Speaking Of Narcissism
Narcissism is my subject.
It had to be.
Because it has nearly killed me so often.
The name of this disorder was taken from the Greek myth
picturing a youth kneeling beside a stream
endlessly fascinated with looking into his image there.
People mistakenly think this means that
he's in love with himself. On the contrary.
I have discovered in my eidetic imaging work
that, in fact, any narcissist
– or any narcissistic aspect of a person –
is missing a sense of self, and, in endlessly seeking
this most essential aspect of his substance,
acts blind to the existence of others.
Having written at book length about this elusive form of blindness,
I was most pleased to see the following poem
came out so succinctly, because I feel everyone
in what has been called our culture of narcissism
needs to recognize narcissism, to see clearly how it works,
and how to handle it compassionately,
since we are so continually faced with and debilitated by it.
What is this most elusive
and prevalent condition?
How does it hit you?
Where does it grab you?
Standing, sitting or lying
before somebody else,
being there for them,
while watching and sensing
that in that moment
you're not there
in their eyes,
you're disappeared,
you're a disapparecido.
I called it "cellophane murder"
at sixteen, when I first began to grapple
with how my mother's narcissism
had ruined me.
You have to keep living through
being nothing to narcissists
while they have no idea
they have committed
any annihilation against you.
Complain and they stare blankly
at you as if you're crazy,
or vehemently deny
that the blow causing this
disappearance took place.
Did narcissism give rise to
the word abashed, or
the expression taken aback?
Every time I think about
one such blind betrayal
I endured, baffled by it for years,
it still feels like a pizza paddle
has hit up alongside my
entire nervous system.
I'm reeling alone over
the chasm of loneliness
falling into the overwhelming
pressure of its darkness
as my gorge rises filling with
a sensation so chartreuse
and of such shrieking proportions
I call it the gangrene feeling.
It takes your breath away.
Your desire to live.
And then where are you?
How do you survive
being reduced to nothing
in the eyes of someone you love?
or the eyes of your society?
How do you play peekaboo
with this disaster
no one else sees happening
or talks about?
It's killing you
and everyone around you.
You're dead
but nobody has time to notice
you're gone, we're gone.
How do you survive
loving one more person,
a whole succession of people
– from your mother and sister
to your teachers and lovers
and friends and editors and acquaintances on –
who have this Cheshire Cat habit
of disappearing their smile
without having any sense
of how such withdrawals
of true attention
sock others in the solar plexus?
Not using the thumbs of our words
to grasp the slippery ways
this prevailing blindness operates,
who sees that it is the numbing source
of each violence committed,
each blind slipshod
slap in the face
we give each other?