Sliver

There are blank spots. Certainly I don’t remember everything. The memories I do have are sometimes murky, shadowed. And some are sharp as broken glass. The sharpest ones I live with, like I lived with the sliver of Coke bottle near my wrist for so many years; not visible, not painful, but just “there” where it shouldn’t be. Considering trying to get out.

One day, so many years a part of me, the sliver decided to leave my body, or at least begin to. Now that might have been a little painful. There was some swelling, and eventually, a bit of a point emerged. I think it freaked me out more than anything. Glass put there by an event so very long past, and now so unreal, I could not get comfortable with the hard evidence of what might otherwise seem easy to deny, or at least ignore, and pretend to forget.

The time came when the sliver protuded enough that it had to come out. I was able to extract it with tweezers, still imagining it might be something besides what it was. Glass. Glass that could only be there by the force that put it there.

The sliver was long, sharp, and clean as a whistle. I had perfect vision then and took a good long look at it. I marveled at the way it had suvived in my flesh in one piece for so many years, and at it’s size. Just huge. It was really impressive. I turned it over several times, pondered it’s origin, and then saved it somewhere now long lost to me. I know eventually I disposed of it. I knew it would be too ironic to find it poked into myself again by forgetting where I’d hidden it. Just because I needed to look at it for a while, didn’t mean I had a wish to hang onto it. So away it went.

A quart sized Coca Cola bottle; they used to make them that way; all glass, and heavy. The bottoms were thick.

I never saw it coming, and don’t remember raising my hand to my head to protect it, and yet I did just that. The part of my hand injured showed such. It didn’t happen some other way. But I never saw it and I never felt a thing. And then again, maybe the memory is just gone or never was there at all. Shock can make things that way.

Another sliver has considered now moving, perhaps is even ready for the tweezers. For all I know it has just passed clean out of me, I don’t really know. But for so long it was “just there”. If I ever spoke of it I did in monotone, matter of fact. I would at least register the look on another’s face and note either horror or disbelief and occasional simple confusion. I learned to say nothing. I suppose not everyone shrugs off the news that someone they know has survived a terror, and most don’t want to know. For most people, it’s only interesting in the movies.

I don’t remember everything. The memories I do have are sometimes murky, shadowed. And some are sharp as broken glass. The sharpest ones I live with, like I lived with the sliver. Not painful, just “there”. The murky ones, they’re the ones that bring the shadows. I didn’t think they had slivers, until now. I can’t see them when they come out, “long, sharp, and clean as a whistle.” But I feel them moving, emerging. Why does it sometimes take so long? When I no longer need to remember, why is it time now? Truly, I am okay. I don’t care if I ever remember more, and don’t really want to. If a sliver is fine where it is, why try to dig it out? I put myself through all that long ago, and finally understood that it’s okay if I can’t remember, it’s ok to live with a sliver. If the sliver’s a problem, it will let you know…and may just emerge on it’s own when it’s ready.

After all this time, I guess another piece of glass must leave me.

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The Why

There is no understanding “Why”.

Trying to comprehend, with a compassionate heart, the incomprehensible; the compassionless. It will make you crazy. 

All that needs understood is more stark and brutal than I like to be, but it is the truth still; there are people in the world who cannot be filled or satisfied. Ever. The closest they come is momentary, and it comes from control, which makes them important, makes them matter.

They don’t care who they hurt or whether it’s wrong to do the things they do. It’s all about them; there is no real concience inside. Only the rules and tools they have learned to get them what they need and want. This emptiness, combined with a lack of remorse, compassion, concience, makes for a very hungry and potentially vicious creature. Some are more talented in feeding themselves than others, and not all who lack a concience become criminal. It all depends on what they want, what gives them that momentary, fleeting sense of satisfaction, but it will always be about what they want over anything else that should matter. Especially you. Especially if you have something they want. And they often do want what they cannot have.

Many wear their emptiness , their discontent, as some badge of honor, their persona one of being so rich, creative, intelligent, and individual that the mundane and real life challenges and joys of other people do not apply to them, do not touch them. They are not sheep and have no need to deceive themselves with the banal like those asleep people.

Many also become adept at displaying the traits of actually having compassion, for they study others and learn that it’s a great cover for not giving a shit about anybody at all. They also learn it get’s them alot of ground with the most vulnerable of marks.

For the truly discontented, the misunderstood, the vulnerable, this blend of learned tactics in the concienceless can cause us to volunteer, or at least repeatedly abide destructive and selfish behavior, even as our instincts scream at us  to RUN AWAY. Because, it seems, someone finally understands us. It’s even worse if you have ever been a “runner”, for now you want to, for once, just stay. And they want you to stay, return, let them in, because you are their source of food. Emotional, spiritual, literal, whatever. You are a source, nothing more. Yes, that’s brutal, and always true to the sociopath.

I say “us”, because I have been this one; one who was dragged into a pit so deep and wide I could not see the sky; all because I believed I could apply understanding to another who is motivated by twisting people into mental and spiritual pretzels. My worst mistake; trying to put myself in their shoes, when it can’t be done. It’s like believing a snake is not a snake, but a human that slithers. A snake is a snake and does snake things. My interpretation of the snake has nothing to do with it’s snake-ness, and never did.

Here’s how I healed myself, took back my life: I stopped believing the story, the excuses, the tragedy of it all, all those reasons the person hurt others, all the reasons it wasn’t their fault they did what they do, all those reasons they are “wounded”, confused, torn, jaded, and self destructive. I stopped believing in the allure, the glamor of their darkness and failures. I ignored their “potential” [which was a convenient way of covering alot of "nevers"] It is all a convenient and learned application to blur and cover their selfish destruction of everything they cannot attain, yet cannot accept responsibility for not having, because they believe they should have whatever they want. Simple. At whatever cost to you. At no real cost to themselves, besides playing the game well.

I stopped believing they are victims of their own crappy lives. Many have had crappy lives and have used what they’ve learned to create so much good. And sociopaths have no problem using every tool to their advantage when they are securing a victim to use, in fact, they can become very persistant. They are not inert, powerless, helpless. Just selfish. Just lacking in character. Just not motivated by anything but greed. Those lacks cannot be taught to one who does not want to learn them. There may be something missing in them, but there is also choice, and they’re not crazy. They do know what they’re doing.

This is not bitterness speaking, for I am long past the brush of bitterness beginning in me. I have survived the chasm of coldness, aloneness, self doubt and anguish the sociopath left me to dig out of. I grew through the pains of learning to love and trust after seeing the truth of what one like this can do. It took me a long time, but I made it; I got better, I got stronger. And I love, feel, and care as fiercely as I can. The sociopath stole from me, I won’t let him rip me off in my ability to love too. I’m alive. My heart is alive. My spirit is intact. I won’t become like he; dead inside.

Know this: they are not like us, and trying to understand will be the consumption of all efforts to understand anything, which would be better applied elsewhere. There isn’t understanding, just identifying, just seperation. Just moving on,  and becoming you again. I believe in you.

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After All

And after all that…I feel slightly shamed for my sharpness about him. Is he a monster? He was certainly the vehicle for one.

Still, I have tried to not become one who hates, or is vindictive–even in spirit.

I should feel sad for him–and I used to. A great danger for me–feeling sorry for him. He does what he wants, who ever it maims. He does not need my pity. He will use a person’s pity, the pity for the lost boy within him. He used mine, anyway.

 

Here is what struck me in this book I just read–The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout–

 

“Question your tendency to pity too easily.

Respect should be reserved for the kind and the morally courageous. PITY is another socially valuable response, and it should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100% that you are dealing with a sociopath.”

 

And elsewhere–

 

“Do not join the game.

Intrigue is a sociopath’s tool. Resist the temptation to compete with a seductive sociopath, to outsmart him, psychoanalyze him, or even banter with him. In addition to reducing yourself to his level, you would be distracting yourself from what is really important, which is to protect yourself.”

 

Last–

 

“Defend your psyche.

Do not allow someone with no conscience, or even a string of such people, to convince you that humanity is a failure. Most human beings DO possess conscience. Most human beings ARE able to love.”

 

That right there, is what I allowed, but fought. That right there, is what I want you to know, with all my heart. That I hope you do not allow someone to convince you that YOU are not able, whether because of “craziness” or “sameness” to another who is unable [the sameness--it's the trick and it's not true].  Because your heart and perception have been damaged–do not believe you are unable to love, or have real love. The world would truly be ripped off if that lie were bought.

 

Rae–once again, I admit I have little restraint. I think I do, but clearly I cannot pace myself here. Maybe the plug in my life has been pulled. Or more like a clog.

I do not say all of this for you, or at least not at you–but for finding the words.

I hope they do not find themselves ever unwelcome.

You are a gift you know–I have been scared, in my own way. The hard scar of him, I don’t hide. But it feels picked at now, and it makes me all those things I have not felt in a while–paranoid, vulnerable, in a weird and not adult way almost.

It’s too weird–we talk as though we are survivors of something so much more dramatic, drastic and “valid” than a man. It was so much more than that to me, so perhaps it’s not so weird.

I need to stop, for I find I have not eaten since yesterday. Times like this, I struggle to do the normal things–eat, sleep, don’t become overly anything.

And always I need those things the most, whenever I have emotional work to do.

I know I have mentioned some other things revealing themselves to me, back to back with our own discoveries. So many things, now made more clear to me, a relief; enlightening and full circle, yet exhausting.

 

A friend has just come—company.

So, I’ll see you.

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