An Empathic Narcissist

What happens when you cross a narcissist with an empath? Apparantly you get a self-centered sociopath who doesn't know how to love anybody but still wants to love everybody. Someone who wants to be alone but also hates being alone. Someone who wants someone to take care of them but also feels guilty and unworthy of that care.

I sit here struggling with who I am pretty heavily. Am I a caring, compassionate empath who just wants to make others feel good and not know the pain of being rejucted by those who are supposed to love me the most? Or am I a self-centered narcissist that knows how to manipulate others into taking care of me while not giving anything in return? Is it possible to be both? How can I care so much and so little at the same damn time??

For the first 19 years of my life I was raised by a vicious narcissistic egg donor who, I'm convinced, had contempt for me from the moment of my conception. She blamed me for her nervous breakdown which caused her to be institutionalized when I was a whole 18 months old. She never encouraged me in any way even while she made me sign up for one activity after another, only to pull me from them at the first opportunity. She never pushed me to complete anything, never taught me how to cook, never invested anything in me...just held her breath until she could be rid of me. No physical abuse but so much neglect and emotional abuse that I spent 51 years hating myself because if I wasn't worthy of my "mother's" love, I must just be worthless, period. At the age of 51, I had a personal "epiphany" where I spent 3 days praying/begging God, the universe, and anyone else that would listen, to break the hate I felt for myself because it has been proven over and over that my self hate made it impossible for me to succeed in anything much less in the changes I need to make.

At the age of 19, I met my partner of 33 years. This is a man who saw something in me that I am convinced is not really there, but he believed it was. He believed that I was special, and smart, and sexy, and capable. Ironically, I could never wrap my mind around the thought that someone like this man could really love the REAL me, the one he simply refuses to see. So, I kept myself separate from him all the while letting him take care of me. I have spent 33 years emotionally abusing this man EXACTLY like my egg donor (I refuse to give her the title of mother any longer) treated me until she was cut from our lives a few years ago. I never invested in really learning how to love him, because I "knew in my heart" that he would eventually come to his senses and move on. Only he never did. He simply stayed, and took the abuse. Losing a little more of himself with each meltdown, each lie, each self-centered act that he endured.

I mentioned earlier about my self-hate incident. The epiphany was that after 3 days of a mantra on loop in my head praying to the powers that be to release me from this hate I have for myself (because if I can't stop hating myself, I'll destroy myself) it happened...really happened. I started praying Sunday night, on Wednesday I literally FELT it. It was like one of those candles you see that are tall but partially hollow and they burn around the edge of the candle until they transition into a "normal" candle. I put normal in quotations because in reality, I am no where near normal yet, meaning I am still failing at my relationship but I'm not burying myself in selfloathing every time I screw up anymore. Sure, the arguments are still rough, much moreso than they need to be...but I am not embracing the negative energy and feeding off of it like a starving animal. I still have my mental breakdowns however, they ARE fewer and farther between. And in my defense, I am going through menopause on top of all the other stressors, so yay me! Sorry, I went down the wrong rabbit hole. Back to me and my candle moment. After I recovered from feeling like someone had just peeled off one of those face masks off me but ALL of me...I convinced my husband to begrudgingly agree to sit and talk with me again. He wasn't thrilled and it showed in his very angry expression and his stiff posture. However, for the first time in our ENTIRE relationship, this did not cause me to withdraw inside myself and go hide in a dark closet or under the covers or wherever. No, this time, it took everything I had not to giggle in his face. Yes, you read that right. I was trying not to giggle. Because he was closer to me in that moment than he had been in two weeks. I could breathe his scent in, I could feel his energy. I could hear his heartbeat. And I was overwhelmed with a joy I had rarely allowed myself to expereience.

This was in 2020, October of 2020, while the rest of the world was going crazy, I began experiencing the world through the eyes of child again. Without the filter of self-laothing and hate to blur all the little things that I was missing. Now, everyday, I experience something new. The thing I am having the most difficulty with still is my relationship. Because I never learned how to love someone growing up, I am really bad at it. And the last few months it's been getting worse. So now, I have begun a journey of self-discovery, to find out who is stronger, my narcissist or my empath. Well, actually that is not completely true, because currently there is no question that my narcissist is in control. The journey is to discover is I can change the leadership before it's too late to make it up to my husband.