Dead Sunflowers

This isn't to rag on my ex but I was outlining how she made me feel to a friend and it made me realize that I haven't really talked about it, and it actually felt really cathartic. So that's what this is, it's just processing unresolved stuff that was swept under the rug and forgotten.

My ex fell victim to advice that basically told her not to use logic or reason AT ALL and instead hyper focus on what's true to her, because without them realizing that she wasn't being honest, "logic" was just framed as "manipulation" by her.

Beyond screaming at the top of her lungs "MANIPULATOR!" (Specifically in front of other people, other people being around was a big factor in whether she became loud or gesticulative) she couldn't and wouldn't explain how I was being manipulative.

In their defense I don't think they realized that she IS NOT equipped for personal accountability like that; at least she wasn't at the time, to the extent that she internalized it as "only my thoughts are right and true, and everything else that's true, but not related to what I want, is either untrue, unfair, or will go unaddressed".

The end of our relationship had a lot of "maybe that's true for you" and then walking off. She was grossly narcissistic. We even began talking about it, we got far enough for her to identify that she cannot put herself in other people's shoes before an immediate shift where any discussion of narcissism was met with anger and rage (a quality she later attributed to me)

Any time I'd talk extensive about her horrible she made me feel she would just ignore me and then the next day REPEAT WHAT I SAID, BUT AS THOUGH IT WAS ME THAT MADE HER FEEL THAT WAY, and when I pointed out that she did this MULTIPLE times, and just said "you're just really good with words so when I hear you put it together like that it makes me realize that's how I feel". However, despite claiming to feel EXACTLY how I felt, she didn't use it to empathize and relate, she used it to punish and stonewall me.

Her version of compassion was not punishing me, not realizing that that's the bare minimum, but if you try to talk her through a problem you automatically became an evil villain that DESERVES punishment so that you'll "learn your lesson".

I don't believe in holding on to control over people's agency, so I would try to reason with her about her position. THIS ONLY MADE HER ANGRY. EVERY TIME.

Once we discussed having agency over our minds and not falling prey to reactive thinking. Afterwards she would ONLY engage with agency to say things like "I'm using AGENCY (said with emphasis) to walk away, I have agency don't I? So I'm using it."

If someone is willing to genuinely acknowledge that something about themselves impacts you, I strongly suggest being willing to explore their empathy. I didn't realize that I was being used, and never truly loved until long into being broken down over irrational tantrums (which she would then go on to accuse me of being broken when I became depressed because of how she treated me, yet when she spiraled during a rage fit she would say "YOU'LL JUST SAY "OH YOURE BROKEN"" and then storm off, when I've never said that. It's was so confusing and disorienting).

It's weird that the idea of trying to reason with her immediately triggers an awareness that she will become hateful as a result, I can see the hateful scrunched up face already as she begins mentally looping on all the reasons she hates me. Granted, she has done this since day 1, and any "reason" she gives just functions as the updated model of the excuse she uses to keep being that way.

During our first few months together, while out at an event together with friends, she ditched me for 80% of it and when I mentioned that I thought we were going to be spending time there together she just got annoyed, said "why are you bitching?". This led to a long conversation about empathy. She did not remembered the conversation the next day and I'd have to re discuss EVERYTHING, the entire time she would act as though the first conversation never happened. This happened A. LOT. and when I questioned her memory because of it she added me doing that to her list my slights against her. She would go to her this to gain more and more slights that she HELD ON TO for whenever she needed an excuse to rage or shut down.

She will blame me and my character for every single last slight but, quite literally, forgive herself because, in her mind, the same rules don't apply to her as MY slights against HER, she uses as fuel for "her own forgiveness". Meaning, for her, she can LITERALLY never be in the wrong. Everything is justified.

To be fair, the fact that she would smile when thinking about ways to hurt me in a discussion should have been a clearer red flag. Ironically she turned the fact that I sigh when things feel hopeless into "OHP THERE IT AGAIN, THE (makes exaggerated sigh noise)" and she would NOOOOT be remotely open to a calm discussion about how it wasn't a condescending sigh.

The worst part is that she never actually got to know me, I was never actually seen, either as person, or as someone of value beyond sex and money.

I am emotionally aware enough to understand that resentment is ours to let go, it drowns our souls in our own worst self, and in a lot of ways I can laugh that my mind was fucked up by a lying, cheating, manipulator. I can even safely acknowledge that I still miss her without it creating a sense of actual longing for her, more just an awareness that my body still feels that she's gone. Oxymoronically, though I feel something is missing, I don't think I could have ever been "complete" in her presence.

She ultimately did the full narcissistic discard once she found a "savior".

She ended up with a dude whose entire personality is that he HATES trans people and that he worked at a church. Which makes sense, as he's probably an idiot, which tracks with the personality and type of person she needs to feel comfortable.

I let myself fall so, so far and so, so hard, and the ground was a lot further down than I thought. I did not break, I am not broken. But I am shifting the pieces of me into something better.

I forgive you, and I hope that ends up being closure enough to move on.