Life with a Narcissist in 7 Short Chapters (inspired by Portia Nelson's piece)

inspired by Portia Nelson’s “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”
located below

I.
I walk down the street.
He has prepared a red carpet for me to walk on,
Strewn with roses.
He puts a crown on my head,
Telling me he would do anything for me and only wants the very best for me.


II.
I walk down the street, with him beside me.
He pushes me out of the way in one spot, saying,
“Watch out for that big hole.
Aren’t you fortunate I saved you from falling?
I’m your hero!”
He leads me onward.
I look back and see no hole.  There is no hole.
But I am so grateful he saved me.


III.
I walk down the same street in the same spot, with him beside me.
He sticks out his foot in front of my legs.
I fall.
I skin my knee, I twist my ankle.
He stands above me, looking down with contempt,
“Wow!  You really are clumsy.  You are lucky I put up with you.
If only you were like me, you wouldn’t have fallen in that hole.
What a shame.”
I pull myself out of the hole,
Watching the blood drip down my shin,
My head hanging low in shame,
Hobbling along,
Watching the back of his head disappear ahead into the crowd.
This happens every time we walk down this street.


IV.
I walk down the same street in the same spot, all by myself.
When I get to the hole in the sidewalk that now is so apparent,
I tiptoe on the curb,
Thankful, so thankful for his warning and wisdom.
I look back and see a shadow of the hole.


V.
I walk down the same street,
my friend walking beside me.  
When I go to tiptoe on the curb, she tugs at my arm,
And she asks, “What are you doing?”
When I reply, “Avoiding the hole,” she stares at me and asks, in a completely serious voice,
“What hole?”
She reassures, “There is no hole, and I would never let you fall in one.”
I look at the sidewalk and wonder.


VI.
Much later, I walk down the same street, all by myself.
With scarred knees and a permanent limp,
I walk assuredly on the sidewalk,
Looking back to see the sidewalk that was whole all along.


VII.
Much, much later, I walk down the same street, all by myself or with others.
My scars on my knees have lessened.
But, if I am truthful, I still sometimes walk timidly in that spot,
Still hoping that I won’t fall.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Original Piece “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”
 by Portia Nelson:
I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.

The End of My Cleaver Life

 

My world at the age of 11 revolved around
My home in the country with my parents and sister,
Two sets of grandparents,
A church and church family where I spent a half-dozen hours a week (at least),
My dad’s school where I spent half of every summer,
And my own school, Medulla Elementary.

To say my life was idyllic would be an understatement.
I knew little of the harshness of the world.
My parents never argued in front of us—and we never even heard anything resembling conflict through the walls.
We knew of no verbally abusive language,
No hateful actions,
No divorces, no one accused of a crime, no one out to hurt others.

The worst thing I can remember happening during the time was the death of one of our cats who escaped and got run over.

And I can remember no time I was ever truly scared
With the exception of two different nights when we came home to discover our home had been burglarized,  
the scary German shepherds that ran loose in the neighborhood,
the dark hallways where the boogeyman lived,
and the wildfires down the road.

Mom and Dad always said they loved us.
They read stories to us,
they tucked us in at night,
And we always knew that they would be there for us.

Leave it to Beaver may have been primetime television before I was born,
But I lived it.
However, instead of Ward doing all the “male” tasks while June awaited Ward’s arrival home with dinner ready,
Mom helped Dad outside and supported his interests,
And Dad was one who would help wash dishes, do laundry, and vacuum.
Mom was one mean ax chopper, and Dad could wash dishes with great joy.

The real world—the ugliness possible—was unknown to me.
I had no awareness of the Vietnam War and only knew that the Russians had scary nuclear weapons.
My only awareness of the news was through re-run episodes of You Are There, told by Walter Cronkite in black and white on a film projector.

This all changed in the fall of my 6th grade year.
Because I was bumped ahead a grade in reading each year throughout elementary school,
When I entered my final year at Medulla, they had no idea what to do with me.
I became a library aide and put together book displays for other students.

My whole world broke open when I was called to Mr. Hollingsworth’s office.  
He introduced me to a young lady who was 5 years older than I was—I was 11, and she was 16.
Her family had just been sponsored by the Lutheran church in town,
And she had just arrived in America from a refugee camp for survivors of the conflict in Cambodia.

Just like I had no awareness of the Vietnam War, I knew nothing of any war in Cambodia,
And I knew nothing of Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge.
If I am honest, I doubt I even knew a country called Cambodia existed.
I had no idea 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians had been killed from 1975 to 1979 while I rode my bicycles and played school at home with my stuffed animals.  
I knew nothing of Pol Pot’s attempts to create a Cambodian “master race.”

All I knew was my life—
But that morning I saw before me a young lady who looked scared to death as she faced me.
Her name was Huoy.
She was new to the U.S.  She was new to Florida.  
And she knew about 10 words of English.

My new task in the fall of 1980 at the age of 11 was to become her personal tutor,
Helping her learn English,
Helping her figure out life in America,
Assisting her with schoolwork.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

That first day all we did was walk around campus.
I pointed at an oak tree and said, “Tree.”
She looked at her Cambodian-English dictionary, looked at both words, and repeated “tree”
Before we moved on to “car” and “door” and “sky.”
She took notes so she could study the words and memorize them.
She knew Cambodia could no longer be her home.
She had to learn English for her new life.

That day began a daily routine where we spent an hour or more together.
We added more words to her English vocabulary,
and she learned how to write in English,
and she and I worked on math.

She drew me pictures of flowers I had never seen before.
She gave me notes with her new English vocabulary beside.
Cambodian words on the sheets of paper she gave me,
Beautiful written Cambodian characters that were artistic pieces all by themselves.
Prior to the days of the internet and varied food options, someone like me did not have experience with other cultures.  My only experience with Asian food was La Choy’s Chow Mein in a can.

I shared my culture with her when she came to church events with me, flying kites,
Hunting for candy in field thrown by Mr. Wilson during our Easter event,
And she shared her Cambodian culture with me, providing me homemade egg rolls her dad made and teaching me a few words in her language.

We became friends.
That spring she shared her story—or part of it.
She told me with tears in her eyes of journeys through the jungles,
Of running for her life,
Of Pol Pot’s men hunting her and her family,
Of the deaths of her mother and brother in the jungles.

Her stories challenged me, terrified me, and broke my heart for her.
Her life experiences were more than I could even imagine at that age.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In addition to the world crashing into my elementary school that fall with my new friend’s arrival, ,
the world crashed into my living room later that year—during the spring of 1981– as I saw Secret Service agents whisk away President Reagan, barely escaping an assassination attempt.
Real-world events suddenly became real.
This event was the first news event that brought the dangers of the world into my home.

Followed soon after was the landing of the Columbia space shuttle in April of 1981, as seen by my classmates and me in our portable classroom.  Five classes crowded around one TV that must have been using an antenna to get the footage.

That year, that friendship, and that experience of hearing of her life story, of the horrors she had experienced—
All of this revealed for me a whole new world.
A whole new reality.
A world I could not even imagine, but a world that was happening outside of my experience.

Through her friendship and her stories,
she provided me with an awareness early on that horrible, ugly things happened outside of my idyllic life.
However, through her love and her smile, I also learned that this type of hate did not guarantee destruction.

Huoy was a model of strength, of goodness, and of friendship.
She showed me how to live through my own hardships that would eventually come—and how to keep on loving.

I may have taught Huoy the basics of English,
But she taught me all about life.




Afterword:  Huoy and I went to the same junior high, but our classes were never together after that sixth grade year.  When I moved across town to another high school, prior to social media, it was hard to stay in touch. I saw her one additional time after college, and she told me she had graduated with honors from University of South Florida.  I have looked for her for years on social media and on the internet.  I may have finally discovered her address.  I plan to send her this, along with a letter, hoping that perhaps I will reconnect all these years later.  To learn more about the Cambodian genocide, check out the fabulous movie called First They Killed My Father or the documentary called The Killing Fields.

My Monkeys, My Circus: A reflection on monkey mind

 

I know the phrase is “Not my Monkeys, Not my Circus!”

The problem is . . . what if they ARE your monkeys?  
What if they make up your circus?

For me, moments are often filled with my monkeys,
Swinging back and forth,
Jumping from rope to rope.
They cackle and call to me, scratch at themselves and at others,
Pick at each other to pull off bugs.
They make faces, and oh!  The noise!
The high-pitched calls—
It is all a girl can do to think straight.

These are MY monkeys.

The Buddhists talk about monkey mind.
It “describes a state of restlessness, capriciousness, and lack of control in one's thoughts”
In which the mind jumps from one topic to another,
From one task to the next,
A sense of scattered thinking, a feeling of being unsettled.
For me, my mind jumps from personal tasks to work tasks to interpersonal tasks—
A to-do list that is always running and reordering.
For me, my mind jumps from past to present to future to present to past.

There is an inability when the monkeys call to stay present.
To sit.
To be.
To live in the moment.

Monkey mind gets worse when my anxiety rises.
Just this evening while sitting in my stocktank pool, within a few minutes,
I worried about Millie chasing the bumblebees on my salvia.  That led me to worry about vet visits and bills, and how could I go to the vet with school starting this week.  Oh, and that reminded me that I still hadn't done the rewrite of my quiz in my freshman composition class.  In the meantime, the crape myrtle looked a bit odd, and I wondered if it needed water or fungicide.  Then, I thought about the water bill, and wondered if the dogs needed water in their dog dish, which then made me think about the heartworm medicine—and the air filter I needed to change because I do the air filter when I do the heartworm medicine.  Mixed in with all of this was a sense of being overwhelmed—and a feeling that I was failing at it all.

The noise!
The monkeys distract with their swinging and calling.

When I  feel the sway of the ropes as they begin their play,
When I feel the uptick of my heartbeat and blood pressure,
When their vocal decibels rise,
I have learned a trick.
I stop and talk to myself, “It’s okay, baby girl.”

I know I am not a baby.
However, there is very little that calms the monkeys as much as this simple phrase
Said in loving kindness by grown-up Kim to the little Kim who still lives within.
Regardless of how big we get, how large our shoes are, how many wrinkles we wear like corduroy ridges on our faces, and how gray (or absent) the hairs become,
We are still basically little kids within, little kids who want to be seen and loved and cared for.

I started the “baby girl” phrase with my female dogs.
When Millie got scared when the thunder rumbled, I sat beside her and told her the same thing I now tell myself when the monkeys cackle: “It’s okay, baby girl.”
I patted her and rubbed behind her ears.

Much the same way, I used to hold my sons close when the noise of the world became too much for them.
I used to rock them and sing to them, reminding them, “It’s okay, baby boy.”

I am much too big to rock and sing to.
I am much too old.
However, even the simple acknowledgement of the fact that life can sometimes be too much,
Too loud,
Too scary,
Too unsure—-this simple acknowledgement silences the monkeys.

When I rocked my boys and told them it was okay, I honesty wasn’t sure it was.
I couldn’t fix Jonathan’s colic or the ear infections.
I couldn’t make the pain go away or make the bad dream disappear.
All I could do was acknowledge my presence and unwillingness to let them down.

“It’s okay, baby girl” is perhaps my new way
To take a deep breath
To figuratively acknowledge that life has become too much,
To figuratively acknowledge that it is okay for me to stop—-
To sit.
To cry if I need to.
Or just to listen to myself.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Stilling the monkeys is a new goal for me.
Learning how to be—and do nothing--is a new reality.
However, this evening, while the monkeys swung on their ropes as I worried about heartworm medicine and crape myrtles,  
I was able to calm the monkeys enough to realize that their noise had almost made me miss:

The green hummingbird dipping its beak into the salvia blossom,
The hum of the bumblebees on my vitex tree,
The joy of Millie as she hunted for life along the fence line, hoping for that random squirrel to cross her path,
The warmth of the sun on my face,
The stillness and quiet that comes as a joy after a long, busy day filled with schedule making and hiring.
The feeling of my leg and foot gliding through the water,
The Summer Chill mix list on my Spotify playlist beating through the air, making my heart thump in rhythm,
The female cardinal swooping down over my head, bringing me to say, "You go, girl!"
The little lizard gliding along in the shade beside the house,
And the joy of the moment—--that single moment.

When the monkeys calm down,
I can finally take a deep breath and sigh in relief and just
Sit.
Be.
Live.