How little we really know

of one another...

Lately I’ve been haunted by this one little nugget of truth: how little any of us really know about one another, even (or especially) amongst those we think we know the most.

We are not privy to the inner workings of each others’ minds, what it is like to exist in the bodies that we do, their motives and intentions, possible selfish desires, all the proverbial skeletons in their closets.

Last November when I received texts and photos, the indisputable proof that my former partner was cheating on me, that he had taken the girl he was pursuing to Europe, where we had planned to go a few weeks before, my insides went cold.

My stomach fell and the world and my reality—once again—-felt warped and distorted, surreal and dream-like. It felt much like it had in March of 2020 when my PTSD was sharp, my cortisol rushes intense, and I wandered around Florida in a haze, unsure of whether this was life or some dream-like, alternative reality.

I remember thinking: at least I have my partner. I have a safe person amidst this hellish nightmare. It’s all behind me. The worst is over.

Little did I know that two years later he would be the cause of trauma, deep pain and betrayal, the cause of my re-traumatization.

(He had invited her on a European trip, double-booking himself . Luckily for him I had canceled the trip after his mistreatment of me. But we had had plan to go on the exact trip they went on. Unluckily for him the girl he pursued is a lot smarter than he is and found him out and about me. And let me know of her and of his true character.)

But what struck me was not even this deep betrayal—that two months earlier he had given me a card, professing a life-long love for me—and it wasn’t even just the picture of seeing him with this girl, although that cut deep into my heart.

What stung the most was just how happy he looked. Elated. Completely, utterly, madly deep in love.

He was all a’grin, kissing her cheek, huge smiles, those big eyes that I had once loved sparkled.

And I thought—who is he? Who was he? Who am I to have loved someone like this?

(I now recognize this as childish infatuation and escapism from his own reality, a desperate drive because of his own inability to be alone, as he jumped from his ex wife to me as well. And though he accused me of having problems with single living, that he was simply running from his own and deflecting and projecting them onto me. Narcissists and many with mood disorders are very good at this, the deflecting and projecting to avoid center spotlight on them, revealing of their own actions.)

But, I did—I spent a very long time staring of the two of them. I took it all in, looking for clues, scrutinizing the photo, searching deep for answers.

Because this photo was of someone whom I (thought I) had known so well. Whom I had dated for four years. Whom I had lived with and gotten pregnant by, twice, and planned a future with…

This photo bore the semblance of this same person. I had spent so many hours just staring at that face, looking into those big brown eyes, looking sideways and sharing smiles and giggles with, yes, un-mistakingly him—that same countenance.

It was hauntingly familiar and completely alien all at once.

My mind could not make sense of it.

It is a strange thing to love a narcissist. It is strange to love someone with a double life, especially when you already have PTSD and have a hard time already grasping all that has already happened. It is so surreal to [have to, to try to] reckon with how you were blind to their true nature, that they shielded it so well, or you were that daft, that oblivious, or that in love and loyal.

I remember in one final conversation with him via text I said to him the only thing I knew then—and know now—to be true, after four years:

“I don’t think that the person I thought [you are] actually exists.”

It was probably the [only] genuine thing of my four year relationship with a narcissist. Someone who proved himself very capable of lying and cheating, evading any accountability, with no remorse, even when caught red-handed with dozens of photo documentation.

Instead [he tried] to blame me. For his cheating?

I sit with this now, let it settle deep within my psyche, as I reflect on how often this must happen, as I consider a friend of mine who is—heart breakingly enduring the same thing that I did—coming face to face with pictures of a hauntingly known yet unfamiliar face, smiling broadly in their extramarital affair. Looking Ecstatic. Beyond elated.

How little we [really, truly can] know of one another.

It all makes so much sense now—my ex’s obsession with anonymity and privacy on social media and his preoccupation with cameras around the house. He must have worried, seeing the world as potentially full of others like he was—full of secrets and lies and double-lives.

We shield so much from each other, and we hide so much from even ourselves. Sometimes maliciously, selfishly, for our own gain and cheap thrill. Sometimes we’re running from ourselves, unable and unwilling to admit to our deepest truths, since they are not flattering, so we save face, we perform.

I know. I’ve done this myself. It is my second nature; I grew up the child of an alcoholic, I was the hero, so I acted from a young age. I pretended everything was fine for all of us and I got very very good at it, majoring in theatre was the logical next step.

The idea of trusting another with my heart is something entirely inconceivable for me right now, even if I did want it. But I am different than my ex.

I am and I will sit with my pain and heal. I will not hurt another by jumping into a relationship, a rebound, to satisfy my own ego and to continue to run from my problems. I will not love another before I am ready. They deserve that.

Instead, I sit with it. The pain. The betrayal. The stark truth that I really do not know others.

I think it enough, a firm and solid step in the right direction to start to [really] know myself.