The Lost Letters: The Dark World of Narcissistic Abuse

In Hell

You are there. Right now. In a place no one else understands. You are lonely, alienated, and hanging on to the thinnest of hopes: That if you just do what they want, everything will be better again. They will love you again. They will look at you with tenderness and adoration. God, you long for that. It's all you want. Just their love. Like before.

So you go on, nursing this fragile hope, even as they glare at you in uncontrolled rage and ravage your character, your body, your mind, your self with brutal slurs, words meant to hurt, with words meant to kill, barbed spikes of a whip; as they corner you when you try to escape, as they hurt you, leave bruises on your flesh, and fracture your fingers and bones when they throw you against the floor or into doors and walls—into anything that will hurt you, that will break you. Because they want to break you. All of you.

You beg them to stop. They laugh and call you worthless shit.

On your knees before them, you weep, and even as they raise their hand to hurt you again you tell them you love them. You. Love. Them.

They sneer at you and say: Too bad. And the hurt goes on. And on. Until you want to die.

For years I lived like this. Years. And for years I hid it. Denied it and took full responsibility for all that was wrong. I channelled my anguish into the love stories of my books and penned beautiful words of gratitude to my husband in the acknowledgements. Because without him, how could I afford to write full time? It was a double-edged sword. No abuse. No books. I romanticised it. What else could I do?

Oh how I loved him. Or, at least who I imagined he was. Because who he was in my mind was not who he was in reality. In reality he was a monster who hungered for nothing less than my annihilation. I still dream of him sometimes. Not nightmares, those I have in spades. No. Dreams where he is nice to me, like at the very beginning. I hate them. When I wake I face a fresh hell, all the feelings I longed for during those long, lost years return, pour through me, visceral, unlocked from the vault of the past in all their sensate beauty and I must overcome all the pain again. The loss. The longing. The unwarranted guilt. It hurts. All of it. It goes on and on.

It's a trauma bond of epic proportions. And you are still in it. Right now. For whatever reason, you are not ready or able to leave. You know best. More than any other, you know what your options are, what the consequences will be if you leave. You know because it's all you think about, day in and out.

Perhaps you are resigned to wait for the discard, because it will bring the least harm to you. Maybe you are waiting for him to replace to you, as he often tells you he will do, counting down the days to your liberation when another woman will take on the mantle of your suffering. A sister. A friend. You pity her, fear for her. You want to warn her, but you want to survive more. It's war after all. During the years you have suffered under his regime of hate, you have protected other women from him. You have done enough. It can be someone else's turn now. And so, you walk the darkest corridors of your soul and grieve, process past your carefully tended gardens of dead flowers. Of a life you never got to live.

Of a love that was a lie.

Below is a list of things I wrote to myself when I was deep in the trenches with my narcissist. I wrote these things to help myself survive what was happening. To give myself a guide I could refer to in times of chaos and crisis when my world was spinning. It helped. A little.

If you can, try to make a list like this for yourself that works best for your circumstances, to give yourself something to cling to when you are lost at sea. If it does anything at all, at the very least it gives a voice to what is happening. Be a friend to yourself. Be kind. Be supportive. For a long time, you may be the only friend you will have, so be the best friend you can be. Your life may well depend on it.