One thing that used to be tremendously obvious to me is that everyone is desperate for more love, most people don't get enough love and some people did not get enough at crucial moments are just ratfucked in various ways because of it.
What the hell kind of evolutionary purpose does this serve? Our need for attachment serves a purpose. But then, why not make us so that we could be satisfied with a pat on the head or two? Why do we need so much?
There are these people in my life, these two people. In their way, they are so bad, so very bad. They have done me some (minor) harms. And what's even worse is that they wish me ill.
Horribly, they make my life more interesting in ways. Of course, I'd rather not have someone actively attempting to make sure I lose my job. On the other hand, both these people are damaged narcissists and there is probably nothing more fascinating than a narcissist. If you are going to get compelled by others' neuroses, as I am.
Sometimes it's like I can feel the love they didn't get but I almost wish I knew when it was or what it was. Like: What the hell happened there? One of them, I met their parents. And the mother and father were both classic narcissists. The amazing kind, the kind who don't even meet your gaze. That is, the kind that live in a solipsistic universe of a kind. Also, famous! Rich, successful. So their child is just a bit horrible. But in a kind of fascinating way where he is horrible/not horrible/horrible/struggling not to be horrible. Later, rinse, repeat.
They are both like this, actually. They are kind of awful and then they try to be better and then they descend into a kind of backstabbing, crazed insecurity they can barely help. And then they emerge again, almost as normal people.
The missing love thing could all be in my head. I swear, I feel it though, the love they didn't get at the crucial moment. I don't know when that was. It can't just be infancy.
This used to make me excuse others' insanity, that empathy. My empathy now is just a kind of fascinated voyeurism. If they win, I suppose I'll be unemployed. I can always write a novel. Or at least I can always wish I can write a novel.
These people terrify me and yet they also entertain me.
Are there any truly great novels with narcissistic characters? I know that Phillip Roth's characters are always narcissists. And he is himself, I am sure, because he is unaware this is true of his characters. Or seems to be. John Updike is also a narcissist, with narcissistic characters. I guess those are OK novels.
Maybe Lolita is a novel about a narcissist who is cured by recognition of his own evil and his love of the person he destroyed? Lolita. That is a great novel.
Of course, my question is: Why me? Why am I the target of these narcissists? Narcissists usually love me. But it's all a matter of positioning. In the Shakespearean drama, I am the heir, they imagine.
It's odd and yet I've gradually come to understand it. Truly, I am as innocuous as hell. I think perhaps I have shaped myself that way for fear of others' envy. But sometimes people envy you anyway.
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