Wellness – Page 2 – The Renegade Coder

As someone who is rather happy with their life and relationships, I don't feel that I'm really even qualified to talk about narcissism. However, someone rather close to me has been dealing with the effects of narcissism for most of their life, and I just can't stay quiet about it. While not everyone is familiar with narcissism in their personal lives, I think a lot of people have at least experienced narcissism at some point. In fact, I'd argue that most of us are familiar with Donald Trump, so I think the issue is relevant to everyone. As a result, I've decided to piece together a work of fiction to try to raise awareness to narcissism. Since I'm not exactly a novelist, the story telling format might be a little odd. Regardless, let's usher in fall with a bit of a narrative. I hope you enjoy it! Hello, Autumn Welcome to the story of Autumn, a young women who was raised by a narcissist, as told by her husband, Micah. Chapter 1: Small Town Antics I grew up in a small town as a bit of an outsider. Well, not exactly. I looked like everyone else, and I talked like everyone else, but I didn't think like everyone else. Sometimes I like to chalk that up to having two great parents who gave me an old soul. As a result, I had a bit of a knack for sensing when something was a little off. Growing up, that skill was quite handy because a lot of things were peculiar about my hometown. People did things that I couldn't imagine were normal anywhere else in the world. By the time I was in high school, I made friends with another outsider, Josh, who happened to have an urban perspective. The first thing Josh noticed was how weird it was that students would just leave their belongings scattered around the school. To be fair, it was quite common to see students carrying around backpacks instead of using a locker, and the school never had a metal detector—or any security, really. While the lack of security was certainly alarming, I had to warn him that the people were a little odd too. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite explain how they were odd. I guess he just had to experience it. Naturally, it wasn't long before Josh became a victim of the small town antics. After all, he didn't exactly blend in like I did; Josh is Korean. So, it probably comes as no surprise that local racism eventually caught up with him. One day, we were sitting in class when one of the students thought it would be funny to give Josh a nickname. Apparently, Josh's darker complexion was enough to earn him the name Pedro. Being the laid back guy he was, Josh never really batted an eye, but I wasn't a fan. Luckily, the name never stuck. Of course, the point I'm trying to make here is that the town was messed up. People could do and say things that couldn't be done anywhere else in the world. There were no repercussions for anything, and that's how I knew there had to be worse things happening just beneath the surface. Chapter 2: Meeting Autumn About a year before I met Josh, I met my future wife, Autumn. Of course, I was only in high school, so I couldn't possibly have known that. At the time, she was just a friend who I exchanged texts with regularly. Eventually, we grew a lot closer before deciding to finally upgrade our relationship. At that point, she was 15, and I was 16. And, I had no idea she had experienced any narcissistic abuse. When we decided to go on our first date, we had to do it in secret. Unfortunately, Autumn could not tell her family about me, so we organized a date with a third wheel. She was just going to hang out with her friend before conveniently running into me at the same place. Being just 16 myself, I understood the value of hiding this information from my family as well, so I didn't think anything of it. Unfortunately, this was the first sign of abuse. As it turns out, Autumn's mother, Alice, told Autumn that she couldn't have a boyfriend until she was 16. Even to this day, Alice denies that we were dating back then. Three months into our relationship, we went on our first real date despite not being in a real relationship by Alice's standards. At long last, I was finally able to meet Autumn's family and see her home. In terms of the family, I really didn't get much of a first impression as even the introductions felt fake and overdone. As a result, I wasn't really sure how to approach Autumn's family, and I can't say things have changed since then. In terms of the home, I'd place Autumn's house on the OCD spectrum. From the outside, it looked like a regular suburban home. On the inside, however, it was uncomfortably clean. I don't believe I saw so much as a crumb on the ground, and they even had pets. Over time, I grew used to the cleanliness, but I still found it remarkably odd that anyone could be that obsessed with fighting entropy. Naturally, this obsession plagued Autumn on a nearly daily basis. After all, no one could keep up with Alice's standards. Chapter 3: Snooping Over time, I would learn more and more about the various aspects in which Autumn's mother would try to micromanage Autumn's life. Alice had a say in just about everything Autumn did. As I mentioned before, Alice used to have incredibly unreasonable expectations when it came to chores. Counters were never clean enough, laundry could never be put away fast enough, and chairs could never be pushed in enough. Of course, these were all forms of control. If Autumn didn't do the chores, there was hell to pay. If she did do the chores, they were never done right. Even if they were done perfectly, Alice would still make comments like "about time you did something around the house." There was no winning. In my opinion, one of the most disturbing ways Alice used to control Autumn was through a direct violation of privacy: snooping. In other words, Alice used to comb through Autumn's room when she wasn't around. I assume the goal was to find something incriminating to use as future punishment, but I can't imagine she ever found anything. As it turns out, Autumn is a really good person with nothing to hide. However, that didn't stop Alice from taking the snooping a step further. In fact, it was very normal for Alice to take Autumn's phone as punishment. Of course, Alice never found anything. To this day, Autumn still gets creeped out when she thinks about her old bedroom. Who knows what Alice could have been hiding in there. Chapter 4: Birth Control At some point between high school and college—I don't quite remember—Autumn's mother forced Autumn to start taking birth control. At the time, I assumed her mother just didn't trust her, but the truth was far more sinister. According to Autumn, her mother forced her to go on birth control because she was too emotional. In other words, Alice wanted a daughter that was easier to control. Apparently, birth control was just one way to do it. At face value, controlling someone's emotions by forcing them to take a drug is pretty bad, but that's only part of the problem. In reality, Alice had a knack for gaslighting, and this was just one of her many moves in an effort to make Autumn question her own sanity. See, the birth control was just a metaphor. On a regular basis, Alice would belittle Autumn for being "too sensitive," and the birth control was a tangible reminder of that. Over time, Autumn began to feel as though she was crazy; she couldn't trust her own memories. At the time, I had no idea these were the symptoms of a much bigger problem. Chapter 5: College Visits When we graduated from high school, Autumn and I decided to go to separate colleges about 2 hours apart. As a result, we had to somehow manage our relationship from a distance. Luckily, Autumn had a car which she could use to visit me regularly. Unfortunately, Autumn had two major problems. For starters, she had so much driving anxiety from the narcissistic abuse that she could never muster the courage to actually visit me. Of course, at the time, I found this frustrating, and I didn't realize it was yet another sign of the abuse. Second, Autumn had to request permission from her mother, Alice, before she could visit me. Actually, I don't think she was really forced. Instead, she did it out of courtesy for her parents. After all, she was so afraid to leave campus because she knew her parents would somehow find out. In many cases, Alice just wouldn't let Autumn visit me. Instead, Alice would plan weird events just to get Autumn to come home to visit. In some cases, Autumn's parents would visit her at college without warning. As a result, she could never make any plans without including her parents. Even when she was allowed to visit, she would receive regular texts requesting updates along the drive and throughout the day. It's no wonder she never liked to leave campus. Her parents were literally smothering her. At one point, Autumn planned a trip to visit me, and her parents gave her the okay far in advance. Every so often, Autumn would remind her parents that the trip was coming up, so they wouldn't be blindsided when it finally happened. As the days grew closer, Autumn became more and more excited until her parents suddenly changed their minds. From what I understand, that night grew very emotional. Of course, why wouldn't it? Her parents completely broke their promise without any good reason. Chapter 6: Exchange Students Eventually, I graduated from college and kicked off my career in a slightly bigger town just north of the village I call home. Unfortunately, Autumn was a year younger than me, so she had another year of college before we could live together. During that year, Alice and her narcissist friend, Karen, both received exchange students from Europe. Karen's exchange student, Johanna, was frail and timid which was quite uncommon in the area. As a matter of fact, most folks were large and boisterous. Add to that a dash of everyday victimhood and you have a pretty insufferable community. Sadly, Johanna spent most of her year being ridiculed for being a vegetarian. Ironically, Karen and her family could probably afford to cut some red meat out of their diet. Meanwhile, Alice received Sophie who happened to blend in a bit more with the community. Over the next year, Sophie went on more excursions than Autumn had experienced in her entire life. Unsurprisingly, Autumn was never invited. I find the whole exchange student dynamic more troubling the more I think about it. For instance, Alice is obviously trying to make herself look like an amazing host by providing these experiences to Sophie. Meanwhile, Alice is actively depriving Autumn of the same experiences. Of course, what really irks me is the massive double standard in this scenario. In what world would Alice have ever allowed Autumn to spend a year abroad with another host family? Yet, there she was taking in a token exchange student. Chapter 7: The Proposal As Autumn and I grew older, the issues with Alice and the rest of the family began to grow. Perhaps the strongest example of this was when Autumn and I got engaged. After seven some odd years together, I finally proposed to Autumn. We were just 23 and 22 at the time, but it felt right. The details surrounding that proposal aren't exactly important. All that matters was that Autumn's sister, Penny, was there to capture the moment. That evening, Autumn contacted her parents to tell them the good news. All she received was a handful of grunts. In contrast, when I reached out to my parents in the morning, they couldn't have been more excited. To be honest, I was really surprised by my families reaction. My dad always told me to never get married, so I guess even he had a change of heart. Within 24 hours of the proposal, Autumn received a handful of texts from Alice that could have raised Gandhi's blood pressure. I guess at some point Autumn had mentioned a summer wedding, and her mother said "Are you talking summer of 18 or 19? Please say 19." For some context, the proposal took place in November of 2017, and we wanted a wedding in June of the next year. These plans would have lined up perfectly as Autumn's sister, Penny, was graduating from high school around the same time. As a result, a lot of the family would have already been around. In other words, we were trying to cater to everyone else, and apparently that wasn't good enough for Alice. Chapter 8: Wedding Planning The next several months were extremely painful as we had to navigate the wedding process while dealing with Alice's hysterics. Luckily, we never let her pay for anything, so she had no leverage. When we first starting planning, we decided we wanted to have our wedding at one of our favorite campgrounds. They had a nice little venue on the beach which would have costed us next to nothing compared to the typical wedding venues. Personally, we saw almost no downsides except the venue was kind of small—max capacity was about 75 people—and we couldn't have outside catering. To be honest, we were pretty close to pulling the trigger, but Alice was constantly trying to change our minds. At first, she was annoyed because there were no hotels nearby even though our hometown was like 90 minutes away. Then, she kept complaining that people were going to be drinking and driving, so we needed to be closer to home. As we were building up the guest list, Alice complained that the venue was too small to fit the ever growing list of extended family members and friends. At one point, the ratio of my guests to Autumn's guest was like 1 to 3 which started to feel a bit unfair. Granted, it wasn't Autumn's fault that we were forced to invite teachers, dance instructors, and neighbors. "After all they've done for us," we couldn't just leave those people off the list—at least according to Alice. Eventually, Alice grew so desperate that she even contacted my mother to try to turn her against me. That's where the famous phrase "it's Penny's year" originates. Chapter 9: The Urge to Elope Just a couple of weeks after the proposal, we nearly scrapped our wedding plans. We were already sick of it. What's the point of having a wedding if half the people coming don't care about us at all? Why should we plan a wedding when it seems more like Alice's wedding? Her persistent victim mentality was frustrating us to no end. Ultimately, we decided to abandon the big wedding altogether. Instead of eloping, however, we opted for a much smaller ceremony: parents, grandparents, and siblings. In total, we had planned to have less than 20 people there. For everyone who couldn't make it, we decided to host a small potluck dinner in the summer. By the time Christmas came around, we decided to break that news to our families. Surprisingly, everyone seemed to be completely fine with it—or at least that's how they acted around me. Who knows how anyone actually felt about our decision. Chapter 10: Wedding Dress Shopping Around that same time, Autumn went wedding dress shopping with a couple of friends, her mother, and her sister. Clearly, this was an event for Autumn, right? It wasn't according to Alice. Within moments of entering the dress store, Alice and Penny went straight to the prom dresses. Apparently, Penny was looking to get a prom dress in December despite prom not being until May. Obviously, their actions were beyond rude, but they were completely oblivious to this fact. In fact, they were so oblivious that Penny had the audacity to show off her prom dress to Autumn and her friends. It seems the narcissism had rubbed off on Autumn's sister. To make matters worse, Penny mentioned that she might just wear that prom dress to the wedding. Did I mention this prom dress costed more than Autumn's wedding dress? The gall of these people, I swear. Chapter 11: Touring Venues Later that week, Alice decided to show her true colors once again. After all, she was still determined to find us a different venue for the potluck. Personally, we were fine with using a local park, but Alice was dead set on having the best our small town could offer. As a result, Alice forced us to tour a couple of venues at our local campus at the end of our Christmas trip. Just a day before the tour, our town received the biggest snowstorm in history. Instead of calling off the tour, Alice forced the tour guide and all of us to show up. Once the tour guide showed up, Alice spammed him with questions about venue features we never even wanted. In particular, she kept asking about a dance floor. At one point, it irritated Autumn so much that she straight up declared we weren't having a dance floor. After all, we were planning a potluck, not a second wedding. Unfortunately, we realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to be booking any of these venues. In other words, we completely wasted the tour guides time—as well as risked his life—and there was nothing we could do about it. Alice was just too persistent. To make matters worse, Autumn and I were heading home that day. At the time, we lived nearly 800 miles away, so we had to get on the road. Thanks to Alice, we didn't get home until 2 AM, and we were exhausted. Chapter 12: Getting the Marriage License Over the next week, Autumn received several passive aggressive texts from Alice about the wedding and potluck plans. At one point, Alice wrote "please reconsider the dance floor" which is an odd hill to die on. Eventually, Alice left us alone to plan the wedding, but she was really against the potluck. Fortunately, it was literally 6 months away, so she left us alone for a bit. In the meantime, we had to go get our marriage license. Since we were getting married in our home state, we had to drive all the way there to file for a marriage license. In my opinion, it was a huge waste of time. Unfortunately, Alice found out we were coming close to home, so she texted Autumn almost the entire trip. Apparently, she suddenly cared about Autumn's well-being. Now, this wouldn't be such an issue if Alice wasn't asking such weird questions. For instance, she was dead set on knowing which hotel we were staying in for the night. Frankly, that was none of her business, and Autumn actively avoided answering that question which made Alice furious. As usual, Autumn was given the silent treatment which always works out great for us. The less we have to deal with her the better. Chapter 13: The Wedding Eventually, Autumn and I got married. In general, we were quite pleased with the event. However, Alice did manage to make part of the experience about her. For reference, the entire sequence of wedding events took place over the course of one weekend. In other words, we arrived in the city on Saturday and flew home on Monday. On Saturday, Autumn and I spent the day apart with our friends—or at least that was the plan. Apparently, Alice caught wind of our plans and wanted to stay in the same hotel as us. Honestly, I didn't get it. They lived literally 90 minutes away, so they could have driven up the day of the wedding. That's what my parents did. At any rate, Autumn was forced to babysit her younger sister, Penny, who was barely 18 at the time. Obviously, this was really annoying because Penny didn't really share the same interests as everyone else. Granted, my sister was there as well, but she at least asked to come. By the end of the night, Autumn discovered that she was supposed to share her room with Penny. Clearly, this wasn't in the original plans as Autumn was already sharing a room with two of her friends. Apparently, Alice only bought a room for herself and her husband and figured Autumn could take care of Penny. Ironically, my sister was smart enough to get herself a room. Chapter 14: No Potluck For You After the wedding, we had about three months to prepare for the potluck. Luckily, it was easy. All we had to do was invite everyone we ever knew and hope they show up with food. That's it! However, Alice was vehemently against this idea of a potluck. On several occasions, she referred to the potluck as tacky and almost forced us to cater it. At one point, she even begged us to leave potluck off the invitation. Naturally, we were so sick of her attempts to control us that we sent the invitations which explicitly stated it was a potluck. Alongside each invitation, we shared a recipe card which we ultimately used to build a recipe book. As fate would have it, Alice was furious. Chapter 15: Missing the Dance Recital While we were all waiting for this potluck, Alice had to find other ways to try to control us. Since it was indeed Penny's Year, it made sense for Alice to try to guilt trip us into attending a whole myriad of pointless events. One such event was Penny's dance recital. To put this dance recital into perspective, Penny quit dancing at one point only to return for the glory of senior year. To make matters worse, she almost never attended her dance class, so it wasn't even worth attending the show—at least that was my logic. Well, Alice wouldn't have it any other way for her Golden Child. As a result, Autumn was routinely begged for over a month to drive 800 miles for this dance recital. While I understand the importance of the event, getting Autumn to claim a sick day just to drive 24 hours in a single weekend was ridiculous. Clearly, Alice lacks empathy. I guess one dance recital is more important than the education of 18 students and the career of one daughter, but I digress. Ultimately, Autumn never went to the dance recital. As a proxy, Autumn asked her mother to film it which she agreed. As fate would have it, Alice's phone couldn't capture a video for whatever reason. The irony of the situation was that Autumn's parents attended the dance recital twice, and they couldn't catch even a short video. I can only assume that was Alice's way of punishing Autumn. Chapter 16: House Rules Just a week before the potluck, we decided to visit our families. For me, that meant spending some time with my dad and sister at a convention. For Autumn, that meant watching her sister graduate and seeing her grandparents. Originally, we hadn't planned to arrive that early. In fact, were only planning to spend maybe 4 days at home. As much as we love our families, we were in the middle of a big transition period which required a lot of effort. We couldn't just give up a whole week. However, I decided to extend the trip because I didn't want to miss out on an annual tradition with my dad. As soon as Alice found out we were extending our prison sentence, she decided to start scheduling our lives. For starters, Autumn got roped into attending some awards ceremony for her sister who didn't win any awards. To add insult to injury, a few days before we were set to visit, Autumn's grandmother had a nasty injury which put her in the hospital. Over the next several days, Alice repeatedly guilt tripped Autumn to leave a day earlier. Apparently, a single day was the difference between being a good and bad family member. To be honest, I still want to know what those four bonus days got us. Oh, by the way, Autumn's grandmother is fine. Chapter 17: No Awards Ceremony Because Autumn's grandmother found herself in the hospital, there was an open seat at Penny's awards ceremony. Luckily, I was there to fill it. To no one's surprise at this point, I was guilt tripped into attending this awards ceremony. Of course, I didn't pack any nice clothes, so we had to go out to buy them just for this event. Fortunately, a solid colored t-shirt was enough to appease the basilisk. Once we arrived, we all sat awkwardly at a table off to one side. I sat on the end with Autumn to my right and her grandfather across from me. Within minutes, we made our way into the buffet line. With our food now in hand, we were able to socialize. Or as I like to call it, maintaining surface-level dialog. In other words, I've never had a conversation with Autumn's family that wasn't completely pointless. Call me an introvert, but I can't do small talk. At some point, Alice decided to ask me what my parents were bringing to the potluck. Before I could even answer, she demanded "and don't tell me you don't know!" A little frustrated, I said "I think my dad is making pierogies." Obviously, I had no idea. I'm not responsible for my parents, so why would I know? It's such a minute detail that doesn't affect any of us in the least. Whatever they choose to bring, we'll probably eat it. It's really that simple. At any rate, we sat around for about two hours watching white kids we've never met win awards they probably didn't deserve. Not once did Penny get announced for anything. Near the end of the ceremony, Autumn's family just stood up and walked out. Apparently, they couldn't wait five minutes for the superintendent to finish their speech. It was probably one of the rudest things I've experienced in a public setting. Of course, getting out of the parking lot before traffic is more important than anything else. Chapter 18: Thrown Out Later in the week, Autumn and I finally got to spend some time together. As a result, we decided to do some shopping for camping supplies since we were planning to go camping right after our potluck. As a gesture to her family, Autumn decided to get some cooking ingredients, so she could prepare dinner. Most of the ingredients were already at her parent's house as we brought some food from our favorite international farmers market 800 miles away. However, Autumn still wanted to pick up some odds and ends. Shortly before I dropped Autumn off at her parents' house, she began receiving nasty texts from her mother and sister. Apparently, they were so hungry that they couldn't wait for her to come home. Fortunately, we were just around the corner. When I dropped Autumn off, I turned around and went back to my parents' house. Just before I got home, I received a call from Autumn begging me to come back. Within seconds, I whipped the car around and sped down back roads to get to my wife. Who knows what could have happened to her. When I arrived, I didn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary. In fact, I even sent Autumn a text to let her know I was there. After waiting for a moment, I started to hear screaming. Next thing I know, Autumn is at the door yelling at me to get inside. Apparently, her mother threw her out of the house. Of course, I didn't know any of the details at the time. I was just faced with grabbing Autumn's things and packing them in our car. Those 5 minutes were probably the most awkward minutes I've experienced in my life. As Autumn was angrily tossing bags my way, her family was trying to act like nothing happened. Most of it, of course, I just tuned out. After all, I'm generally nonconfrontational, and I don't think they wanted to test that theory. However, I did overhear a couple of comments. For instance, Alice said something like "I'm sorry if I ever treated you wrong" to me while repeating the idea that Autumn "just snapped." Meanwhile, Autumn's dad kept acting like nothing happened while following us around the driveway. Naturally, Penny was acting like a complete lunatic. Just before we left, Autumn pleaded to her family to "not come to the potluck." Alice responded, "oh, we'll be there with bells on." Chapter 19: Behind Closed Doors Over the next hour, Autumn told me the story. From what I understand, Autumn began cooking dinner as planned. At some point, Alice thought it was appropriate to ask why I wasn't there. For reference, it was Penny's graduation day, and I was never invited. I guess it was understood that I was going because I'm family now, but people need to learn how to communicate. Anyway, Autumn basically responded in the same way. She stated that I was never invited, so I never planned for it. From there, Alice got upset which made Autumn upset, so Autumn decided to finally voice her opinion. She told Alice that she treats me poorly, and that she wasn't surprised that I didn't want to go. Naturally, tempers flared. At some point, Alice declared that she hoped "none of [her] people [would] bring anything" to the potluck which rightfully set Autumn off. Autumn calmly responded with "you're a piece of shit." Before long, Alice kicked Autumn out of the house which is when she called me. While she was packing, Penny came out of the woodwork to voice her opinion on the matter. Apparently, Penny was upset because she "can never have a day just about her" which is ironic given that it's her year. Regardless, Autumn ignored Penny which prompted Penny to take a cheap shot at the side of Autumn's head. From there, anything was fair game, so Autumn started swinging at Penny. Alice couldn't imagine anyone would touch the Golden Child, so Alice started swinging at Autumn. At this point, Autumn's dad, Greg, decided to finally step in to protect Autumn. That was probably right around when I showed up which immediately defused the situation. Chapter 20: Setting Up a Potluck Until the potluck, Autumn hadn't so much as spoken to any of her immediate family members. Of course, that didn't mean we could necessarily avoid them. Before we could even host the potluck, we had to get to the park to setup. Back when Autumn and her family were on speaking terms, Alice wanted to get to the park like 3 full hours before the party started. Fortunately, we didn't have such strict rules anymore. Unfortunately, the reservation was still under Alice's name despite Autumn paying for it. As a result, we had a really awkward meeting with the park owners who initially assumed Autumn was Alice. Once they turned the park over to us, Autumn, a couple of my friends, and I began setting up as quickly as we could. After all, we had no idea when Alice and her enabler husband, Greg, were going to show up. When we were just about ready, Autumn's family made an appearance. Once again, they acted like nothing happened, but they were very careful to stay hidden. In fact, they were in and out before we knew it. Then, they reappeared when the party started. Chapter 21: Hosting a Potluck For me, the potluck was one of the most amazingly awkward events in my existence. To put it into perspective, I'm not very close with my family. But if you invite them to a potluck, they will come from all over with a dish. As a result, there were a lot of people there that I hadn't spoken to in years. Beyond the awkward exchanges with various family members throughout the day, I had a great time. The only thing that kind of bothered me was that my family stayed outside while Autumn's family stole the inside. I say stole because that's where the witch, Alice, stood. Also, it's where we kept all the decorations and food. Unfortunately, we couldn't get through a whole potluck without Alice making some sort of nasty comment. This time it was to my mother. Apparently, my mother brought a ton of burgers, and Autumn's father and grandfather volunteered to cook them. For whatever reason, that bothered Alice so much that she eventually confronted my mother about it. From what I remember, Alice said something like "you got yourself a couple of helpers," and my mother was like "yeah, I guess." Then Alice sneered, "Micah is really lucky." To which my mother declared, "well, I bought the burgers." In other words, what's luck have to do with anything? Did I mention most of the food was brought by my family? I'm assuming Alice went and told everyone she knew not to bring anything. Clearly, she told some pretty nasty stories because there were a lot of people on her side of the family that never even showed up including close family and friends. Some of the excuses were really quite amusing. For instance, a couple of family members couldn't make it because one of their kids had a soccer tournament. Is that not the lamest excuse ever? We sent out invitations months ago. Unless that kid is going to the Olympics, I think they can miss a game, but I digress. To be honest, I really didn't care if anyone showed up. That said, I now know that a lot of these people probably would have skipped our wedding had we invited them, so I'm glad we didn't throw a bigger wedding. Chapter 22: Bullying Since then, neither Autumn nor I have spoken to her family—at least not directly. At some point, I decided to document some of my frustrations with that entire week. Unfortunately, someone found out, and I got a really nasty comment from them. In this comment, they suggested on multiple occasions that Autumn and I were bad family members, and that we needed to grow up. In addition, they mentioned that the potluck was tacky, and they stated that Autumn was never thrown out of her parents' house. At one point, they even claimed that Autumn would have some serious "ass-kissing" to do if she ever tried to come back. Ironically, this person was operating under a pseudonym, Elaine Irling. Honestly, who needs to grow up here? Clearly, it's us, not the person creating a fictional character to spout hate. After some detective work, we were able to come to the conclusion that the comment came from Alice's best friend, Karen, another local narcissist. Isn't it funny that the person who wasn't there the night Autumn got thrown out has so much to say about the truth? That's some premium gaslighting right there. Like a normal person, I simply deleted the comment and moved on with my life. Unfortunately, that destroyed what was left of Karen's self-confidence, so they fired back with yet another comment. In this comment, they wrote about how I was asking for an "honest comment," and that they weren't "bullying" us but rather "telling the truth." In what world is telling the truth an excuse for bullying? I've never once seen someone make a fat joke at an obese person and thought "they're just telling the truth." Nor have I ever seen someone make a math joke to an Asian and thought "well, Asians are really good at math." The truth—regardless of its accuracy—is never an excuse for bullying. Chapter 23: Flying Monkeys As the lack of family contact continued, Alice gradually began sending out her various flying monkeys. In general, nobody ever tried to reach out to us after Autumn and I left for college. In fact, we spent an entire year nearly 800 miles from that small town, and we almost never received so much as a text from anyone. All of the sudden after the fight, people started texting Autumn left and right about the most random things. Of course, I can only assume they'd been sent by the queen bee to mine information out of Autumn. As a result, we gray rocked almost every person who has tried to reach out regardless of their intentions. It's truly sad when we can't trust anyone. Clearly, our efforts succeeded because Alice's flying monkeys began to stoop very low. For instance, Penny went out of her way to contact my sister to tell her the true story. I can only assume the goal was to try to turn my sister against me. Instead, my sister sent me screenshots. Now, Autumn and I know the story her family has pedaled to the locals. Of course, we don't care that much. We've moved on, and we're happier now. No one in that small town is worth saving. Chapter 24: Bait Since then, we've been happily deflecting the flying monkeys. One thing is for certain: our efforts are killing Alice. Almost every two weeks to the day, Autumn receives a text that includes some premium bait. For awhile there, Alice was sending texts like "I love you" and "I miss you," but it's never occurred to her to apologize I guess. Why admit fault when you can just start the emotional abuse cycle all over again? More recently, Alice has upped her game with texts like "please call me" as if the world were crashing down around her. Apparently guilt through love isn't working, so she's trying guilt through urgency. Unfortunately for her, Autumn doesn't give a damn. In fact, Autumn's plan moving forward is to get some therapy before trying to rekindle any sort of relationship with her family. Honestly, I think the therapy is a great idea, but I don't think we should even try to break this pleasant lack of contact. That said, I'm going to support Autumn with whatever she decides to do. After all, she doesn't have many people in her corner. A Hopeful Future Well, I hope you enjoyed the story. After almost everything I've written on this site, this is by far the hardest article I've written. If you've ever experienced narcissism or you know someone who has, let's chat about it in the comments. After all, the community could use more support. Alternatively, I find the /r/raisedbynarcissists subreddit is an excellent resource and community for narcissist victims and survivors. As always, thanks for sticking around! If you are interested in keeping up to date with The Renegade Coder, consider subscribing for the weekly newsletter. Otherwise, thanks!