When Hearts Heal

Chapter 6

It was hard seeing pictures of Jaden everywhere with our friends, having a good time, smiling, laughing...It felt like even the posts he wasn't in, I was constantly searching for his face in the crowd, trying to see him, see what he was doing. I don't know what I was trying to achieve through doing this... 

"I should probably block him right?" I asked looking over at Maya. 

"The question is, why haven't you already ?" She asked looking serious. 

"I mean... I did. Then I didn't. And then I did again...until I didn't. Ugh !!! What's wrong with me!?" 

"Nothing's wrong with you Adi, you really loved him. " 

"He bought a ring, Maya...Julia told me." I commented feeling like the bad guy in all of this. 

"He did. But he also wasn't right for you and you had 100% the right to turn him down and say no. In my opinion, you should've stopped letting him talk you into stuff a long time ago." 

"Maybe, but that doesn't justify why I'm here licking my wounds STRUGGLING to get over him while he's out there having the best time of his life. I mean, I can see everything as clear as day now but, why am I so hung up on him? I know I deserve better and I see the way he treated me and the things he made me do, but I still can't figure out why I can't get over him, Maya." I asked. 

"I don't know." She answered sincerely pulling me into a hug. I could tell she was actually conflicted and wanted to give me an answer but she also knew she didn't have the answer. Heck, I didn't even have the answers to answer myself. 

Why is it always the good people that end up with the deepest scars? 

Maya sat down as I put my head on her lap while she stroked my hair. "Am I really just this pathetic that I can't even get over a guy who treated me like dirt?" 

"You're not pathetic Adi and you know that. You're a strong, confident, intelligent, beautiful, kind -" 

"And yet he managed to take the best qualities of me and made them my weaknesses," I added getting frustrated with Jaden all over again. 

"Hey, look at me, " She encouraged as I lifted my head up to look at her. "Jaden's a jerk. He had the best person in the world loving him with all her heart, a person who would and did give him her world, but he was too broken to see that and he hurt you. And I'm sorry that he hurt you, Adi, I wish I could've saved you the heartache. But don't you dare put this on you. He was the jerk, not you." 

"Then why do I feel like turning down his proposal was my fault? That I was the one who broke him?" I asked getting teary-eyed. 

"Because that's what manipulators and narcissists do. They train you so much to live in that mindset that your healthy feelings and communication are too much and that your needs don't matter. They string you along so that you crave that emotional connection but the second you ask for it, you're the one who's wrong for asking for it. And they keep doing this until you eventually...stop. You stop expressing your needs, you stop showing your emotions to them, you stop being you and you start changing into the person they want you to be. That's what Jaden did to you Adi, and that's not a healthy relationship...So you turning down his proposal wasn't you trying to hurt him, it was you trying to protect yourself because deep down you could feel something wasn't right. And when he blew up at you for turning him down and trying to make you feel bad and put the blame on you, you saw the exact person he was. And besides, he didn't want to marry you, he wanted to marry this broken version of you that he created so he could keep on manipulating you and getting his way. Is that really the type of love you wanted? The type of father you wanted for your children ?" 

What she said was true. It all was. Honestly, I didn't even know what the word narcissist meant until after we had broken up and I googled it. I remember reading through the signs and the common treatments of a narcissistic relationship and how it all started to make sense. I remember blaming myself for not seeing the signs sooner, asking myself how I allowed it all to go this far. But I also remembered the good memories...and to this day I still question if those are really good memories, or if I have been brainwashed for too long now to even notice the difference anymore.