I didn't realize it's been so long since I blogged. At one point in time, I had intended to post once a week. Apparently, those were delusions of grandeur. And besides my chronic sleep disturbance, I've also been busy starting a new page on Facebook. This page is for narcissism, and it's growing nicely.
I had been abused and tormented for four years, but it's only been at the very end of last year that I discovered what I was dealing with: a malignant narcissist. These kinds of relationships end with the discard phase, which, for me, was May of 2012. And since that time, I had myself all but convinced that I was the problem. Now I find out what this person was, and that self-doubt and self-blaming is just part of the package.
At one point in my life, if you had asked me what a narcissist was, I'd have said it was just a very arrogant, very self-indulgent person. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Narcissists do skadwads of damage--emotional, psychological, even physical. So for me, four years later, I had been hospitalized twice (once against my will), put on daily medication, and had attempted suicide four times. They do skadwads of damage.
My new Facebook page is called Barbed Wire: The Narcissist Friend. Most resources and information out there on narcissism is about narcissist spouses and family members. There are even a few on narcissist bosses. I found very little that were relevant to narcissist friends, and mine was aptly named: Barb. Hence the page name, Barbed Wire. I just reached 300 followers on that page, and I hope that it grows steadily. I'm still tweaking what would have been called in radio, "The Format."
I love meme-ing. It keeps my mind and my hands busy. So I've been working on building a set for the new page. I strive for mostly original content and very little shared material. Some pages, all the content is shared from other pages and sites. I'm trying to avoid that, though I do pass on good stuff that hasn't already made the rounds.
The basic purpose of the new page is the same as the Depression page: with the hopes of helping someone. So many of us don't even realize what we're dealing with until it's too late. It's like getting hit by a bus and then dragged for a mile and a half over rough road. All of a sudden, you're falling apart and have no idea why. And narcissism is the one mental illness where nothing is done for the patients, and it's the victims who end up on meds, in counseling, and in the hospital. Many victims end up killing themselves. It's time to start taking it seriously.
