Oh My.. *Gasp* .. a Narcissist…

Labels.

I hate them. With a burning intensity I hate them. Why do we feel it necessary to label everything? Everyone? I don’t care if you have a degree or you were in a relationship with someone that hurt you so now you are an expert….  you can not smear the words ‘narcissist’ and the like around so casually.

I can call myself one…  or accept and agree that I am. But why do YOU feel it so necessary to over use the word on your mission to spot them all coming?

To be clear – I qualify for all sorts of things. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Sociopath. Sadist. Masochist. Borderline Personality Disorder. Bi Polar Disorder. Schizophrenia. I know this because I have sat opposite many a well educated suited mental health expert in rooms with walls lined with certificates in cheap frames.

I was a crack head. I was a drunk. I have broken (on other people) two jaws, a few noses, about a dozen fingers…   punched, kicked, bitten. Even waited with malicious intent around a corner with a public phone in my hand, waiting for a specific person to come around the corner so that I could smack them in the face with the phone that I had violently unattached from the phone booth. I have smacked people with pool ques. Thrown things. Threatened people.

I have manipulated people. Hurt people. Been a tramp, and quite possibly the best shag that many have or will ever have.

But ask me what good I have done, before you lick that label and slap it on my forehead. Ask me!!

I have spent more time in orphanages, old age homes and animal shelters than many. I have a genuine and undying love and empathy for the homeless, downtrodden, down and out’s and elderly. I have a particular weakness and love for dogs and other animals that are used in fighting or as bait. If you handed me a gun and told me I could kill people who hurt animals, or old people and children…  you wouldn’t even have to pay me. Would I flinch? No. Would I stand with my foot in proud self love over the bleeding body of the recently deceased? Hell yes.

I never ever have money at the end of the month because I am forever giving it to people who undoubtedly need it more than me.

What label should I have now? “Charitable Narcissist”?

I detest when people don’t think independently of what they read and are told. They regurgitate bull shit and then it’s lapped up by equally narrow minds.

Not once in any of those interviews where I walked away with a diagnosis did anyone ask ‘why’? It was way easier to put money in their pockets – insured, because the faceless, nameless patient could be medicated and sent home. At one point I was on so many different drugs that my hair fell out, and my skin reacted badly – and all my insides ached.

My story and it’s details are not important. But what is important is the ‘why’ behind the behaviour. The actual questions should be more along the lines of:

Were you ever sexually assaulted as a child?
Have you ever been assaulted emotionally for a long period of time?
Have you ever been raped?
Have you been raped more than once?
Have you been scared that it happens again?
Do you think your experiences have shaped how you look at people?
Do you get angry for no reason?
Are you paranoid?
What are you afraid of?
Have you ever wanted nothing more than to be numb?
What makes you feel alive?
What makes you sad?
What is the difference between Intimacy and affection?
…. and so on.

Had someone bothered to read between the lines (before the first shrink who actually did – once I had come out of suicide watch in hospital and went straight on to rehab) – it would have spared me so much further confusion and pain.

In the process of being medicated and shoved from medical pillar to medical post – I had no choice but to shape my own idea of who I wanted to be and what that would take. At any given age that could mean any number of things based on the external input I had or had not been given. Also – my personality type. Despite all the things that happened to me at the hands of people I loved and trusted – I was still a big and strong and caring personality. Is it any surprise though – that an anger unrelenting built up inside me and was largely characterized by my perceptions of weak vs strong?

I never wanted to feel helpless again. So I went overboard and was determined to smash anyone who even resembled a bully. That is FEAR driven. Call me a narcissist now, in that disdainful tone?? I was taught from a very young age that sex was key to any relationship. So off I went and became pretty good at it – and in a dark way – mastered my own fears of pain and rejection. At the expense of other people. Now call me a predator, like I was born with that skill??

When you are abused as a child and then before you hit 20 you are raped repeatedly and beaten for a four day period – would it not make sense that you find a safe place in your head – and find it hard to come out? So when a doctor asks you – do you hear voices? And you answer yes…    that can ONLY be schizophrenia right? I see patterns and numbers in things. I hallucinate. Was I kicked in the head too many times or…  ?

Medicate it! Quick!!

So the Narcissist test that is floating about. You have to meet 5 of the 9 requirements to have NPD. Please… someone tell me that is as ridiculous to you as it is to me?? Yeah…  I think I am smarter than other people. I had my IQ tested fuckers – I AM smarter than a lot of you. But hand in hand with that – is the space I live in. There is only space for me and the sounds, people, colours and the  stimuli I choose. There is no space for idiot people who think that breaking a nail is the end of the world.

I understand anger. It’s a language that I speak fluently – which means there is a level of intensity required for anyone to actually be near me with out being either intimidated or really tired after a while. Would I swap and be someone else? Hell no. Why? Because I stood up, and I gave the finger to the big fat cosmic joke that was my past. If it were not for those experiences, I would be less of a person.

Do I enjoy hurting people? Yeah – when they are assholes. Bullies. Can you blame me?

I am not saying my moral compass is where it should be – but what I am saying is – don’t YOU tell me where it should be. You don’t know me. You have no idea what I have experienced, interpreted, felt, given, taken, needed, been robbed of… so you can NOT just stick a label on my face and walk off satisfied that you have done the world a favour.

It is you who needs a label then. “Regurgitating Non-Thinker.”

Blah. Labels.