The Lost Letters: The Dark World of Narcissistic Abuse

A Testament of a Lie

It began with a lie, as all things too good to be true tend to do.

Eleven and a half years later, I hide in the south of Poland, rapidly going bankrupt from fighting an endless court battle against a man who is using his wealth and nepotist connections to ensure I am left with nothing. And in this place where my ears are blind and my eyes are drowning in rustic beauty, I sit before my beloved keyboard and write a testament of hell. Of destruction. Of evil.

Of the silent, insidious process of someone systematically eradicating the identity, self, worth and value of another with escalating psychological, financial, sexual, and physical abuse.

It takes a special type of personality to possess the lack of empathy required to hijack a person's love and trust and use it to invalidate them, punish them, and turn their heart into weapon to be used against them. To control them.

Narcissists are everywhere. They live among us. Hard to spot. Harder to catch. Impossible to stop. They enter your life with calculation and expertise, are excellent listeners (at the beginning), because information is power. Their story is always the same. They are the victim of selfish people who have taken advantage of their generosity and goodness. They prey on your empathy, sharing their tale of woe until you are seduced by their words, and of how incredibly fortunate you are that they appear to be the very one you have been waiting for. You know you won't do to them what their previous partner did. You know you are perfect for them. They tell you they love you. You fall. Hard. And they are there to catch you.

Perhaps you get two months. Perhaps a year. It is a fairytale. A love affair drenched in passion, adventure, and excitement. You can't believe your luck. They ask you to marry them.

You say yes. You don't want them to slip away.

And then the fairytale ends. Like the proverbial frog in the frying pan, things shift subtly. At first you express concerns. You are told you are over-reacting. Doubt plagues you. Not about them—about your ability to see things as they truly are. Nothing is clear. You try to get clarity so you carefully frame your question. It's not right. You try again. Still not right. You are corrected. Often. Gently, with a smile, as though you are cute but a little dense. Something feels off. You used to be able to trust your gut. Not any more. It seems your gut is the liar these days. Soon you give up saying what you see or remember because you never get it right and have to be corrected. It's just easier to let them tell you how it is. How that blind woman with the seeing eye dog wasn't on the pedestrian crossing and your partner almost ran them over. You saw it wrong. They weren't even on the crossing.

But you saw the dog almost get hit.

Or did you?

As your light dies from their continual crises, drama, and fights created out of thin air, a line is crossed. Exhausted of your internal energy, of your light, of what made you who you are, you become a shell, no longer of any use or interest to your once-fairy tale partner. Now you are looked at with derision. The hate begins. And it's terrifying. Like an abused dog who knows nothing better, you crawl back, trying to appease them, to please them, to get the fairy tale days back. To get the hate to stop. Because if they hate you, you must also hate yourself. The pain is unbearable.

Sometimes they relent and are kind for a day, maybe a week, or even a month. It's a oasis of heaven in the midst of a burning hell . . . but then the pendulum swings back and the hate returns again, the treatment even worse than before.

Over and over the pattern repeats until in desperation you have no choice but to turn against your Self, make your thoughts and experiences wrong and theirs right, and accept that everything—everything—is your fault. Caught in their riptide, your existence is slammed against the sharp rocks of their bleak shore, and the only way to end the storm (they tell you) is to do what they ask, but each time the request is more humiliating, demeaning, and annihilating . . . until you are not you anymore, but a broken thing, lost, isolated, and trapped in the glare of their intense, insatiable hatred.

One year ago yesterday, the divorce was finalized. But the court fight goes on. He claims I owe him money for having supported me. I had no job. I had nothing. It was how he wanted it. Now he wants not only everything there is from the marriage, but he also wishes to put me into debt to him. I have gathered up the scraps of the fight that remains within me to write this for you. If only someone had written this book before I met him, if only someone had recommended it to me. How different my life might be right now. Perhaps I might not have seen through the fantasy he created at the beginning, but I would have understood sooner what he was, and why he was doing what he was doing, and how it would never, ever end until either I died, or was discarded, a broken, ruined woman. I would not have continued on in the false hope that somehow I could make things better.

But there was no book, and back then no one really knew or talked much about narcissists so I was unprepared for the enormity of the sacrifice my heart had made in its pursuit of a love that was a complete lie.

My story is ugly, painful, and at times, utterly brutal. When others hear the recordings of what I endured, they cry, even the men weep. It will be hard to write this. I will be forced to relive awful memories. But after months of consideration, and the encouragement of my friends, I know I cannot remain silent when I have the gift of words and the knowledge this experience has given me. My father says the greatest thing one can do is to give service to others. Perhaps I was always meant to write this book, even if it has come to cost me almost everything. Perhaps as I sit here in the ruins of my life, my only true purpose is to protect other women from great harm with the gift I have been given.

So this book is for you, to help you understand and spot those monsters who seek to consume your light until you are nothing but skin and bone, your soul enslaved to their control, your existence defined by their mood. Your life left in a tailspin and them still hunting you, maliciously seeking to kick you while you are down. Trying to force your own hand to end your life.

I am almost 49. I fled the country to escape him. Now I live in my best friend's house and try not to think of the beautiful home I had, the car I loved to drive, or the garden I nurtured. The few scraps I owned from before the marriage are stored in a shipping container, locked away for who knows how long. Perhaps forever. My narcissist was incredibly successful in his work.

He has all and I have . . . nothing.

Except this. My words.

And those can never be taken from me.

So let us begin.

This time with the truth.