Zoe dearly loves the Christmas movie Elf, in which a human raised by elves at the North Pole travels to New York City in search of his real father. While there, he uses his elf-skills and unbounded, characteristically elfin enthusiasm to great effect; for instance by transforming apartments and department stores into winter wonderlands overnight with common materials.
When Zoe had started spending more time at my house it happened that she took a nap one afternoon. I don't remember exactly what I did with the time but I think I spent it tidying up the house, doing laundry, and getting dinner ready as I often did. When she emerged after some hours and found what I had been doing she remarked that my productivity made me like the hero of Elf.
At the time I was charmed by the comparison to one of her favorite movies. But after spending many more months with her and seeing what she was capable of, what her moods and almost-constant defeatism were like, I saw something else about that remark: from her perspective ordinary human levels of activity belong to the realm of supernatural beings.
Zoe never has much of a surplus of energy for anything; how could she? Since early childhood she has been managing an extreme amount of emotional pain by using survival mechanisms like denial and projection, by twisting the truth about what happened to her and about what she became as a result into something more acceptable than it really is. Sustaining these fictions is hard work. There isn't enough time and energy left to do much more than that, especially not to do much more for other people. The closest you can come as a Non to understanding what this is like is by paying attention to how you feel soon after you have been abused and discarded by your PD partner, in that period of time when you're not taking care of yourself and probably can't care much about anyone else either. That's the kind of darkness they have always lived in. The emptiness and self-sabotage and unhealthy ways of coping that you are wrestling with are like those that torture the untreated survivors of childhood trauma even in good times.
Now you are a trauma survivor too. But you are an adult, you can take care of yourself, you can do better than mere survival, your fate has not been sealed as theirs was. If you are like me, one of the lucky ones, you didn't spend enough time with your abuser for your scars to be permanent ones. You have shared nothing that will tie you to them for the rest of your life and give them fresh opportunities to hurt you again and again. If you are unlucky, and have been married to a PD individual or, much worse, have children with them, my heart aches for you; you are one of the unlucky ones; you have a heavy burden to carry down a long road.
But whatever the case, no matter how deep your wounds go, promise yourself you will not behave as they did. Don't let them drag you down to their level, no matter what they did or what they continue to do. Keep yourself pointed at what you used to be. There will come a time when you find yourself in a relationship again; be wise and use what you have learned, but don't punish anyone else for what's been done to you. Take responsibility for yourself, get some help, choose more cautiously, but be willing to open yourself again, learn to trust again.
And for God's sake, if you find that you have to break up with someone, do it like a human being. As Mr. Goodlove has to say:
The reason you are in so much pain, is because you have been betrayed, cut off and abandoned cold by someone you loved. Remember this pain, and never, ever do that to another human being. Especially if you find yourself dating another emotionally disturbed person, and have to call it quits. You take their calls, and you stand your ground, and you hold their hand through it. You let them know you still care about them, while enforcing your boundaries. Even if you are right, and they are assholes. Why, because its your responsibility as a human. That is all.
God bless you Buddy.
