My Best Friend, The Narcissist

I trusted. I loved. I gave. I accepted. I tried. I tried, I tried, and I tried.

By

Two fashionable women at the Hoover Dam Access Road stand closely, laughing in the sunshine
Katie Treadway / Unsplash

Many people get trapped into this. They get trapped by a charismatic personality, or even worse, a person that’s so sweet and innocent but seems that they were just victimized by the entire universe. It seems that they can never catch a break, everything is always going wrong for them. They can’t keep a friendship for more than a few weeks because that person just does them wrong. They’re an “Empath” you see? They feel the emotions of everyone in the room and they can pick up on everything. That’s why they need it to just be you two. That sounds fair… I mean, this person, they’ve been victimized their whole life, why put them in an uncomfortable position any more than they already are?

Halt the brakes here, honey. For your own sanity, for the sake of your future, halt the brakes RIGHT here. Stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. (Okay, collect $200 if you can, let’s not be too hasty.) You get the idea. Reread that first paragraph and truly let it sink in. Let it sink into your very core, and feel the chills grow and actually LISTEN when every fiber of your being is screaming “BULLSHIT” at the top of its lungs, because dollface, you are correct in that. The smartest thing you can do there, is stop.

If you were to pause, and listen to every single person that your best friend is talking about and could visualize it like a rear view mirror, all you would see is a constant stream of disaster. All you would see is a constant stream of trains wrecked. Every single person in their life victimized them though, right? Every last one of them? Every. Last. Person. Victimized. Them. Again, think about it. THINK ABOUT THIS. The only common factor in all of these train wrecks is them. Are you ready to be a train wreck? Are you ready to be the next disaster? The next sob story? The next person that hurt them so badly?

I wasn’t. I believed. I trusted. I loved. I gave. I accepted. I tried. I tried, I tried, and I tried. Every time I started making progress, it would turn into another mess. I was somehow messing up again. I was “in trouble.” I wasn’t good enough. This was my best friend, surely she wouldn’t be putting me through this on purpose, right? Wrong. She used. She resented. She RESENTED. She took. She rejected. She left. She left me feeling used, tired, alone, empty, like my soul was gone. Like I had nothing left. Like everyone else was going to leave too. Like I was incapable of love.

It hasn’t even been a full month, but I’ve learned from this. I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned the warning signs. When someone makes you feel alone, and they’re right next to you… when someone makes you feel drained every time you encounter them… when the sound of their name fills you with dread or even immediate exhaustion… when they make you feel like you’re impossible to love. Like you’ll never be good enough. Like you’re going to be alone, friendless, unworthy… forever. You RUN. You don’t try to help. You don’t tell yourself that they’re worthy of your love.

They aren’t worthy of your love. You tried, and they weren’t worthy, but YOU are worthy. This isn’t about hating my “ex best friend”. This is about the experience. This is about what she taught me. This is about how her resentment towards me, her drainage of me made me realize that I deserve better. That I never need to hold myself back for another person. That I am deserving of love. I’m worthy of the love of others, and most importantly, I am worthy of the love of myself. I am worthy of friendship, compassion, family, life, energy, and happiness. I am worthy of loving myself, because I am so deserving. This person… I’ll never say that anyone is undeserving of love, but I will say that I hope that they find it far, far away from me.

I’m deserving of a happy life, where I love myself, and I accept the love of others. I almost rejected the love of friends, family, and myself, all for this one friendship, and I see now that I was wrong. I was wrong to think that I didn’t deserve it. I’ve always deserved happiness, and now I’m going to find it. Not through other people, no, I’m going to find this happiness in myself, because that’s what I deserve. That’s what we all deserve. Self-love, and happiness. TC mark