“You’ve got me scattered in pieces, shining like stars and screaming.”

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Narcissistic Personality Disorder lately. It’s a personality disorder I am intimately familiar with. I spent a lot of time learning how it works and why it happens in an attempt to understand the relationship I had with my father. I was convinced as the years ticked past that I would never have to deal with another relationship diseased with this disorder.

But something can be right under your nose, or in between your sheets, and you don’t see it. Things started out far too perfect. We had a fairy tale romance and all of that crap. But after the abrupt and traumatic ending I was left with the dust and debris of what was once a great love, crumbled around me like ancient ruins. And the only thought running through my mind was, “why?”.

I’ve been desperately searching for reasons why, asking what I could have done or said to have prevented it. It was obviously all my fault. I made him depressed, he closed himself off because who would want to be close to me? I’ve lost my looks otherwise he wouldn’t push me away or shudder anytime I touch him. It was me.

He told me to leave. How could he not?  So I left. The hardest thing I’ve ever done. But then there was the back and forth. The late night phone calls, the text messages, the emails. All glimmers of hope that it would be okay, that he would let me come back. He lit me up like the night sky, then he’d disappear and make me wait. “Why?” continued to rush through my mind.

Then one day, a very keen observer answered the question in three words: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But how could it be? I know all about NPD. It wasn’t in my relationship. No way. But the memories came flooding in. Interactions and exchanges that seemed innocent at the time were now stripped down to their true reality. Manipulation, degradation, guilt, emotional torture. I had made excuses for all of it, I had blamed myself for all of it. In the years we spent together, how much of that time really was perfect? The rest of the time it was an act. We were so good, we even convinced ourselves for awhile.

The more I refresh myself with this disorder I’m surprised by my response.  Instead of pity, anger, validation, I feel a deeper sadness, deeper compassion. He can’t help his disorder. He doesn’t understand why he feels the way he does. He’s in pain. He doesn’t know who he really is. He’s lost and confused. All he knows to do is to continue building a false reality to protect himself. That’s why to him our entire relationship was a facade, the icing to mask a burnt and inedible cake.

But you see, no matter how fake it really was, it was real to me. My love was real, the life we shared was real, the future we planned was real.

I loved that cake, no matter how burnt or inedible it was, it was mine and it was real.