In the last 12 months, I sat in conference rooms and on Teams meetings with the first real narcissist I’ve had the misfortune of meeting. She eroded my professional credibility before her fraud was discovered and she was fired. Until then, I was forced to endure her verbal assaults. Her undermining. Her lying. Her sabotage. Her incompetence which she deftly pushed onto others in a way that made them appear to be the one who was incompetent. I have amassed evidence of the times I reported it, recordings of meetings proving her behavior. Screenshots of messages. And during my annual review I smiled and nodded and took accountability for giving up. Because I reported her repeatedly and nothing was done. I remained silent while my competence was repeatedly called into question by leaders who were being force fed her disinformation and who were all too happy to paint me as the problem. People for whom I had done good work for years. I accepted the pay cut and said simply, “as a leader, I am ultimately responsible for the success of this project, and this project has not been successful.”
I was having panic attacks and nightmares, losing sleep and weight from not eating. My hair was falling out and new lines were forming on my face. I was becoming paranoid and watching my back and sobbing after meetings where every action I took or decision I made was called out and questioned or criticized in a very public way.
I started therapy and talked endlessly in sessions about how I felt my life was unraveling. The career, the professional brand I had worked my whole life to create slowly eroded by a cancer hired into a role she was unqualified for, and chastised when I reported her to the appropriate leadership team. I talked about every time I abandoned myself to make a man comfortable in my relationships. Every time I tolerated bad behavior. I dove deeply into how someone who is bright and driven and funny and capable somehow learned over 4 decades to dim her light if it made others uncomfortable. To stay silent and small if danger was close.
Every day, I also endured. If I know how to do one thing well, it is getting back up when I am knocked down. I dated. I laughed and danced with my friends. I read good books, watched interesting movies, had deep talks with the people closest to me. I wrote in my journal and drew endless tarot cards. I saw sunrises and stunning sunsets. I listened to live music. I saw my son mature beyond what I thought was possible. I cried as my niece graduated from high school, cried while my nephew, who made me an aunt for the first time, proposed to his girlfriend on our family trip to the beach. I took drives and listened to good music. I started this blog and dove head first into a first attempt at a novel, at a social media following to boost both. I joined a writing group and started to meet people in my town. I cried and created and sang and laughed and moved and stretched and grew.
And I started blocking dead weight. The ex boyfriend who wasn’t ready. The date who hinted at sex and stopped responding to messages after I turned him down. The multiple online dating matches that ghosted, confessed fetishes that repulsed me, suitors who raised their voices at me or poorly masked their manipulations. And I stopped dating. It has been 6 months. I’ve delved into online dating a few times, had a few chats, went on exactly one date that quickly showed me why I don’t online date. But I am starting to enjoy being single, spending time alone. And somewhere in the silence left behind, a voice is emerging.
She’s staring at me in the mirror these days. Smiling. She’s quietly encouraging. She’s straightening my back and squaring my shoulders. She’s holding her ground in tough conversations at work. She’s listening, healing, watching, protecting. Somewhere over the last three months or so the negative voice in my head that has been tearing me apart at every turn has gone silent. A new voice, the strong one that carried me through sexual abuse as a child, through a parent’s mental illness, through a chaotic young adulthood, through an abusive and chaotic marriage, through the trials and tribulations of dating, and the worst professional year I have had since 2005, through grief and loss and constant disappointment. She’s settled in my throat and behind my eyes. She’s stretched out behind my belly button and lengthening into all four limbs rewiring the fibers to build a strong and protective new frame that carries herself into the room with pride, with certainty.
There are years that ask and there are years that answer. I have been in a 6 year stretch of years that asked. And asked. Then asked more. Until I couldn’t stand it. Until I stood on the edge of my own sanity, my sense of self decimated, and looked down into the void, that took me to my therapist’s chair admitting I was having thoughts that should worry people around me. That if a tire blew and I hit a tree, or died in my sleep…well…oh well…
And I have spent every day since then clawing my way back up out of the grave I was digging, a revanant reaching for the light. The sun is rising again. I almost missed it.
All life hangs in the balance between what is, what was, and what might be.
Our character is forged in and refined by the years that ask. Our purpose emerges in the years that answer.
And somehow on an average Thursday morning I woke up and I just felt…alive. Whole. Ready. Revoking all contracts, all ties, all energetic claims that do not support the woman I am becoming. Calling back to me all energy which has been taken without my permission. Pulling inward all the love I gave away so that I could focus it inward. I’m not where I want to be, and I am not even sure I know where I am supposed to be – yet. But I know I’m going to get there.
If you’re still reading, thank you. I hope you’ll stick with me for what comes next.
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