heal.


Herewith is one of the earliest emotional betrayals I ever experienced. I have re-experienced this same type of trauma a couple other times in my life. The perpetrator never ever apologizes, gives closure or talks to you about it. And if you do tell the truth - you will be smeared and demonized for opening your mouth.

Repetition Compulsion doesn't get easier, in fact - it gets exponentially worse each time.

I never had a real date until I was near to my 17th birthday. I experienced early puberty and was very embarrassed about my looks and bullied about my height and figure since fifth grade. My mother was chomping at the bit to farm me out to some man, but I was more content to sit in my bedroom reading. Most boys saw me as a sex object because of my physical maturity -- I didn't realize yet that they'd use my emotions to get to me.

My friend Mary-Alice had asked me and 5 friends over to her parent's home for her birthday dinner. Mary-Alice was very sweet. She had epilepsy which few people in my high school wanted to deal with. I tried to be one of the few who never made her feel bad about her episodes and helped her cope the best she could. When she had them she just "froze" and was highly embarrassed when she "came back" and everyone was staring at her. I liked being friends with her and helping her. I still like helping people.

At this party she invited the boy she'd had a crush on for a couple years, Mark. He was two years older than she and I. He was getting ready to join the Navy by spending a year at home after high school getting things in order for his family. Mark had dated Mary-Alice a few times but the feelings weren't mutual. At this birthday party he flirted with me and I flirted back, not thinking much of it.

About 2 weeks later, the phone rang at my parent's home. It was Mark asking me to go to see AMERICAN GRAFFITI (I'm dating myself here!) with him. I was flattered and said a tentative "yes." I told Mary-Alice the next day he had asked me out and if she really disliked the idea I would turn him down. She said 'no' it was o.k. They weren't exclusive and to go ahead. So I went. I would never backstab a friend; then or now.

I was a nervous wreck. I spent most of the movie keeping his hands from wandering farther than my knee or my shoulder. He asked me out again and again and again. After a while, physical things happened but nothing farther than second base. In retrospect I realize he was not respecting my boundaries. He would ask me to do certain things that I had no intention of doing. And then he would push. It wasn't until about 6 months later I found out why he'd really asked me out.

Mark left about 3 months into our dating to go to Pensacola, FL for Navy basic training. He wrote maybe once or twice a month to me, saying he was very busy and that he missed me. I was young and very flattered. And grateful for the attention.

6 months after he'd left, in July, the girl who had been my best friend since 3rd grade asked me to her house for lunch. Janet and I had a lot of history - she was petite, brunette and very cute, popular and had been dating for years prior to me. I wrote about her treatment of me as an appendage HERE. I was the 'ugly best friend' who went around with the pretty girl to make her look better. It was me who held her hand when her father passed away suddenly in 7th grade. It was Janet who told me, when I was 12 years old, what sex was. She knew ALL about it. Unfortunately, my narcissistic parent had taught me to ignore or minimize this sort of treatment of me and we were still friends. I thought...

All that was about to change.

I rode my bike everywhere when I was in high school. To work, to friends, the 7 miles into town from our little subdivision out in the boondocks. To get to Janet's house that July day, I rode my bike in 90 degree weather, uphill on the side of a highway, turned off down a road that was littered with farms and farmland. Janet had asked me to come over for lunch. She made me and herself something to eat. She was home alone for the day and wanted to talk to me.

The talk inevitably turned to boys. She told me about the 3 boys she was juggling and how she was trying to 'sort out her feelings.' She was always saying that when her usual bevy of guys was getting boring and she wanted to move on. I told her it had been a couple weeks since I heard from Mark so I didn't know how he was, and that I missed him.

Janet got very quiet for a minute and asked to be excused. I assumed it was to go to the bathroom. She came back with a large box. The box was about the size of the container a microwave oven would come in now. She opened it up and it was full to the brim with letters. "Please take a few and read them" she said. "You need to see them." She sat there smiling broadly at me.

I reached down. They were all from the same person and the handwriting looked very familiar. Suddenly I realized they were from Mark. All of them. Some came 5-6 a day. In with the letters there were boxes of jewelry. Not costume jewelry - real, expensive jewelry.

"Read them." Janet said. By then my heart was pounding so fast and the blood rushing in my ears I could barely breathe. I opened a few letters and started to read. They were all basically the same. Mark telling Janet that he 'loved' her and 'only her.' He wanted to marry her and be with her forever. They were 'soulmates' and meant to be. He called her "sweetie" and "babe" and "my love." He offered to send her tickets to places where he was stationed so their 'love could continue forever.' All things he had never ever said to me. At least he was honest.

I felt sick. I didn't even know they knew each other! I realized that times he'd come to our high school to see me that he'd used me to introduce himself to & ingratiate himself to Janet. She and I were both involved in a lot of the same school activities. I had no idea they were dating. Not one. I felt like garbage. I could hear my narcissist-parent telling me I was a 'freak' and how 'no man would ever really want me' and calling me 'stupid' or 'un-loveable.'

But the worst was yet to come. I fixated on the letters for a bit. I don't know how long. Finally I came to parts in a few of them that Mark talked about me. In brief, he told Janet repeatedly that the only reason he dated me was because I had the "body of a woman" and was only "good for" sexual gratification. I was glad I told him "NO" all those times he tried to push me to do things I was uncomfortable with. I felt horrible. He called me "pitiful" and talked about me like I was a lovesick puppy. He admitted he liked toying with me and how he was still communicating with me out of "pity."

I remember getting up and saying I needed to go. I numbly walked out to my bike while Janet still sat looking out the large picture window of the kitchen of her home. At that time, I couldn't believe the same girl whose hand I held when she got the news her father had passed away a few years before, did this to me. She still had a weird smile on her face as I pedaled down her long driveway and down the long farm road in the dust and heat of July.

I rounded the corner to come to the highway and got about 3 feet and stopped. I parked my bike and walked down into the ditch at the side of the road. With the sound of summer bugs, in a ditch full of weeds & wildflowers, and my blood still rushing in my ears, I promptly threw up the lunch. When that was gone, my breakfast came next followed by bile. I wiped my mouth and tried to clean my hands off on some weeds. I composed myself and drove the bike home, where I laid on my bed and refused meals for a couple days, in shock.

A letter from Mark came about 2 days after this full of the usual pablum. I wrote him back and told him, briefly, I had spoken to Janet. She had shared his letters with me and I was aware of his 'true feelings' about me now and to please discontinue writing me. I also told him to please stay away from me when he came home on leave and wished him luck with Janet. I didn't say that I had known Janet long enough to know how that would end so he needed to find out for himself. The letter was less than one page.

Almost 16 months later, my mother received a letter from Mark begging her to talk me into letting him take to my senior prom. My mother was determined I would go, though I did not want to. I had already made plans with a couple girls who also had no dates to go to a movie that night but my mother would have none of it. This was not her idea of how a daughter should be. I was never her idea of a her perfect daughter. She pushed so hard I finally said "O.K." to shut her up.

It was a horrible evening. My ex-fiance (I'd become very serious with a boy I'd known for a few years but, it was broken off for us just a few weeks earlier) and his on & off girlfriend of 5 years sat almost directly across from us. At the end of the evening Mark tried to physically force himself on me and I clocked him so hard his head went back and broke the driver's side window of his car. I jumped out and got home.

48 hours later, Mark started stalking me. He scared the wits out of my grandmother by peering in our basement windows and walking around the house. This was well before stalking laws so he followed me to work or the library or the bank. I was getting ready to go off to college and wanted nothing to do with him. Finally, my mother let him in and sat there helicopter parenting while I told him goodbye, in person.

I told him that I would call the local police if he came to the house again. My father had just joined the N.Y. State Troopers so I knew who to call. My father popped in and told him he would report his stalking behavior to the Navy.

Most of all Mark wanted to know why I wouldn't give it another try. I asked him if Janet had ditched him. His face said it all. I said I didn't trust him. I saw him start to make a move to grab my arm but my mother was hovering right there and when he realized that - he stopped. He asked about the engagement breakup as one of his brothers my age had told him. He left our house and I told him stay away.

He never bothered me again, but I do know he went to see my ex-fiance who was on his way to the U.S. Naval Academy. I am sure it wasn't pretty but frankly I didn't care.

I had problems sleeping after the initial shock with Janet and my family doctor gave me low-dose sedatives. That last year of high school it was difficult to see her. Unfortunately I had to interact with her a lot academically & during after school activities. After the stalking I was put on sedatives again but stopped about 1 week after I got to college. I hadn't yet lost my ability to trust or love again...

... but it had one foot out the door.

The Betrayal of the Bystanders
by Kathy Krajco

Why do we feel so wronged by the people who believe a narcissist's lies about us? There are a number of reasons, but here is one of the biggest.

It's because their credulity isn't innocent. If a stranger believes some outrageous lie about us, we aren't surprised, and we don't feel wronged by them. But if someone who knows us believes that same lie, we feel betrayed. Guess why? It's because they have betrayed us by believing that lie about us.

For example, if someone has known you, they see your track record of conduct. In other words, they have seen how you conduct yourself along this way of life we're bound upon.

No, they don't see everything you've said and done. But they have seen a lot. They have seen you react to many various stimuli.

That track record of yours sketches your character in their eyes. This representation of what kind of person you are is based on your CONDUCT (your words and deeds), not on mere hearsay about you.

So no one should be able to come along and tell them JUST ANYTHING about you.

For example, if you are a gentle person, that will show. Many times. The people you interact with will see sample after sample of you reacting gently to things that most others would react more harshly to.

So no narcissist should be able to come along and insinuate that you are violent.

Likewise if you are honest. In ten years that will show. Many times. The people you interact with daily will see sample after sample of you reacting honestly to things that most others would hedge the truth about.

So no narcissist should be able to come along and insinuate that you are a liar.

Likewise if you are sensible. The people you interact with daily will see sample after sample of you reacting sensibly to things that most others would show poor judgment about.

So no narcissist should be able to come along and insinuate that you are crazy and imagining things.

To believe these things about you they have to unknow everything they know about you. That is, they have to unknow you. They have to revise history. They have to erase that track record of yours.

And that track record is your life. They have to wipe it out.

That takes your life.

Which is why they call it "character assassination."

Your whole life goes up in smoke. And a figment of the imagination is substituted for it.

Those people are not innocent. Indeed, check it out: that is the Original Sin.

Eve committed it when she chose to believe that God was the liar, not the slithering sidewinder who snuck up to her and said, "Really? God told you that? That you would fall if you swallowed this stuff?"

Then Adam committed it worse when he swallowed it, too, just to agree with Eve.

The serpent did the same thing to God that the narcissist does to his victims, whom he slanders to discredit. Adam and Eve did the same thing to God that people do to a narcissist's victim when they believe the lie.

The narcissist's lie is always ironic. For the narcissist is out to smear one of your outstanding GOOD QUALITIES with the semblance of one of his own VICES. So, the allegation is always preposterous. No one who knows you should be fooled by it.

Because it isn't believable. They should know better. But they willfully don't. Because the lie is juicy.

And so, there's nothing like a narc attack to show you who your real friends are.

SOURCE: The Betrayal of the Bystanders