I’ve been dealing with the second really bad narcissist in the last two months, and I’m wondering whether there’s a message or a lesson I’m missing, so God keeps sending them my way until I get it.

So, I’ll try to think out loud here and try to figure it out.

The common belief of narcissists seems to be that they are “good persons”, and everything that contradicts this belief is someone else’s fault. Also, they feel entitled to everything – they are entitled to your full trust and confidence, and take offence if you call them out in any way. Every form of interaction is riddled with tripwires and red flags you need to avoid of doing things exactly the way they want it, or shit instantly hits the fan. They act as if they have an innate right to everything and everyone, and the only way for you to not be attacked is unconditional obedience and submission, where boundaries are never clearly defined because they feel the innate right to extend them whichever way they feel like at the moment.

I wanted to say that God is the only person who actually has absolute rights, but that’s actually not true, because God respects His children as having innate sovereignty that roots down to the fact that their souls are made from God-stuff, and so the sovereignty of God propagates throughout His creation. I initially thought that the defining characteristic of narcissists is hubris, or claiming that which is true only for God, but it seems to be actually worse than that – they claim rights not even God claims, which makes me think of why that might be.

I think the actual cause is innate spiritual emptiness. A narcissist is the opposite of God. God is fullness that gives, and a narcissist is emptiness that claims and takes.

A narcissist cries because he feels wronged, and feels he is owed so much that he didn’t receive. A good person cries because he wronged others, or feels that he could have done so much better. Interestingly, a narcissist never, ever feels remorse – only regret that things didn’t go his way, the way things are supposed to go. Remorse is a different feeling – a feeling where you know what is right, and knowing you fall short. It hurts, but there is beauty and glory of God behind the hurt, because you saw the glimpse of that which is the wonder of wonders, beyond, and you repent for your unworthiness and strive to overcome it.

Do I have to face narcissists because I am somehow vulnerable to being exploited by them? I don’t feel particularly vulnerable – I instinctively go into intellectual, analytical mode with them, focusing on facts and evidence and completely ignoring all the emotional snares they constantly use to provoke empathy in others they are perfectly incapable of feeling themselves. Am I a narcissist myself, and they are a mirror God is having me face? I can understand what they are, so there is obviously enough of it in me to cause good understanding, but I could say that about almost anything, since I was always prone to losing myself in reflecting others, and that has always been my weakness. Or is that it? My weakness of excessive empathy that makes me function like a chameleon, losing myself in the environment, appropriating the colour of things around me and never truly being myself? Are those narcissists a warning, that I should claim myself or be perpetually exploited and abused? My mother was a narcissist, and a very bad one at that, and she caused some very deep injuries, that mostly have to do with the ability to exist as my own person, and not just a service provider to others. There’s probably something there; I recently went to buy a fountain pen because I realised that I neglected my handwriting over the years of wearing out keyboards, and I felt deep unease and revulsion when I came upon a certain style of Pelikan fountain pens that my mother used to have in her drawer when I was a child, and this feeling of disgust was overwhelming to the point where I wondered what the hell that was – apparently, it is a part of what she considered her “golden years”, and she extended all kinds of fantasies and crazy entitlement and dreams of a happy future she is owed, until the damn children happened and took it all away from her. She never failed to mention how I ruined her life by merely existing, several times a day, and that fountain pen seemed to be so impregnated with her narcissism that it felt like a disgusting cursed object, a Nazgul’s blade or something, and the implicit message of my mother to me was that she had the right to be happy, and I took that away from her by being born, and it is my fault for not getting out of her way, the fault for all of her life being devoid of all the things she dreamt of. The implicit message of narcissists is that you only have a right to exist if that pleases them and increases their greatness. I resist them, but there is a vulnerability and a pain somewhere in there, as well – probably something that makes me want to get along with people and be invisible, probably a desire not to provoke my mother’s anger by existing, and this is completely inconsistent with what I would have to be were I to incarnate my full power, power of the kind that has the absolute right to exist, power that has the right to manifest itself regardless, because it is rooted in the will of God, and that probably looks like whatever it is that the narcissists do, to me, and I object to it on some level. Can this be it? It does strike me as true.

Oh, I had an idea just now.

The point of this world is to be a place where narcissists come in order for them to have God get out of their way, so that they can enjoy true life and happiness, without Him.

God existing and being that great wonderful thing that everybody strives for and wishes to embody is something narcissists perceive as a crime against them, if they have to witness it and suffer it, because somebody else being the focus of attention is a terrible offence against them. God should just get out the way, the damnable selfish creature that would want them to put Him in the center of their Universe, where they and nothing else belongs.

I think this is it. That’s why my mother keeps crossing my mind when I try to figure this out – she and her attitude towards me is an incredibly archetypal example of a very widespread problem.