Happy V-Day!

Well, today is “the big day.”  The “day for lovers.”  You know what I’m talking about:  Valentine’s Day!  If you’re still on the mend from your time with your narcissist, perhaps even feeling a bit nostalgic, missing them, I hope you’re not entertaining the notion of reaching out to them.  As history and experience have proven time and again, it will not end well for you if you do.  Hopefully, you’re past the point of feeling the need to celebrate Valentine’s Day with your narcissist, but I get it if you’re not.  Truly, I do.  It’s always nice to celebrate a day made specifically for lovers with the person whom you love.  In fact, Valentine’s Day marks the anniversary of Julia, my narcissist, and my first date.  The thing is, if you reached out to your narcissist, or if they reached out to you, and you did reconnect even just for Valentine’s Day (or night), you have to remember this one ubiquitous truth:  you and your narcissist would indeed be celebrating Valentine’s Day with the person whom you both sincerely love, and it’s not each other.

As we have already established, when you love a narcissist, you are both in love with the same person:  the narcissist.  And while that may sound a bit jaded, emotion makes a truth no less true.  Jaded or not, I think we need to be honest with ourselves, first and foremost.  Think back.  No matter how amazing things were between us and our narcissist during each and every one of those hoovering phases, things soon always went to hell in a handbasket, didn’t they?  And didn’t they seem to do so more and more quickly on the heels of each passing hoovering phase.  Tell me, were those 2-3 days (or weeks, if you were lucky) of blissful reconnection with your narcissist worth the hell of the following 2-3 months (or longer) where you slaved away investing untold effort and countless tears on what seemed a neverending parade of misery, futilely attempting to unbreak a broken person and their broken love?  You and I both know we’re lying to ourselves if we say anything other than, “No.”  Sure, at the time we felt if we loved just a little harder, a little deeper, made more of a heartfelt investment, that our narcissist would become the person whom we first met and first fell in love, so we innocently and unwittingly continued on our path to self-destruction.

If you’re still hurting, still missing them, still longing for their touch on your skin, their embrace enveloping you, their kisses gently yet passionately caressing your lips, their scent on every breath you take; I genuinely and sincerely share in your pain.  I spent 4-½ years there, a prisoner, myself.  And even now as I stand exhausted and drained, but liberated and free, having ridden out the tidal forces of grieving and thus washed up on these secluded shores of healing, I find that I still miss my narcissist.  Yes, you read that right.  I miss her.  Or, more accurately, I miss who I thought my narcissist was.  Not who she truly is.  And the two are such polar opposites.  When we find ourselves missing our narcissist, and at times we will, what we must realize is this:  we don’t miss what we lost.  We miss what we imagined would be, now that we realize it will never be.

My beautiful, you are so amazing!  Why would you waste the wonderful gift of your love on a person devoid of the capacity to return that love?  Some of you may be understandably asking me, “But didn’t you?!”  Yes, beautiful.  I did.  And I regret every single one of those moments of my life that I selflessly sacrificed my time, my heart, my spirit, my energy; my love, for someone undeserving, unappreciative, and completely incapable of returning even the smallest morsel of that banquet I so eagerly and lovingly prepared just for her.  So, no.  I am not judging you if you lapse.  I am not casting even the slightest hypocritical glance at you, let alone the smallest stone, if you relent and call, text, or show up on your narcissist’s doorstep today.  It’s your heart.  Only you can be its keeper.  But allow me to ask you a question:  is that where you truly wish to be, not just for one day (or night) but for the rest of your life?

Consider, each time you venture back down that particular rabbit hole, you enable your narcissist to gleefully reopen the wound from which you’ve worked so hard to heal.  You allow them to, once more, shackle you to them and begin sucking the life and love from the beautiful vessel that is you, feasting as they did before, callously chortling as you once again slowly become emotionally bankrupt.  All of your healing thus far, every step you’ve taken down the road on this journey of mending your beautiful heart, will be undone.  Is that what you want?  Is that where you truly wish to be?  Resuming your journey of healing from the beginning, with freshly opened wounds?  I hope not, beautiful.

Instead, I would propose that you do indeed celebrate Valentine’s Day not so much as Valentine’s Day but as V-Day – a day of victory!  Because you most assuredly have survived a war.  That being said, in lieu of celebrating a broken relationship with a broken person, why not celebrate your victory, your freedom from that person and from a love that was grotesquely unilateral?  Celebrate that you are no longer with someone who never truly cherished the amazing gift of you.  Because you should be cherished.  In point of fact, it is you who should be celebrated, not a sadly unsalvageable romance with a person who never did anything more than tolerate your presence.

So go out!  Go catch a movie (but not a romance!).  How about an amazing dinner at an upscale restaurant you’ve always wanted to try but never found the time, courage, or maybe even the money to venture?  Splurge on yourself.  Treat yourself!  You most assuredly deserve it – just don’t go back to any old haunts you frequented with your narcissist, trying to relive a moment or memory from the past.  How about a nice stroll along the Riverwalk or on the Greenway?  Sure, you’re bound to pass and perhaps even interface with other couples, but let that be the inspiration to you that love still very much exists!  And don’t fret.  You won’t be the only person flying solo today.  Somewhere out there is someone else who’s also longing for the same love you not only possess and yearn to share but that you also seek.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll meet him or her while you’re out.  Maybe not.  Fate can be such a fickle mistress, sometimes.  Regardless, don’t spend Valentine’s Day lamenting the loss of something that was real only for you.

My beautiful, if you are hurting so badly that you feel compelled to once again allow your narcissist to come back into your life, pull out those letters your past-self wrote your future-self.  If you’re a regular reader, I hope you embraced the practice of writing out your fresh pain as I have recommended in multiple articles.  If not, you should start.  Believe it or not, the broken and hurting you is far wiser and stronger than the healing you could possibly imagine.  And all the pain they have to share will be the strength you need now to refrain from returning to that particular level of hell wherein your narcissist awaits you, welcoming arms outstretched, with a Cheshire cat grin betraying the hollow-emptiness that resides where their soul should be.

If you haven’t been writing out your pain as you have progressed on your journey of healing, as you have traveled down this path to wholeness, if you feel yourself becoming weak, contemplating calling or texting your narcissist, call or text a friend, instead.  Someone who was there for you when you were at your lowest and they lifted you up.  If a good friend isn’t an option or available, take that walk or go watch that movie – just distract yourself!  Don’t allow your mind the opportunity to focus and fester on what is no more.  Trust me, I know firsthand that we can create for ourselves the most torturous of private hells wherein we willingly reside.  You have dug your soul out of a very deep and dark place; do not go back to what buried you.  If you don’t have the luxury of calling a friend, or distracting yourself, private message me.  I will answer.  I will talk with you.  I will be here for you.  But, whatever you do, my beautiful, please do not go back to your narcissist.  The only thing waiting for you is the past.  And it has nothing new to offer.