The Special Wound...

We all want to feel special.  We all want to be loved and cherished for who and what we are.  But some of us have a deep need to feel special.  I am sure it comes from various sources for all of us, but the result is this wound of never feeling like enough as we were, leaves us susceptible to someone coming along and banging the drum of our specialness...

I know I am not the only one, for sure.  But mine is the one that I know best so I will talk about me.

I think growing up I always felt overlooked.  I am not sure that is an accurate way to have felt, I just know that I felt it deeply.  And I know at least some of it was delusional.  I think I was selected and picked a great deal more than I allow or remember.  I just remember needing to feel special, like I mattered.  And I know that I completely outsourced that job to you. It never occurred to me that perhaps this was my job. Like at all.

Looking back now I can see that I was never right sized about this.  Always likely needing way more than my share of attention, affection and the like.  I was not unpopular but I also remember never being satisfied with whatever level of status I held.  I always wanted more.

I know now that was just addiction in its native form.  I needed these outside things to make me feel ok inside.  I was not capable of self regulating.  I was not capable of thinking or feeling that whatever level of acceptance and popularity I had, was ever enough.  I think all addicts are born a quart low and we spend the rest of our runs attempting to fill that missing quart.

Regardless of the veracity of my feelings or the reality in which they played out, I ended up feeling misunderstood, misperceived and overlooked. And I have carried some version of this through my life.  Even well into recovery. It is an old story that I am not sure ever had any real merit but I have repeated it so many times that it became truth for me.

I developed and then curated this special wound which was then exploited by those caustic and callous enough to do such a thing.  Who would do that?  Any psychopath or narcissist, final answer.

And a few years ago, for a variety of reasons we don’t need to go into, that wound was reopened and I was suffering.  

When I think back to the night I met him, what I mistook for interest and being wow’ed by me and all my specialness, I now know was more likely him sizing me up for exploitation.  And I can see now, with a clarity that is very painful indeed, that this idea I have carried about someone coming along and discovery and appreciating all my specialness, was the thing that made me vulnerable to his fucked up abuse to begin with...and I can take that even further to see that all of the abuse I have suffered in my life was directly correlated to me having this fucking need to feel special.

Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel special but what I have come to experience and know is that when this feeling of specialness is delegated to others, it leaves you vulnerable to exploitation.  Hard stop.  So long as you think someone else is going to recognize, understand, love, value your uniqueness or specialness, you will always be vulnerable to attack.

I am reading this book now about this man who basically preys upon women.  Finds them and their special wounds, then exploits it for his own gain.  Uses them for their love, trust, money, homes, social status.  He finds successful women in their own right, and then worms his way in so that he can exploit them for his own agenda and gain. The book is fucking triggering. It is hard to read.  Because so much of what this fictional character does lines up with and mirrors what I allowed him to do to me.

He sets it up like he is the most incredible man that has ever lived.  He is attentive, loving, supportive and all the things.  And she believes in him.  I mean why wouldn’t she?  Haven’t we all just been waiting for that special person to come along and recognize and select us over everyone else?  Fuck, what a set up!  And this is not just about men doing it to women, women do it to men also, but this book, it is the man as the psychopath.

The ease with which he lies. How thinly veiled his bullshit is, unparalleled, but it passes because he is a master manipulator. And the women want to believe him.  I wanted to believe him.  I quite desperately wanted to believe all the things he said, all the ways in which he showed up for me (in the beginning, that would all change in short order) and all the ways he made me feel loved, adored and special.  Fuck, I can see it so clearly now.  How I was just ripe for the picking.  And I just followed along like I had some fucking script!  But I always had doubts.  I always questioned his motives and veracity and honor.  But not enough to remove him from my life. I could never PROVE he was who I thought he was so I continued to believe him even though my actual ability to trust him was waning with every passing day.

I suspected who he was all along.  But I allowed him to lie to me, manipulate me, gaslight me into staying with him and giving him more money and time.  And as soon as he had another plan, he took it.  I was not a love interest, I was an option. One that I allowed him to exercise for an embarrassingly long period of time.

And he still makes a run at me from time to time.  Nothing that puts forth any real effort.  Before I figured out how to block his emails also, he would get through with some pathetic one liners that wouldn’t bother me so much as they were an intrusion in the peaceful, truthful life I have lived since I got rid of him!  Peace really does come from no contact with people like him.

Anyway, the book has stirred it all up again.  And I guess I am not done grieving the loss of the me that I allowed him to exploit and take.  I am revisiting my own special wound that made me vulnerable to a fucker like him to begin with.  And just when it was all feeling fresh and acute again, he called my daughter.  Out of nowhere.  Again.  I thought she had him blocked but she got a new phone and apparently that is something you have to do again with the new phone.  She did not answer or respond.  

I would be more upset about his unwelcome intrusion into my life...but I know that he will likely never give up because even a dry well can become wet again.  So it is worth the effort to check it every now and again to see if there might be something in it for him once more.

But I am no longer susceptible to him or his charms because I have had to deal with this special wound and cauterize it.  If I allowed it to remain, then I would make myself vulnerable to him or others like him again.  Ummm, no thank you!

I would love to tell you that the wound is healed but I am not sure healing is completely possible for me at this juncture of life.  The best I can do is to remain vigilant and aware.  To see that someone who comes on strong and hard likely has another agenda other than to celebrate and value all our specialness.  Love bombing is just grooming after all.  God that is a horrible thing to realize.  We are not loved, ever, we are just groomed into responding in a way that they want and like and need. And using our own unhealed wounds to do it is the way they get so far in, so quickly. I see that now.

So I guess my own experience is a possible cure for being fucked over by a narcissist or psychopath.  Heal your own wounds, or at least know they are there, and then you can make yourself invincible to their charms, seductions and grooming.  And if you don’t heal your own wounds or again, at least maintain some sort of working knowledge about how they show up in your life, you will fall prey to someone who will tell you they love you while they are fucking others, or take your money and waste your time.  They will sell you the dream of being special and you will buy it but when the time comes for there to be pay dirt in the deal, you will find that what you really purchased with your love and affection is a whole lotta swamped land in Florida that is as uninhabitable as it without any real value at all.  Unless you are a snake or gator, then it is the best place ever...

It isn’t easy to heal your own wounds, but the work of healing is way less work than having the wounds and allowing them to be exploited by sociopathic fuckers who will rob you blind and then blame you for running out of funds to support them...