Unexpected Outcome

Well, well, well…

I am still processing the parole hearing which was one week ago.

I’ve had a roller coaster of a weekend and I still haven’t had the opportunity to sit with my feelings of last Friday.

He was denied parole for 6 months.

Denied.

A cocky, white male, ex-lawyer was denied parole. WHAT?!

I remember the precise moment he was denied. I looked to the support staff, my boyfriend, and my friend. Did I hear this right?! I went into the hearing with the expectation that he would be released on parole. I assumed there would be no other outcome.

At first, while listening to the back and forth between the parole board and him, I thought he was getting freedom. I would roll my eyes or shake my head at his asinine responses. I assumed they were buying what he was saying. His answers were by the book. I prepared myself to be angry that they weren’t seeing through his garbage responses and attempts at manipulation. I took notes the entire time. At one point, I wrote “this is a game” and showed it to the people there with me opposing his parole. He clearly thought this was a game he had no chance of losing.

He was wrong.

The board asked him several questions that he couldn’t answer:

He had to take a domestic violence course. What did he learn?

If you Googled “anger management in relationships” you’d find his answers. When he was challenged again with what he actually learned, he had no official answer.

When he was asked about restitution he blamed my protection order as his hinderance. However, the other victim in attendance was there because the Inmate stole $20k from him; he was not contacted a single time about repayment and definitely didn’t have a protection order against him.

He was then asked if he spent the time during his crimes manipulating people and that was the only sword he felt comfortable falling on. He is an impeccable manipulator, so it was the perfect opportunity for a “humble brag” to be spun into “ownership” of his crime.

Yes, of course he manipulated everyone around him during the times of his crimes.

“Then what is stopping us from thinking you’re manipulating the whole room today?”

Boom.

*mic drop*

The chair of the parole board, based on the answers above, motioned to deny parole for 6 months. It was a fast and unanimous “yes”

Circle back to my shock. I couldn’t believe it.

I took a deep sigh. We got up and walked out, following the advocates. We chatted, asked next steps, congratulated each other, and then left to go get some celebratory snacks.

I teared up in the car with a feeling of relief. I shouldn’t have tried to stop the tears. My boyfriend and I ripped the entire hearing apart. All of the things he could and should have done differently if he wanted to be released on parole. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful he went into the hearing thinking he had it in the bag, but man it felt good to blow him and his stupid answers up.

He brought a photo of himself getting an employee of the quarter award and held it up to the board. You’re required to have a job to even be eligible for parole release. He knew that, right? Their unamused expressions tickled my fancy. I’ve laughed at that image every single day since the hearing.

Not once did he take responsibility for his actions.

He never said he was sorry.

He never talked about what he intended to do outside of prison to continue down a positive mental health path.

He hadn’t done anything for his mental health. Not one thing. No classes, no courses, and no therapist…nothing. I should be surprised, but I’m not. He tried to blackmail his probation-approved therapist into having his baby when he was dating me, so therapy is unlikely to have any affect on him. (I didn’t know that while we were dating, though I had suspicions.)

He had no real answers for how he intended to refrain from violence toward women other than he’s done “deep introspective work” over the last three years in prison..

He’s intelligent, so if this isn’t a clear indication how egotistical and narcissistic he is, then I don’t know what is. This was a cut and dry example of narcissism. He went into the room thinking he was going to be able to manipulate his way to freedom even though the board warned him that they don’t fall for that shit.

And they didn’t.

They owned him. Hard.

He didn’t see it coming.

I didn’t see it coming.

I was elated. I had my entire day planned out with the assumption he would be paroled. I was going to put on Jennifer Lopez’s Enough, a movie that I played every day for three months after he was originally arrested. I planned for long cuddles and lots of sad tears.

However, I spent the rest of the day telling my close friends stories of how he dug his own grave in that room. I cuddled with my boyfriend, feeling solace and peace for the first time in a long time. I felt seen, heard, validated, and safe.

While I wait for the next hearing to come up, I hope I can process the emotional weight of the last 3.5 years. I want to savor the relief before I go back into anxiety revolving around the next hearing and the content of letter number two. He’s going to come out swinging and I will need to do everything I can to up my game and fight for him to stay where he is - prison. For the time being, when the anxiety of the next hearing pops up, I breathe through it and remind myself that I have time. I have 6 months. For now, let’s savor the relief. I worked hard to help the board see he’s a fraud and they believed my words.

I should be proud of myself.

I am proud of myself.

Fuck you, Inmate.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

It’s Domestic Violence Awareness month. At the end of September, I had a great idea for several pieces to be dropped throughout October. Yet, here we are nearing the end of the month and I have one single piece.

It’s not that I find it difficult to write about what happened to me. It’s that I couldn’t figure out exactly what I wanted to say or how to say it. I have three different documents written and rewritten with changes in specifics, general education, and full of angry rambles. It’s impossible to make a complicated and unbelievably intense “situation” simple in written form.

There’s a cycle to narcissistic abuse. It goes like this: idealization/love-bombing, devaluing, discarding, and sometimes, re-engagement. The cycle is cold and calculated. It’s meticulously crafted. By mirroring, future-faking, and pathological or compulsive lying, the victim falls hard and fast. They feel valued, heard, and safe. They open and share all their dreams and vulnerabilities. This information is then used by the abuser to see how to penetrate the victim’s boundaries (if they exist). They start testing these boundaries to see how far they can take the victim before they’ve had enough. Using gaslighting and other tactics, the abuser tears the victim down, emotionally abuses them, and eventually discards them. This can be a formal break up, straight-up indifference, sabotage, or betrayal. Sometimes, the relationship ends there. Other times, the abuser brings the victim back in through re-engagement: they love-bomb, apologize, and show bits of the person they once pretended to be, creating what’s known as a trauma-bond. The cycle continues until the narcissist gets bored and discards you for one last time - or in my case, gets arrested for telling me he was going to kill me and eventually goes to prison. The victim is side-swiped. It’s a deeply confusing cycle and it’s designed by the abuser to be just that.

So, let’s get to my story.

How did it happen?

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Idealization:

Love-bombing, future-faking, mirroring, pathological and compulsive lying, showing a fake self, and data-mining come to mind when I think of how it started. A bit of everything. You see, he’s been a narcissistic abuser most of his life. He had the practice to meticulously take me down. He came over one night, we spent the next night apart, and he moved in the night after and never left. That is, unless he was threatening to break up with me, left to visit and make out with his therapist, or cheat on me with other women. The quick takedown was supported by the fact that even though we had never met, he wasn’t exactly a stranger. We had been on the periphery of each other’s lives for nearly a decade. We knew things about each other. He knew who I was and used that knowledge to make me feel safe. He called it kismet that we had finally met. He told me he felt protective of me. He supported that all I wanted was to be valued and seen. He promised not to let a day go by without letting me know how much I meant to him. I was smitten. I fell hard and fast.

There were red flags, of course, but red flags look like any other flag when viewed through rose-colored glasses. He would brag about being a good listener. He would expect credit for doing things that are simply expected in a relationship. I had gut feelings he lied to me on numerous occasions. But nothing is perfect, right? Everyone has pain and trauma they’re trying to heal from so who was I to judge someone who was working through their own shit. He claimed to love me more than anything and I wanted to believe him. I did believe him. I’m an empathetic person. I can find reasons to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. When you tell me your struggles I want to be a person you can lean on. After our relationship, I found out that you can have too much empathy. Narcissistic abusers love overly-empathetic people because they know they’ll be able to get away with nearly everything. I was too kind, malleable, and sensitive. The self-esteem and self-love I had was standing on shaky ground. Severe anxious attachment was a familiar feeling in most of my past relationships. It all made sense in hindsight. Of course I was the perfect person to prey upon.

Devaluing:

Our first fight started after I told him he was being mean. I had never seen that side of him and I remember how hard I sobbed when he got up, scolded me, broke up with me, and left to go sit in his car. I was devastated. What the hell happened to the man who claimed to love me? After a little time, he came back inside, apologized, talked about how that incident triggered some unresolved trauma in him, and told me it wouldn’t happen again. Little did I know, the small narcissistic abusive cycles had already started and it would, in fact, get immensely worse.

The mind games left me shattered, destroyed all my confidence, and made me feel insane. At the same time that he was raising my self-esteem to the world around me by helping me find a new job and stand up to shitty friends, he was also chipping away at my self-worth. When we fought, he would make me feel like the most stupid human in the entire world. Once, he called me, “a taxing example of humanity.” Sometimes, we would fight for hours about the way I said something. I would tell him that the way he perceived something I said wasn’t how I intended it and then he would belittle me for not saying exactly what I meant. He would accuse me of lying and keep me up all night arguing his case. I would eventually give in with hope he would stop being mad at me only to then fight for another extended amount of time about the “lie”. He knew that I became extremely anxious when forced to sleep alone during a fight, so he would purposefully sleep on the couch knowing I would be awake all night wondering what I did wrong and asking myself how I could fix it. I would beg him to come back to bed. I would apologize every which way I knew how. The sleep deprivation left me exhausted and confused. I made more mistakes, giving him extra fodder to continue gaslighting me, shifting blame, and backing me into a corner. The day after arguments were heavy. Some kind of conclusion would be met, apologies stated, and he would immediately move to dote on me again. The back and forth game tore at my being until there wasn’t much left.

Discarding:

Where the devalue phase was a disconcerting, horrid mind game, the discard phase is pretty cut and dry. When we were on a particularly lengthy fighting spree, he would abruptly end our relationship. He would tell me he’s leaving, gather his things, sometimes pack a bag, and just walk out the front door.

Why didn’t you just let him leave, Rhegan? Things could have been done right then and there.

You’re absolutely right! The relationship could have been over long before it got to the end if I had just let him leave, but I was already trauma-bonded to him. I had experienced the narcissistic abuse cycle many times over, and I was taking the blame for everything that was happening. If I could just be…better…then he wouldn’t act like this. If I could be more loving, giving, and forgiving, then he wouldn’t be so mean. If I could only give him more support then he wouldn’t be projecting his anger onto me. If I could help him feel better about his own life, then he wouldn’t want to destroy mine. So when he left, I begged him to come back. I told him I’d be different. I forgave him for any indiscretion. I offered him whatever he wanted if he’d just come home. He would eventually come home. I always wondered where he went. After our relationship, I found out that he went over to his therapist’s house or to visit an ex girlfriend. I’m sure there were many others that I didn’t find out about.

There were four violent incidents over the course of our relationship. The second one was the worst. The last one sent him to jail because it was the first time he clearly told me that he intended to kill me. The violent fights were some of the scariest times of my life. The day after those I would be raw with emotion and vulnerability. Remnants of things he broke the night before were usually scattered around my house, chunks of my hair in the garbage can, shadows of bruises on my body, and the vicious words he flung at me sunk deep into my brain. It was in those after-moments that he was the sweetest. He would hold me and tell me how sorry he was, that he’d never do it again, he had no idea why he was like this, and he’d do anything in his power to make me feel safe again. He would woo me back into his arms. Since he was the only other person who knew what was really going on in our relationship, I felt that the only place I could be safe and feel seen would be with him. Who else was going to tend to the bruises on my body, mind, and soul? The only one who could do that was the one who created them. At least, that’s what I was manipulated to believe.

How/Why:

I feel the need to apologize to the reader for going through those paragraphs. I know it’s not easy to read. It’s difficult to write without emotions streaming down my face. It’s hard to think about how much I loved someone who hurt me. It was even harder to come to terms with the fact that he never loved me. I was a game - a challenge. I was a home, money for bills, food, and other life-perks he didn’t want to work to get himself. I was love, humanity, empathy, and kindness - emotions he will never possess.

Narcissists suck the life out of you because they are so deeply insecure. They hate themselves. They fear vulnerability. They are weak and emotionally inept. They manipulate, gaslight, and mirror because they don’t have an identity. They steal traits from their victims because they don’t have self-worth. They abuse for power and control. The malignant ones do it for fun. Empaths will give them the benefit of the doubt for longer than the average human. They will coerce you to get what they want and if that doesn’t work, they’ll simply take it. If they aren’t in a position to take it, they’ll blackmail you to get it. Whatever that “it” might be: money, sex, and anything that will benefit them.

I never thought I would be in this position. To be honest, I’m not sure I fully realized I was being abused until after he went to jail. I knew what he was doing was violent and wrong, but I didn’t connect the dots to domestic abuse. I loved him so much that I wanted to believe this was all due to his severe depression. He tore away all of my self-esteem so I truly did think it was all my fault. I was embarrassed to tell people. I felt ashamed for a long time. I was supposed to be this strong, independent woman. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.

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I’m so tired of seeing the uneducated comments on social media. The victim-blaming makes me sick. I was lucky to get out. He was suspended from practicing law, on felony probation for theft, and had no more money. I was fortunate that I was taken seriously by the detective if not by the officers who came to my house that evening. It helped that he had a known past of sexual abuse. He had accused me in a previous fight of recording him when I hadn’t, but I remembered and got a recording of him telling me he was going to kill me. That aided my battle. I fought hard to put him away. I cooperated the entire year he was in jail before he was sentenced to prison. Do you know what it’s like to live in limbo for a year while your abuser is in jail? I know why women don’t report their abuser. It’s debilitating to relive your experience every email, phone call, continuance, plea deal, sentencing arrangement, and official statement. If I was less determined, I would’ve put it all in a little mind-box, repressed it, and ran away. But I couldn’t do that. I had the support to see it through, so that’s what I did. However, some people aren’t as lucky as I was and even further, some get out of the relationship and still end up dead. Victims are more likely to die from their abuser after the relationship has ended because the abuser feels they have nothing left to lose.

The depths of confusing despair is certainly not validated even if you report it and the cops take you seriously. There is nothing that feels like solid retribution after someone has maliciously destroyed you. Nothing heals except time, therapy, support, and small, forward movements. Placing any blame on the victim is just flat out cruel and leaves an opening for the abuser to label their victim as crazy. Put the blame where it belongs - on the abuser. Check those around you who say anything different.

As hard as this is to talk about, it is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and I wanted to share more than just a little piece of my story.

I hope that any victim reading this knows that I see, hear, and believe you.

You did not deserve what was done to you.

You have worth.

You are valued.

You are loved.

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For more resources, check these out:

Women Against Abuse

Why Don't They Leave?

NCADV

National Domestic Violence Hotline

Narcissistic Abuse Cycle

NAR

Narcissists and Insecurity