The Other Definition of Revenge

If you're white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, like me (guilty as charged, can't help my genetics, but I can psychoanalyze the eff outta them genes), you've heard this phrase:

“Living well is the best revenge.”

And, like me, you likely only have one answer to this axiom:

Horse. Shit.

You want to see them in pain, measure for measure what they put you through. You want to see the realization in their eyes that they screwed up so far beyond the pale that they couldn't find said pale with two hands, a map, and a native guide. You want public humiliation, groveling, and everyone's admittance that you were Right, and they were Wrong.

That's neurotypical revenge.

Now, before you go off at my phrasing of the previous sentence, no, we're not talking about neurodivergent. Leave them alone. I'm talking about the truly insane.

The narcissists, whether malignant or covert. The Cluster B nutjobs. Many who have Borderline Personality Disorder. The soulless ones. Them.

Their brains don't work the way the rest of ours do, and neurodivergents are part of that “ours.” Most neurodivergents are just trying to get along in a world that makes no sense to them, like reading the rules in a pitch black room, so they have to feel along and hope someone left Braille instructions in English, not Swahili. But then one of Them comes along, to eel into any life they can, taking advantage of the kindness or generosity and then exploiting it. And I've met eels, so I know what an insult I'm giving their entire species. Tapeworms care more about their unwilling hosts than one of Them for their victims.

Once, long ago, a fellow student in college, studying psychology, mentioned something interesting (whether or not it's true is a different story): all of Freud's theories have been debunked, UNLESS you're studying people with mental illnesses. Then they make perfect sense.

The above, combined with a less-than-satisfactory mantra, has given me a solution to my problem of moving on from Them.

Ignore Them. Drop Them. Use Them as a vaccine to make you immune from further predation, then scrub Them from your mind. Do not let Them live rent free in your head.

Why?

It drives Them absolutely bug-effing NUTZ.

I'm serious.

Remember, They don't think like the rest of us.

They want you to remember Them. They want you to obsess over Them. They want to watch the world burn, and that includes watching you twist yourself into knots trying to figure out what you did wrong with the relationship, and what you could have said or done to change things. They are happy to create the misery you're living in, then turn up the heat slowly.

Silence kills Them. They live in the center of chaos, the venomous spider in the middle of the web. Take yourself away to live a life out of Their perceived orbit, and suddenly They have no hold over you.

I had a nasty final experience with a malignant narcissist earlier this year. She owed me a lot of money, but somehow convinced herself that I was a horrible person, so didn't deserve to be repaid, going so far as to create false memories and conversations to back up her belief. It was insane, hearing the accusations coming out of her. And I thought this was a friend? It was all a lie, five years of a deep and intense relationship that never existed.

It's been hard to process, but the worst part is that I was so blind, so trusting. I am disgusted that I fell for it all. It turned me into someone I didn't recognize. I didn't lose myself, but it was real close. And that's what saved me – when I called her on some obvious gaslighting, just like that, I was kicked to the curb.

I will survive. And, like I mentioned, I will use this harsh experience to vaccinate myself against further incursions into my life and happiness.

She had to re-establish communication in order to pay what she owes me. Despite her protests that our texts to her were “triggering,” and blocking us, but apparently still getting them? Yeah, doesn't make sense to me either, but she was no longer sane in the court room. So she started up on the same old shit – poking, nasty little digs, trying to get a rise out of me so she could justify her ugliness. My last comment was short, sweet, and to the point: “I don't need further extraneous communication from a malignant narcissist.”

And then I stopped texting.

Because I will not feed the beast.

I will not dump all my feelings on her, hoping to engender sympathy or empathy, because narcissists don't feel those emotions. They can fake them, sometimes for years, but they are as fake as the persona they create to lure you in.

I will not let her live rent free in my head.

I have a life to live. I have butterflies to raise. I have friends and family who were more than willing to welcome me back, bruised and emotionally bleeding as I was. I have a world to explore, and places to go, and experiences to enjoy.

Occasionally, the thought X would have liked this, she should be here flitters through my head, to be replaced by Nope, for these very good reasons, now you know why she's out of your life. And I can see, clear as day, how her interference would destroy the friendships and pleasure of the trip. Like the last two years of our “friendship,” the mask would slip, and the black hole in her would suck all the life out of what we were doing.

I'm only human, of course. I have days where I just want to scream, grab a baseball bat, smack some sense into that once-loved, now-hated face. Tell her all the things that I know would hurt. How she's become exactly like the father she despises, right down to the cadence of the calculated lies she spit at me. How I wish I had never been convinced to befriend her, and how I wish the person who introduced us would drop dead. How I now know the great big lie they were trying so desperately to hide from me, and how disgusting it is to destroy people's lives for their own perverted amusement. How she doesn't know how to love, doesn't even know what friendship is, and abandoned me when I really needed her.

But I won't. Because that feeds her, and keeps the narcissistic cycle circling.

I've said what I needed to. Calling her what she truly is, is so powerful.

And I can walk away.

Because you know what would be worse than wasting five good years of my life, having my money, my time, and my emotional bandwidth sucked away, at a time when I couldn't afford any of those things, but I gave them anyway, because I thought she needed me?

Spending even one more minute on her sorry memory.