Lessons Of A Quiet Girl

Narcassists and Toxic People

I'm curious here, if other quiet people like myself have this problem. The problem being that narcissists are just drawn to you. They are drawn to you, and they latch on.
Essentially I lost a "friend" that I had had for 21 years. A good person, who does good things for those that they care about.
How is that narcissistic, right?
Here's how.
The 9 defining characteristic of a narcissist are as follows:

1) They are arrogant and domineering. - they will try to control you to better suit themselves, because they are the most important person. They may do this with their kind gestures, actions and words. Later to be used against you.

2) Grandiosity - this means that they feel superior. They have a serious superiority complex, everyone else is inferior to them their amazing talents and traits. They may love to gossip about mutual acquaintances. This is annoying as shit.

3) They have a preoccupation with success and power.  - They have higher expectations of themselves, and in bad cases they push these expectations into others. If you do not fit into their box, they tell you what a bad person you are and how you need to change for them, to be more like them.

4) They lack empathy. - the definition I read on this was very long winded and in my experience, inaccurate. To sum up, they lack emotions, remorse and guilt. I find this inaccurate to an extent. Each time I've dealt with a narcissist, they do have emotions. They just feel things differently than the general populace would. Remorse and guilt, on the other hand, I firmly believe that they lack, or have a very difficult time feeling. In my experience, they try to use their emotions as weapons. Constantly.

5) They have a belief of being unique. - this one is touchy, as every person is unique and different. Every person has their own beautiful traits, talents and characteristics.
However, in my experience with the narcissists, they have an abundant belief of this. "No one else in the world has ____ because I'm so special" I got to hear this one a lot. "No one else in the world has the marriage I have, because it's so amazing and we're so in love and we're so happy and blah blah blah". Guess what, honey. I saw that marriage for what it was: mediocre at best. Congratulations on having exactly what others have.
Sorry, that was mean.

6) A sense of entitlement - this one I find to be sooooo very true. Being treated equally is not good enough for the narcissist, they get incredibly insecure when you have an equal amount or more time for someone else. Which leads to our next point...

7) Jelousy - they are envious of others. Because they are driven to success and power, when they meet people who are naturally more inclined towards these things than they are, they flip. They have a massive hate-on for people who are naturally kind, naturally good at school, naturally do well in the work place, naturally attractive. If you don't appear to have to work as hard as they do (because they clearly work harder than anyone else, right), then they will despise you to the core of their being.
I'm not even sorry that I'm not even sorry.

8) Exploitative- they will utilize another person for their own gain; to their advantage. This can be dangerous, and in my experiences thus far, haven't been terribly so for me, personally. However, in the wrong hands or mind, incredibly bad things could happen.
They need someone to watch their kids or pets, they will call you. But you're such a bad person because you didn't go to that social thing they wanted you to do, you don't care.
They need help getting ahead in school or work, they will call you. But you're a terrible person because it was easier for you, or you did better than they did.

9) They require excessive admiration - and they won't let you forget it. I once had to applaud someone for cleaning their own dining room, doing their own dishes. Simple tasks that people do all the time.
Hey, sometimes we need somebody to tell us that we're doing a good job with menial things such as that, because we're in a bad slump and after a week and a half we finally took a shower and fed the cat. But not all the time.
Narcissist require excessive admiration because they know without a shadow of a doubt that they are superior to you, and they need to hear that you also know it through praise.

People have been referring to this a lot lately as a "toxic person", and they are.
The only way to win with a narcissist is to stop playing their game. You are allowed to leave, you are allowed to walk away, and you do NOT owe them an explanation. Explaining yourself is just feeding their need for attention so that they can try to flip it on you later; it's just ammunition.
You don't deserve to be treated like garbage just to feed someone else's ego. You deserve to be treated like everyone else, deserve to be treated with equality, deserve to be treated like someone truly special by those closest to you without it being turned around on you.