Prose Poem: narcissism vs grace 🙏

1)

Narcissists never see you./They only see themselves/a surface mirror of distorted reflections./They don’t remember because they don’t listen./They don’t understand because they never tried./Empathy is a foreign language to them.

If they’re your parents they think you existed because of and/for them./They think: they own you,/that they can destroy you,/that you never existed, before they chose you/petrified at losing status and control/afraid of any reality that they aren’t the center of/they can’t stand being ignored./Fear of losing encourages them to blame you/for making their gaudy crowns tilt/heavy with ego/overcompensating by inflating excessive materialism.

2)

Control freaks are anal-retentive, their kryptonite is letting go./So afraid to not exist, they hold on, deathly afraid of the end/but I think the natural process of Death is a relief, a continuation, a transition, an evolution into new growth./Death can be a graceful release into a new becoming/just like birth.

Take the higher ground of evolving/for your own health and inner-wealth./Happiness is the best karma medicine./Learn to self-protect and self-comfort without saying a word./Conscious peaceful silence sings triumphant volumes heard.

3)

When you’re raised by a narcissist/even after you’ve escaped their envy/you still wear their critical voice like a scar that devours/self-worth, self-flagellation, self-hatred/wearing the ridicule flag that was designed to keep you settled down/narcissists don’t know how to empower anything but superficialities.

You think you can be good by taking it/you think you can absorb and transform it/but it’s a sure way to fail./Fighting with an enemy that taunts you/is a trap-door straight to hell./Learn to ignore demons./Win by disengaging./They won’t know what to do with themselves.

Subtlety, sensitivity, empathy,/Grace doesn’t need to shout./I notice all the tiny details,/the subconscious motivations that are hidden from those who can’t stop talking/things they can’t ever know because they’re so distracted by their surface selves.

4)

Internalizing a narcissistic parent is cancerous/Don’t do it!/Don’t be an eternal child repeat punishing yourself with criticism and invalidating goals./Narcissists want duplicates and clones not true allies or free-thinkers./Narcissists don’t believe in equal./They believe in hierarchies: their way is better and your way is worse./If you disagree they’ll call you ignorant/which is their reflection, not yours.

“Might as well chose to be a beggar,” my well-intentioned mother said, when I said I wanted to be an artist./She broke my heart and I broke hers although we loved each other. I chose to stop my true goals, punished myself for years over that spoiled wish of wanting to be who I was inside./Standing up for myself made me feel guilty, as if it were wrong to be real and truthful not a fake, subservient pleaser.

5)

Life is so strange when you’re raised by a narcissist/I wish it wasn’t true, labels feel cruel/especially now since she’s gone from this world/but she’s in a better space, I take comfort in this,/she’s painless after all that torture/not just the cancer,/all of her life was full of rage and struggle/but she hurdled through Olympic and triumphant

I know because I lived under her shadow./Part of my healing is telling the truth as I perceive it./My smallness/my subtlety is spiritually elegant/I don’t have to be perfectly right./I can intelligently guess and win a game I declined to play in/the rat race of life has temporary prizes/I’m not impressed with glamor at all.

6)

I choose to believe:/we are facets of the source of our creation/seed-like we carry the truth within us /divine children reporting back to the source of Love is my god/not a he or she to me/god is fathomless love intelligence.

I am an imperfectly perfect Bodhisattva/a star that remembered before I was born/and I know I will return home again/where I was always seen, known and loved.

My mantra:

1. When I am brave no rejection can harm me.

2. No injustice can destroy my grace and knowingness.

3. No external drama can disturb my inner wellness.

Namaste💖🙏.