Stop Asking the Narcissist’s Victims These Questions

**Trigger Warning://Domestic Violence, Blood, and Rape**

This is one of the most painful articles I’m ever going to write because this needs to be said. I wrote an article:

And in the comment section, there was a lot of support from fellow survivors; but I was also shamed and blamed for not leaving Dwayne and for “allowing” him to beat me up (read for yourself).

In fact, this was one of the exact comments —

Why are you letting a man strangle/abuse you? And do it again and again? Sorry, simply stupid.

(Medium also did not remove this comment either.)

I wrote this article to answer the two questions we seem to get, as victims and survivors of not only narcissistic abuse but also domestic violence:

Why don’t you “just leave”? or
How (or why) did you allow (or let) that happen to you?

(We usually get either or both of these questions, worded in different ways. And it’s one of the coldest things to ever ask a victim of abuse because it’s victim-blaming. And those doing it should be shamed for it.)

Now, I’ve mentioned Dwayne before.
I introduced him to you in this article:

He was a malignant narcissist I dated from October 2013 to May 2015. He was one of the two most dangerous narcissists I have ever dated.

(Both of whom were malignant.)

What you don’t know is I tried to leave Dwayne three times.

Each experience taught me more and more why so many victims don’t or can’t leave; and how (and why) they allow it to happen to them.

So now I’m going to use my experience to answer the two questions you need to stop asking victims of domestic violence and narcissistic abuse.

Once and for all.

…

The First Time I Left

All I remember is he was laying in his bed telling me how he was thinking of letting me go and as I stared at him he said that it was cool if I hate him.

There was something psychologically wrong with Dwayne but I didn’t understand this until many years later. When I realized he was just like my father. My father was a malignant narcissist.

He and Dwayne were very cruel and would often, sit very still while talking really horrifically to you — and always in the calmest tone. This is what Dwayne was doing right now.

Why didn’t you just leave?

Honestly, I felt so defeated that in the middle of his talking, I grabbed my bag and just started walking. I didn’t want to hear this shit anymore.

I heard him say something like,

“Linda if you leave/walk out that door, I‘m gonna break your fucking — “

But I didn’t catch (or remember) the rest of that sentence.

All I know is when my hand touched the knob to that front door my head snapped back as my ponytail was yanked. Dwayne savagely dragged me back into his room — before throwing me across the floor.

He was screaming and I was going into shock.

I kept crying as he dragged me onto his bed and I curled into a ball and that’s when he stopped. He pretended to hand me the phone to call the cops on him before asking me if I wanted him to do it.

I never answered.

I was in shock.

And then the love bombing began.

By then, I was too terrified to leave because of what he’d just done to me when I actually tried to. The cops were never called. Not even by him,

Despite the phone being in his hand.

And the idea to call them, his.

…

The Second Time I Left

Image by iStockPhoto.com

I mentioned this incident in the first link in the introduction of this article.

Why didn’t you just leave?

All I remember is walking to his bedroom door to leave the apartment, after letting him know that it was over.

Dwayne grabbed me by my throat and bashed my head against the concrete wall in his room,

Yelling —

We are never breaking up!!!

This was the first time he ever told me I was never allowed to leave or break up with him.

His abuse was now escalating because this was an inadvertently blatant threat to my life/ It was the closest thing to,

“I’ll kill you”

Coming from Dwayne.

It was December 27th, 2014.

I don’t remember the end of this encounter.

I only remember waking up in excruciating pain and being unable to eat food. He choked me so hard I had trouble swallowing until mid-March,

Because I was just leaving him.

…

The Last Time I Tried to Leave

It was a few days after the New Year 2015.

I found proof he was cheating (still) with the same ex. It was around two in the morning (most of my beatings took place at two in the morning).

His younger brother, who I was very close with, was still up and heard me crying. When he checked on me, I confided to him what was going on.

He supported my decision to “do what I had to do” so I cried to myself as I started getting dressed, but my movements woke Dwayne up. He looked concerned and rushed over to me, asking —

What happened??!

Once I told him what I had found (undeniable online evidence) he quickly dropped the mask and angrily got back in his bed, saying absolutely nothing.

I stood by the side of his bed crying and telling him how I felt and what happened next is still something I can’t believe actually happened.

Out of absolutely nowhere…

Dwayne kicked his leg out to kick me in the side of my abdomen/pelvic area. Dwayne was 6’1 and I’m 5’3. He was 16o-something lbs. I was 103 lbs.

When he kicked me it actually sent me flying. The room spun as I was kicked off the ground and my knee hit one of his weights when I landed on the floor, a foot away.

From the floor, I remember his shadow covering me as he literally stepped over me, as he got out of bed, cursing me out.

At some point, once I got up, I was slapped so hard I was knocked back and my face hit the window behind me.

This fight got so brutal that at one point he intentionally grabbed my entire face and tried to turn it like you would a doorknob.

He was trying to disfigure me.

Or kill me.

How did you let that happen to you?

Well, this time I finally fought back — because I had to.

I had to hit him to get him off of me and once I hit him, he truly fucked me up. He started screaming —

YOU THINK YOU BADDER THAN ME?!?!

This was the night I almost died.

…

Dwayne Straddled My Chest

And started raining blows down on my face… until he just stopped. And started looking at me… horrified.

I was crying and saying something like —

I was only trying to tell you my heart was broken.

But as I was talking it was becoming harder to physically speak. And it was getting slightly harder to see him. And he kept looking at me like he was genuinely… scared and worried for me.

Something was wrong.

I tried to get up to go to the bathroom and do this routine I had after my beatings — but he stopped me.

Now, I was scared.

Why didn’t he want me to see myself?

Because whatever he saw that was causing the look on his face was bad. Real fucking bad. He went to the bathroom and came back with a towel but I could barely move or get undressed.

I just laid down.

He took my jeans off,

And suddenly said —

Well, since I can’t make you happy the least I can do is fuck you.

He said it like it was a chore before turning me over so that I was facedown (he didn’t want to have to see my face) and raped me.

My face was so swollen I didn’t bother talking. My body was in so much pain I couldn’t move. All I remember was staring into blue blankets and crying.

I fell asleep during the rape but woke up a little later in the morning and since he was sound asleep, I quietly made my way to the bathroom.

To see what he was so afraid of.

…

There Was This Routine I Did After Each Beating

Photo by Sneha Sivarajan on Unspalsh

I think it’s important to let you know that I didn’t develop this consciously. I didn’t sit down one day and say, “this is the plan, every time I get my ass beat”.

It just ended up being this thing that kept coming together over the course of the seven-month period of him beating me.

These eight steps:

survive my beating
(finally) make it to the bathroom
put on my ‘beating’ playlist (unintentionally created)
stare at my bruises in the mirror
step into the shower
cry and wash the blood off
go back to bed (or go to class, in one case)

My playlist consisted of two songs, on repeat —

Elle Varner’s See Me Tonight

and more frequently,

Elle Varner’s Little Do They Know

I can recall many times staring at handprints and black eyes, listening to Little Do They Know. I especially recall stepping into his shower preparing to clean the beating off of me. So much of that time escapes me now,

But that doesn’t.

This routine played a major role in coming to terms with reality. It’s a large reason I was finally able to believe I was being abused.

That moment in the mirror was always crucial.

And what I saw this time, when I looked into it, shook me up enough to wake me up.

My lips were black, blue, and swollen twice their size.
My right eye was turning purple and blue.
There was a handprint darkening around my neck
scratches and cuts in multiple areas
There was a weird, large circular imprint on my left cheek

(Which was actually an infection on my face that was slowly developing after he slapped me so hard my whole body turned and fell into the window, as a rusty nail in the wall had penetrated my skin.)

I was scared of myself.

But now, I was scared for myself.

…

How Did I Allow This to Happen to Me?

(Again and again.)

When people ask me —

Why/How did you allow this to happen to you?

Here’s your answer:

I went into shock every time I was beaten.

It’s also important to mention I have ADHD.

In many traumatic incidents, I froze.

This is a common response for people who have ADHD. In many of these cases, freezing is what played a vital role in my survival.

I also dissociated as a result of the shock whenever Dwayne would beat me because I couldn’t believe it was happening to me.

I would go to the bathroom, lock the door, and prepare myself emotionally and mentally with music for what I was about to see. And stare at my bruises after every single beating,

Inspecting the damage that was done.

Each time, brought me closer to a point of acceptance that this was, in fact, my body being battered and bloodied. Slowly.

At some point, all domestic violence victims have this moment in the mirror, whether they’re coming to a point of acceptance or not.

We face ourselves last.

I was struggling to believe I was a victim of domestic violence, not because I couldn’t believe it but because I couldn’t believe it was me…

Because I kept surviving.

You see it on television and in the movies.
Hear about it in a song or through word of mouth
Or even read it in a book.

But it’s different when it’s you.

It’s always different when it’s you.

And unless you’ve been there, unless you can truly understand, stop asking such a heartless question. Sometimes the depravity of mankind is so shocking when it’s in your face that there is no reaction or response at all.

Sometimes you can experience something so blatantly evil that your mind literally does not accept it. It’s cognitive dissonance in its worst form.

Not only did I try to leave, but I also tried three times.

Each attempt garnered a worse and worse beating — and eventually rape. When I fought back, I was beaten nearly to death.

I only survived that night because he had beaten me so badly that he actually scared himself.

I wish people would earn some sensitivity and locate some empathy because not every victim of an abuser is staying because they “love” their abuser so much. Some of us have or are trying desperately to get the fuck out.

Many have, and will, end up in graves because they will try to leave. Because they will fight back to keep it from happening again, or at all.

And some will survive, like me, to answer your two most insensitive questions. So, does that answer your question?

…

Just So You Know…

Dwayne was openly beating me while people were home (but not when his father was because he was scared of his father). His aunt heard every beating and did nothing.

She actually yelled at him during my last beating because he was beating me so loudly that he was “keeping her up” when she had to work.

Yes, these were her words.

His aunt was abusive as well because she was prejudiced against me not being from the same culture as him. They were from Jamaica.

The following morning Dwayne’s father was alerted to what Dwayne had done to me after that last beating, and he threatened to throw Dwayne out if he ever did it again. This is the only reason my beatings stopped.

I would make my escape from Dwayne that coming May. I’ll tell that story soon because there’s only one way, from my experience, to get away from a malignant narcissist. And to anyone this article triggers,

I’m sorry.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

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