How Loving a Narcissist Taught Me to Swim Below the Surface

For most of my life leading up to my most recent relationship with a narcissist, I was viewed by friends as the eternal optimist. I saw the world around me in bright colors, sparkles, and sunshine. My rose-colored glasses were by far the rosiest.

In my teenage years, my friends even called me their favorite party favor. “Who needs drugs when we can just put Lena in the middle of the room and be entertained for days,” a friend said one time.

I was the poster child for surface-level happiness. Only, I was anything but happy.

No one ever knew how much I dreaded going home. How hateful my mom was to me. How terrified I was of my step-dad. I never let anyone see the deep dark ocean within me that was filled with heavy weights of sadness, shame, and pain. No one, including myself, understood that the happy girl in front of them was merely a well-crafted, unconscious attempt to stay as far above the surface as possible.

I think most people are taught how to navigate the highs and lows of their emotions as children. Their parents gently and lovingly help them dive down to the depths and kick themselves back up to the surface again.

But in my house, any reminder to my mom that I was breathing the same air as her was treated as a threat to her existence. So I stayed as high up in the clouds and out of the way as possible. And while everyone around me learned to thrive in the ocean, I never learned to swim.

Until I fell in love with a narcissist.

I remember telling him that loving him felt like being held deep below the surface and desperately trying to thrash my way back up for air. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that is exactly what was happening.

While initially, he’d pretended he loved to fly high up in the sky with me, he eventually filled my pockets with rocks and sunk me deep into the ocean within me.

“Sink or swim!’ He laughed, “Or better yet, just sink.”

He forced me deep down into the depths of all the pain I’d tucked away inside of me and made me face it. He smashed open every box and dumped out the contents right in front of me.

“Look at this mess you made” he scoffed.

It was the typical narcissistic attempt to shield himself from his own pain through deflection and projection, however, he wasn’t wrong. Most of what he poured out in front of me was my mess, or at the very least, a reflection of it. And it had existed within me long before he ever came along.

I realize this will be an unpopular statement for those who are in the very beginning stages of healing from narcissistic abuse, and even more so for those who are still consumed in blame and anger. Your feelings are valid and I get it. Honestly, I would have punched someone in the face had they said this to me at the beginning of my journey back to the surface.

However, please hear me out.

When we love a narcissist, yes, there are many terrible things we can blame them for. Emotional manipulation, gaslighting and future faking are all insidious tactics used as attempts to destroy the very fabric of our being. They purposely poke holes in us so they can gleefully watch us sink.

However, I believe we have a responsibility to own our part in this dark dance with them, too. Because if we had not been lugging around all that heavy pain and darkness in the first place, no amount of rocks they stuffed in our pockets or holes they tried to poke in us could have ever made us sink.

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What I learned in the most painful moments of my recovery, was that the only way I’d ever get back to the surface again was to make peace with swimming in the depths within me.

I had to learn to hold my breath, dive down and face the pain. And while, yes, he hurt me in the most unimaginable ways, the experience also helped me to understand myself in completely profound ways.

I learned to navigate my own emotions instead of stuffing them out of sight.

And now I am no longer unaware or scared of the ocean of emotion inside me. Because loving a narcissist finally taught me how to swim.