I don’t have time for you...
He acted as if, I felt, he was my brother. I was in hospital for a long stay, healing the largest bone in the body. It turns out, you know, that this is his thing, preying upon the vulnerable.
For the second time in my life, I was on a long many months stay on a recovery ward and a minor acquaintance in my life instantly became a major care giver. Turns out there is a cost to be paid.
I’m single with no family to speak of, a prime target. The first one became a roommate so I didn’t get warehoused in some bedbug factory due to my low disabled income. Then Covid hit so for years I tolerated his undervaluing abuse.
I got this place of my own on a subsidized rent and I met Dale who lived here taking care of the helpless Marilyn, while attending church and gamblers anonymous. He’s a really good guy the Manager told me, you can trust him.
So when I was attacked by the unhoused man at the grocery, thrown down and thrown into hospital for months, Dale was my go to guy to recover my car from the grocery and fetch me some clothes and toiletries from my apartment. I paid his hospital parking and bought us lunch and proceeded to build a friendship as equals; gradually and over time each of us revealing some thing in the usual way that friends do when they build intimate relationships. Dale was having none of it, it was, to him, a oneupmanship contest of abuse experiences.
As I recovered I got day passes and as I got more independent Dale exhibited more frustration. He needed me to be dependant so he could feel superior. Eventually he just dropped me as I was discharged, I walked out of the hospital, caught a cab and went home to finish recovering.
The other day as I was walking to the bench outside our building he said he wanted to show me a photo on his phone, to demonstrate I suppose his superior talent. I said let me get organized here, trying to sit down from my walker, and I’ll look at it. This triggered him, he wasn’t a priority, I guess, and he became very frustrated, “I don’t have time for you to get organized!”
“Well, fuck off then” was my response.
So he did, his mask was fully let down leaving him exposed.
Tari, on the other hand, is also a covert narcissist of the communal type as defined by psychcentral.com as: ‘For example, while communal narcissism might cause you to say (and believe) you have a strong moral code or care for others, you might not realize the way you treat others doesn’t match up with your beliefs.’
The other day was my birthday and she attended the dinner on my invite but became agitated and bored when I managed my various minor disabilities. In the car, a usual scene of the crime with narcs, she began to criticize me for creating some inconvenience for her, my driving taking too long to get to the restaurant. Then she placed a birthday card on my door leaving never to be invited to return.
I thought about her various crits of me in the car on past trips, threw her card in the garbage and went to my solitary peaceful bed. Another birthday another narcissist.
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