Death, Taxes, and Narcissistic Revenge
A narcissist will always get you back. Always. Guaranteed, 100%, rest assured, count on it, they WILL get you back. Whether you meant it or not, that doesn’t matter. Whether they acknowledged and accepted your apology (unlikely) or not, whether they’ve told you they forgive you (unlikely) or not, even if it was a complete and total accident on your part and you’re the most genuinely sorry person on the face of the earth and you offer to make it up to them, tell them you’re sorry and you’ll make it up to them and you tell them how much you love them—doesn’t matter. None of that matters. Pay no attention in the unlikely event that they say they’re over it; pay no attention to what they say or what they don’t say. There is only one thing that you must know:
The narcissist will get you back.
It may take days, weeks, months, or years, but if this person is a genuine NPD, whether diagnosed or not (most aren’t), then he or she—or it—WILL get you back.
How do you know when the narcissist has got you back? You won’t. Not for years. But there will come a point, IF you hit rock bottom and don’t commit suicide (thereby providing the narcissist with even THAT juicy source of supply on your way out [Secretly, in their lurking dark-helled heart, every narc will think: “Ooooo, he/she even KILLED themselves over me! I must really be that IMPORTANT!”]), then you will have your Twilight-Zoneian survivor’s epiphany, you will in that moment become Once-in-a-Lifetime David Byrne incarnate, suddenly mentally shouting to yourself, “My God! What have I done?!” and you will begin your long recovery process from the evil, paranormalish codependency to narcissistic abuse in which you played your part, and in ugly, rotting-onion layers over the course of the next year and the next, through the hazey paranormality of the complex post-traumatic stress syndrome that the narc put you into, that you let the narc put into you, then you will keep slowly peeling back these rotten, toxic-black-moldy layers of misplaced memories, and you’ll be having further, ugly, nasty, new epiphanies with each, and it will more and more begin to dawn on you, how each and every time that the narcissist ever did something screwy to you, something that didn’t make sense, something that you never figured they’d be stupid enough or accident-prone enough to do—but hey, they said it was an accident, and hey, accidents do happen.
When the narcissistic in-law backed over your mailbox, you thought it was an accident. An incredibly dumb, boneheaded accident. They even offered to pay for it. They were so incredibly sorry, and so you said, No, they didn’t have to. Nevermind. You’d fix it yourself. But you never made the connection to the time, four months earlier, when you called the narcissist out for gossiping about you with other family members.
Not until now.
When the narcissist burned you with that scalding hot water that time, those couple of times, you thought it was an accident. An incredibly dumb accident. How could they NOT understand how a faucet works?? It made no sense whatsoever. But it COULDN’T have been on purpose, they’d NEVER do that, because they’re such a GOOD PERSON. It MUST have been an accident. But you never made the connection to the time, six weeks earlier, when the narcissist mistakenly thought you were calling the narcissist fat.
Not until now.
When the narcissist didn’t get back on time like they promised, so you could go to your friend’s big event, the narc was just stuck in traffic. The reason they never called was because they’ve been having problems with their cellphone. They can’t call out on it for some reason. They have to get it fixed. So you had to stay with the kids and miss your friend’s big event. But you never made the connection to the time nine months ago when you were all playing SETTLERS OF CATAAN together, and your friend made that one joke, and you thought it was funny, but she secretly didn’t.
Not until now, you didn’t make the connection. But now you do. You start making lots of connections. Lots and lots of connections. All those oddly inexplicable absences or mistakes or oopsies that the narcissist did that inconvenienced you or frustrated you or hurt you, all of those inexplicable events,—HOLY SHIT, THOSE WERE NO ACCIDENTS! THEY WERE NOT ACCIDENTS!!
But they said they were sorry! And you said you were sorry! But wait,—she still got me back?! THAT’S what all those were about!?! Shit. Shit. Shit! What was I WITH all that time?!?
Mind you, that is only your reaction if you actually MARRIED one of these demonic meat-puppets; if you got burned so long and so egregiously that you finally awakened from your codependency and SAW the creature. But if you were only the in-law whose mailbox the narcissist ran over after you dared to erect a boundary to them, then you probably never do wake up. You’re still annoyed, of course, but the fact is, the narc got away with it. Got away with his or her revenge upon you. Just like the narc was counting on. Because after all—who in their right mind would do a thing like that on purpose?? It’s RIDICULOUS!
Key word: RIGHT.