I’ve been pondering my attachment to the past a lot recently.  The last of my belongings from my former home were delivered last week.  It was a long time coming and I opened each box with anticipation, looking for certain items that I was sure would be there.  Alas, two treasured books were missing … and I mourn them.

Through the twists and turns my life has taken since 2006, I’ve experienced a lot of loss.  One would think that it would get easier to shrug it off but the memory of these things, and the loss of them now realized, sort of makes me sad.

Years ago, when something easier was troubling me, I asked a mentor how I should handle my desire to renew that habit.  Their response was brief and profound.  The advice they offered was simply, “Follow it through.”  I asked what that meant.  My friend explained that I should use my memories to follow through the act of renewing that habit all the way to the point where I had decided to change the habit.

So, when you find yourself pining for your Narcissistic Ex, follow that feeling through.  Examine all of the experiences, good or bad, and follow that train of thought right up to the point where the only choice was to leave the relationship.  During that stroll down memory lane, you’ll be refreshing memories that both attract and repel you.  If you are completely honest with yourself after replaying your mental tapes, you will once again conclude that you’ve made the right decision to leave.

I sure don’t describe this as some of my best work but, while I was working today, this poem flitted into my head so I thought I would share it here:

It put a smile on my face. I hope it does the same for my readers!

The Holiday blahs have certainly affected me today.  There was a season when hope was still in my vocabulary and all things seemed possible.  At the time, I had no idea it was a false promise from a Narcissist.

Love is what we are told we need.  Attachment is the downfall of loving, I guess.  But I don’t know how one thing works without the other … and I’ve never seen both work together.  The paradox of that confounds me.

In the movie, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there was technology that wiped out the memories of love.  I sometimes wish that it existed.  But I have discovered another clue into why my soul cannot seem to leave the horror of my abusive partner’s betrayal behind.  I’m quite certain that he would be entirely off my radar by now if I had not been so traumatized by him.

All the holiday commercials on TV this time of year sometimes serve as a rancid reminder about emotions that I once felt.  The illusion of love propagated by our culture is designed to make us want it but, what is it?

When my former beau reached for me, the anticipation of his touch was like an electrical arc charging the air.  Every smile, kiss and impassioned embrace that I shared with him was, to me, an expression of my love for him.  For him, a Narcissist and serial dater, it apparently was some game that he played to prove to himself that he had the ability to amuse, seduce and sexually satisfy a woman.

That’s the title of a movie that I watched again last night.  Although it is moderately amusing and the acting is very well done, there are similarities between the player’s justifications to his peer-aged lover and experiences that I had with my Narcissistic Partner are stunning. 

There were some major differences, however.  The female character, played by Diane Keaton, learned within a few weeks of falling in love that her new sweetheart was nothing more than a shameless womanizer.  The second major difference is that Jack Nicholson’s character actually experienced curiosity about the effect he had on his former lovers and sought them out in order to better understand himself. 

Of course, he had suffered an event which gave him cause to recognize his mortality… 

Time may or may not heal all wounds but I honestly can’t describe my present frame of mind any better than this awesome song by Carrie Underwood.

If you’d like to pick up some of her heart-felt and beautiful music at Amazon, check out this link.