Loving a Narcassist - A Memoir

Rose Colored Glasses

"I think we should just be friends..." The words hit like a ton of bricks. How exactly does one go from talking about finding an apartment together to a breakup conversation in the middle of the biography section in a Library? In what world does that make for a normal situation? 

I guess I should explain. 

I was finally 18 at the time. It was Spring of 2009 and I had just turned 18. We could finally get a place together legally and I wouldn't have to hide our relationship from my parents any longer. Jared was 19 at the time and working at the local Steak n Shake across from the mall that housed our Library I had been working at since I was freshly 16. We had been together for about a year. My parents disapproved of the relationship since he did not share the same religious beliefs as our family. But I was young and in love. Madly in love as most teenagers are with their first boyfriend. He had been distant with me lately but I just figured it was due to brother's death earlier that year. I was busy working two jobs. In the evenings I shelved books for the library and during the week days I did clerical work for a nearby brokerage firm. With both incomes and his we could afford a small apartment together. The idea of coming home to him every night sent butterflies off in my stomach. 

Books tell many stories, but I am glad they could never tell anyone the stories of my life within those walls. Between my first kiss in the children's section with a guy that was the cousin of my long time high school crush, to the first time Jared told me he loved me in the non-fiction. 

Jared and I actually met at the library. My co-worker and friend Kari knew him from high school and he would often stop in to use the public computers and would talk to her while he was there. I mentioned how cute I thought he was and she of course relayed this information to him which encouraged him to ask for my phone number. Scribbled down on some scratch paper we kept near the search engine PCs I handed over that phone number with my heart in my throat. And the rest was history. 

Everything was good. For awhile Jared worked in the mall at a neighboring store and we would often take our breaks together and walk through the mall. We stopped at the jewelry store a few times and looked around. I always admired all of the cute promise rings in there. Subtle hints dropped. We would sit in front of the nearby Cafe and talk about silly things including mutual friends we had. But in the Spring of 2009 I got a call from Jared that sounded like a completely different human on the other end. Through sniffles I was told his older brother had been murdered by police at a Gas station a town over. How anyone processes something like that I have never quite put my finger on. And if I had trouble processing it, I can only imagine how he felt. 

The day of the funeral was a day I could not forget. It rained and the air had an unforgiving chill. It is normally a time of year that brings life to everything around you. However, this particular spring day felt very heavy as I stood in front of the large church in my heels and business attire. I had left work for an extended lunch break at the brokerage firm to attend. I saw Jared and few others standing around in front of the dark colored exterior. I walked up and hugged him and handed him a carefully folded note that held a small silver half-heart necklace on a black rope chain inside. I can't remember everything I said in that note. But I remember pouring my heart out with love and sympathy and promising I'd always be by his side through the good and the bad. He stuffed it into his coat pocket and I made my way inside the church. 

I had never been inside a church. It was strictly forbidden in my religious community to attend any other religious establishment or gathering that was not of our own. I was awe struck by the hand crafted pews and stained glass windows. Large crosses with Jesus carved into them hung on each wall. The stage bowed before the room with a meek podium front and center. Pictures of Jared's brother lined to the left of the podium. A grieving family to the right. I sat quietly near the middle of the rows. As the service started, everyone quietly took seats around me and someone took the stage to deliver what would be the last memory everyone would have of a man that was a father, brother and son. I remember leaving that day grieving over a human I had never even had the opportunity to meet. But he was so much to Jared and therefore he felt like so much to me. 

The months following that funeral Jared grew more distant but tried to remain as normal as possible. I watched him start working more and become stubborn about accepting any help I offered to him when I had the means and he did not. Never the less, I thought it was just grief and that we would be fine. 

Until that day, standing in the biography section of the library...as I went on about my dreams for our future and was interrupted with those few cold words: "I think we should just be friends." 

"What?" I replied. I'm not even sure if it was a sincere question or a rhetorical statement. 

"Yeah..." was all he uttered while staring down at the floor. 

"...Why?" I followed. 

"I'm sorry, Leah." And then he turned and walked away! I stood there feeling like I was just frozen in place as tears started to well up in my eyes. I watched him walk all the way through the young fiction...passing the adult fiction and DVDs...the romance novels...the new arrivals...and out the door around the corner until he was out of sight. I ran to the breakroom where I completely lost it and sobbed. Looking back it was so dramatic but I was overwhelmed with emotions and honestly a lot of what the fucks, too. I had never felt emotional pain that literally reached up into your physical chest and blocked all sense from your brain in one foul swoop. It was the first real heartbreak I ever experienced. 

For, what felt like years but only presented itself in a couple of months, I felt broken and depressed. I called but he never answered. I saw him walking and would stop to offer him a ride home, but he would act like I didn't exist until I drove away. I didn't understand how he loved me one day and the next I just wasn't even a thought to him!  

October finally came. His 19th birthday. I had gone to an airbrush shop and paid to have a design I had sketched placed on a black hoodie. I wrote a letter sharing how heartbroken I was and apologizing for whatever it was I did that turned him away from me so sharply. The week of his birthday I stopped in at the Steak N Shake after my shift was over and saw him through the service window at the back of the restaurant. He saw me but then moved out of sight. I waited at the front counter and another employee walked up to greet me. I asked if they could just give him this gift and explained it was for his birthday and that I wouldn't bother him. The employee asked if I wanted him to go get Jared. I declined. He had saw me there...if he wanted to talk to me then he would have. 

As I turned to leave, I saw Jared one last time as he took the gift from the other employee. I didn't wait to see if he even cared to open it. I just left. And that was the last time I would see him for nearly two seasons. I left a piece of my heart in that gift and moved forward with my life, discarding all the unanswered questions I had and heartache to go with it.