My Crazy Friends (narcissism and other problems)

Back when I had a social life, my family used to refer to my crazy friends a lot.  Each of them had different problems, none of which affected our friendships.  I have been on the same radar as these people for more than thirty years, despite many ups and downs in our relationships.

Because we do not see each other all the time, sometimes taking a break for ten years or so, it is a lot less stable, yet a lot less boring than most people.  My parents had much the same kind of relationships with their friends, so it does not seem unusual to me.

I have a parent (mother) with narcissistic tendencies, a sister with a more defined form of NPD, which appears to be more of an affectation. I have shown a marked preference for narcissists over the years.  It is easy, I know the rules, I don’t expect anything, so I guess I keep doing the same thing. My father, who I resemble far more than my mother, was more empathetic and introverted, and so I was basically brought up with the idea that we had some jobs, the benefit of which meant we did not have to talk to anyone.  You need a lot of rests when dealing with people who believe that the world revolves around them.

A cursory look at the material on Youtube related to narcissism, is that a lot of it is not particularly good.  Some of it, in fact, consists of people over-analysing things about their relationships that aren’t worth noticing.  What they perceive as narcissistic abuse, is actually just some individuals showing a greater tendency towards selfishness than others.  narcissismvideos is probably the most dedicated narcissism researcher in the world, and one of the few I bother to listen to, because he himself suffers from NPD.

So it is rather ironic that the family would refer to my crazy friends, each of whom had different and in many cases more interesting sets of problems.  Some of these were environmental.  Aldous, the character from Best Scandal Ever and Best Romance Ever, had chronic reactive depression, brought about by living at home with his gifted yet sporadically violent brother and mother.  My own periods of sadness have been greatly lengthened by being at home, and I have lost count of the days I have lost to wondering why I put myself through any of this whilst being told that I am the problem.

If you try to get through life without feeling anything, you will seek out more bland personalities than I have chosen to spend my time with.  I tend to look on this as a strength. I am sufficiently secure to bear the brunt of many problems.  It becomes rather sad, however, when I see someone becoming ill right in front of me.

Because of a brain injury, my friend told me that he thought that he was dying when he was in fact recovering.  His memory has improved, his functioning has improved, he is in less chronic pain than he was in previously.  He has, during the same period, shown significant deterioration in his level of engagement.  You can have a conversation and believe that he is participating in it, only to find that he has not connected with anything that has been said at all.  It has, in the last week, become impossible to talk to him at all as he is clearly not engaging with any information and chooses instead to gaslight.  It takes time and knowing someone well to even spot this, and he is not all that safe, as company goes.

Naturally, since I cannot communicate with anybody about my work, I have come to the conclusion that the only answer is to shut the door on everybody and finally do it.  I am obviously going to have to become as driven and self-promoting as the average narc to get the necessary information out to enough people to finally be able to discuss it with anybody.  This is not good for my work, and it is not something I want to do at all, being an introverted empath rather than an extroverted narc.  In the meantime I have to work on my personal presentation, since my life has, up until now, consisted of servicing others.

This is the biggest change yet in my journey, brought about by my bizarre imaginary love affair with Wolfe, and I am well out of my comfort zone at this point.  I hope for everyone else’s sake that I can pull it off, because it is important.

Having had at least two ex boyfriends with NPD, one psychopathic, a sister with an affectation, a mother with sufficient tendencies to survive almost anything, and a best friend who showed strong markers for it, I am hoping that I have learned enough about putting yourself first to at least pretend sufficiently to make this work.  If not, I will be wasting my time.

Hopefully this is sufficient to explain to you that craziness is a tool, and a label, rather than something to be avoided.  You can learn from anybody, at any time, without fearing adverse results from spending time with more unusual people.  I do not recommend falling in love with them, but hey, shit happens, sometimes with good results rather than bad.

 

 

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