Know when to walk away; know when to run

There’s so much to do today. I thought I would be caught up after the holidays but I also thought I’d get some time OFF during the holidays. I got neither, so I’m trying to take as much of an online break as I can. I do still want to write part two of this series, though, so… here we go.

Last week I talked about narcissists. We know them, we love them, we pity them, we’re driven insane by them, and if we’re really really lucky we can shut them out.

Going “No Contact” isn’t a clean break; it’s more like a messy, field amputation. There was that limb you had in your life and now you have to learn to live without it – unlike a real limb, though, it’s “get to” and not “have to.” So you get to rebuild your life, get to rebuild your soul, get to learn how to walk through the beautiful day without that albatross around your neck.

The Silence is Louder Than the Screaming

The first thing nobody tells you about cutting off a narcissist is how deafening the silence is. For months—or years—your brain has been tuned to a very specific frequency: the “What Do They Need Right Now?” channel. Your nervous system has been on high alert, scanning for shifts in their mood like a sailor watching a dark horizon for a rogue wave.

When you finally cut the line, that frequency goes dead. And it is terrifying.

Without the constant noise of their demands, their insults, or even their intermittent “love” crumbs, you’re left alone with your own thoughts. And your thoughts have been conditioned to be your own worst enemy. You start wondering: Was I the problem? Did I overreact? Maybe if I had just explained it one more time, in a different tone, using a PowerPoint presentation and a puppet show, they would have finally understood.

Stop. Just… stop.

That urge to “explain” is just your trauma trying to find a familiar rhythm. Silence is a boundary, not a void. It’s the space where you finally get to hear your own heartbeat again, even if it’s currently beating in a panicked Morse code that translates to “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Silence is a luxury but your brain needs to learn how to trust it – like the first time you fly first class, and you worry that someone is going to peg you for being in the wrong place and make you go back to cattle class.

The “Am I the Narcissist?” Spiral

Let’s get vulnerable for a second. Somewhere around Day Four of No Contact, usually while you’re staring at a sink full of dishes that look like they’re auditioning for a horror movie, the thought will hit you: Wait. Am I the narcissist?

You’ll remember the times you snapped. The times you were cold. The times you fought back with a sharpness that surprised even you. You’ll think, I’m the one who blocked them. I’m the one being “mean” now. Oh God, I’m the monster.

Sweetness, listen to me. A narcissist doesn’t spend their Tuesday afternoon having a moral crisis about whether or not they’re a narcissist. They don’t lose sleep over the way they treated you; they lose sleep over the fact that they lost their favorite toy. If you’re thinking maybe I’m the narcissist… you’re not the narcissist.

If you are worried that you’re the bad guy, you’re already disqualified from the position. What you’re feeling isn’t “narcissism”; it’s “reactive abuse.” It’s what happens when a person is pushed into a corner for so long that they start biting back. It’s messy, it’s ugly, and it makes you feel like garbage—but it’s a symptom of survival, not a personality disorder.

Rebuilding the Internal Compass (Which Is Currently Spinning Like a Top)

How do you start trusting yourself again when you’ve been told for however long that your feelings are “wrong” and your memories are “glitchy”?

Start small. Start ridiculously, annoyingly small.

Start with the laundry. Or the coffee. Or with taking a shower. Did you know you can do laundry and leave it in the dryer for a day if you want? Nobody cares. If it bothers someone, they can take it out and fold it. The sun will still set at night and rise in the morning. Did you know when you make coffee for yourself in the morning, you can serve it in any mug you want? Use the special one. Use the one you’re afraid of breaking. You’re worth the special mug. Did you know when you take a shower, you can use the scented soap? You can smell like lavender if you want to. It’s not silly to want to smell like something you like instead of like Dial soap.

That’s it. That’s the win.

Rebuilding self-trust is just a series of tiny, mundane choices where you don’t check in with a ghost for permission. It’s choosing to believe your own eyes when you see that the sky is, in fact, blue. It’s acknowledging that if you feel hurt, it’s because something hurtful happened, not because you’re “too sensitive.”

Your internal compass isn’t broken; it’s just been held near a very powerful magnet for too long. You have to walk away from the magnet before the needle can find North again. Before you can find your True North.

The Grief You Didn’t Invite

There’s a weird grief that comes with this. You aren’t just grieving the person—you’re grieving the version of yourself you had to kill to stay with them. You’re grieving the “potential” they showed you during the love-bombing phase, which you now realize was just a well-rehearsed character.

It’s okay to miss the character. It’s okay to cry over the ghost of the person you thought they were. You can miss the feeling of being “seen” while still acknowledging that the person who saw you was actually just scoping out your structural weaknesses.

The same person who told me I had the most intriguingly beautiful gray eyes is the same person who told me I would calm down and come to my senses once my period was over. I can grieve the absence of someone who would say something lovely about my eyes and I can be angry that same someone would dismiss my frustration by repeating a false misogynistic trope. The grief and the anger have to coexist. They have to be able to sit at the same table and look at each other square in the face.

The Beauty in the Breakdown

I’m weary. I’m so tired that my bones feel like they’re made of lead and my brain feels like it’s being run by a drunk squirrel on a treadmill. But there is hope here.

The hope is in the fact that I’m sitting on my own couch and nobody is telling me I’m sitting on it “wrong.” The hope is in the fact that I can feel my own anger and not have to apologize for it. The hope is in the messy, wrinkled pile of clothes in the dryer that will eventually get folded—or won’t—and the world won’t end either way.

We are resilient because we have been through the fire and we’ve come out the other side with our skins slightly singed but our hearts still beating. We are “hot messes” because we are finally allowing the “mess” to exist without trying to polish it for someone else’s approval.

If you’re in the middle of the “No Contact” fog, just keep walking. Don’t look back at the explosion. Don’t check their Instagram. Don’t ask their sister how they’re doing. Just keep picking your favorite coffee mug. Keep using the scented soap. Keep trusting your own eyes. Keep breathing.

You aren’t worthless. You were just being viewed through a distorted lens. Now that you’ve smashed the lens, you get to see yourself for what you really are: a goddamn miracle of survival.

OK, I’m off to feed the girls, who were sleeping late on this cold morning. They just want their crunchies and a head scritch and some snuggles on this couch. And honestly? That’s the kind of uncomplicated, honest love I can handle today. It’s the kind of uncomplicated, honest love I deserve.