Love, Narcissism, and Manipulation.... what is the difference?

Everyone knows I'm more than a little bit jaded. I used to think that fairy tales were real. Or maybe I just hoped they were. Because I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted someone to come sweeping in and rescue me. I thought I wanted someone to provide, to do things for me, to kiss me anytime he wanted to and all that jazz. But I have always been drawn to bad boys. And bad boys have the manipulation tactics down. Gaslighting too. They are schooled in those. And they will educate. I didn't know that I was crazy before I got married. Okay, yes I did. I was accustomed to manipulation and gaslighting as a kid. But I still thought the fairy tale was out there. 

The longer I live the more I learn that everything, and I mean everything, is intertwined. What kind of man I meet, interact with, what have you, and my childhood interactions with a controlling, emotionally and physically abusive Mom, my relationship with my Dad and his womanizing tendencies and twisted views of women and love, and situations that I was either put in or put myself in as a young woman that were not emotionally or physically safe. It all morphs together into a big, steaming pile of mistrust and cycle of abuse. 

I seem to think that muddling through my part in all of this will somehow set me free and one day I'll be "normal" and know how to have a relationship with a man. But I kind of doubt it. The pendulum does swing. From chasing after the adrenaline rush in what I call a mixing up of the run-like-hell warning bell with the gee-that-looks-like-fun bell and embracing recklessness and chaos to the swing in the opposite direction of one who is emotionally, physically (sexually) shut down and embracing the shutdown and the rage and defensiveness and self-protective cocoon that separates me from those who I either am in relationship with or want to be in relationship with. At this end of the pendulum, there's emptiness and loneliness and mistrust. And they are my friends. I don't feel like fighting for "normal." In fact, it feels like manipulation. Which it might be. But I have no interest in hacking through the bullshit and waste to try to find what is real and genuine. Everything feels like head games and mind fucks. And I don't know if I have what it takes to pursue a 50/50 relationship. This isn't necessarily wrong, I have a right to take care of me and a genuine obligation to myself to heal from the trauma that is my past. But it's also not right of me to drag someone else through the muck and the mire of my journey. What am I doing? 

I am a warrior and if you wrong my kids, my friends, my family.... I will make sure there's hell to pay. But when it comes to me, it is so difficult to sort out what I feel, what is real, what is really worth fighting for, that I never know when you'll be hit with defensiveness you don't deserve, apathy that should have been rage, or apathy that you had no part in developing.... you just had to endure the hailstorm that was my emotion because you are a living, breathing human, not because you had a hand in creating what I was fighting against. 

So this is the conundrum. There is no way to learn to navigate this battlefield without participating in the battle. In other words, I can't "learn" to have a relationship with a man, a significant other, without jumping into the relationship game. I can't learn how to date if I don't date. But it's messy and ugly and a whole lot of "not fair" to all involved. 

Currently I keep navigating. But the day may come (and it may come soon, I don't know) when I choose not to keep navigating this path that I call romance. And I also look for that to be a sweet relief, even though in the past, the loneliness made it a special form of hell. 

So this is today's slice of the crazy train tour that is my life. If you want to read about other author's Slice of Life today, click on the orange slice.