edit intro : posted on sunday apr 21 :
i just wanted to introduce myself here,Just reading all your stories and feelings has helped me so much... like a constant to be aware of. Everyday let's try to live as if it were our last. I'm so glad to have found all of you and honestly think that God led me here.. it's really much more than realizing that you encountered an N in your life, it's trying to release those boundaries which have been erected in having a normal emotional reaction to that which was not normal.. and i just thought today.. What is normal? People don't try to "act more normal".... they just are. And we should just be. And that's really such a hard concpet to kind of understand, i know. I think i'm finally getting out of victim mode. I'm finally being able to see the potential i have in myself. The seed.
anyway, enough with the blabbing. nice to meet you all.
just some background info about me :
i am 19 years old now and a sophomore in college
i went to highschool with an N
and during highschool it took an EXTREME toll on my relationship with myself
I went to highschool with an N (
http://www.drirene.com/female_nar.htm )
for four years i dealt with, well initially
believing that i couldn't make an emotional connection with her ( though before highschool and before i met her i've never had any problems making friends, etc etc ) .. i met her in the beginning of ninth grade and because our classes were in four hour blocks ( like each class was two hours long ) i thus spent maybe four hours a day just in class with her, not counting lunch and nutrition.
I was still adjusting, making new friends, finding myself in a new highschool, and we met during my first class ( being that there were just a handful of people in it )
wow, i'm writing this and i'm remembering all these other details
i have been so shocked within the past [almost] two years, reeling over and not knowing how to heal, kicking myself for it, trying to make sense of the nonsensical that i feel that
being that i thought she was a charming and friendly person ( overly so ) and i wanted to get to know her better, i asked her if i could sit and eat lunch with her.. as "highschool groups" go, this group was a group of four or five girls, one of whom had been in band with her, whom she flattered beyond avail, and all sorts of weird things ( keep in mind this is highschool )
i think the projection was enormous, being that after one of the girls left the group ( the N stole her lunch while she went off to buy something from the student store or something, and when the girl came back the N acted as if nothing were wrong, even went so far as to help her find her lunch .. -- this part why i didn't see as a red flag i don't know. I didn't know that N's existed when i was fourteen, i suppose, or even thirteen , im not sure ) the girl told me while we were sitting outside on a lunch bench ( the N was not there )that the N was talking about how the N referred to me as "her slave" ( Projection. )
i spent so much time with the N day to day that i didn't know what to think or believe.
there was so much devaluing then flattering that i was confused about myself. Like one day, the girl ( a thin blonde girl with whom all she talked about was "how hot this boy was" and certain big labeled dept stores like "Sakks fifth avenue" .. ) and
i think it's been so difficult
my best friend outside of highschool , whom i had gone to church with since i was say, seven or eight, i dont know, we'd been best friends since forever, told me one day on the phone that "i wasn't myself anymore" that "we shouldn't talk on the phone anymore" ( for the time that we were friends we nearly talked on the phone everyday for hours and hours .. ).. i was distaught obviously but i didn't think that it was because i'd been spending time around the N, and i was just so confused as to why all of a sudden such a thing would happen. I was a mix of frustrated angry and sad, but I somehow accepted it ( though i still saw her at church )
I remember talking to the N the next day about my friend distancing herself from me and how i felt sad about it, and the N simply kind of nodded, i dont even exactly remember how she reacted, but it was kind of a "too bad" response..
in the 10th grade, i began to suffer body image issues, i purged nearly everyday i think, ( i kept trying not to and telling myself it was bad.. i thought this was *me* and something i need to *heal* from ) .. i kind of befriended a girl at school amidst all the madness whom i told that the group that i hang out with, was too superficial... and she told me that i should just not hang out with her. Of course the N everyday expected i would sit next to her on the bus, etc etc, and then i questioned myself, even though i was listening to my gut feeling.. i felt overwhelmingly guilty for "leaving her", and asking her "could you sit somewhere else" on the bus, that when we got off the bus i wrote a letter to her saying that i was sorry that i told her that ( an excuse for the N to keep ignoring my boundaries , oh so wrong .. ) and she was like "Oh! It's okay!" *Big Grin* .. and my guilt made me continue to be around her,
during P.E. when we had "free time" i would sit with her outside, and think to myself ( i've always had best friends, in middle school, in elementary school ) that because i must have no personality, thats why i can't connect to her. And so i felt helpless.. as she would go on and on about "this skiing trip she went to where there was this Hot skiing instructor who helped her ski and how much he loved her such and such ) in retrospect all our conversations seemed to go like that, all about her.
Or in P.E. there was this guy that she found attractive, supposedly, and she walked around the P.E. field ( did one round )playing her N cards and she would return talking about "how hot he was" and everything revolved around a new guy she would find "hot" but she would never get to know really..
there were a new group of girls ( senior girls ) that she flattered beyond hell ( two of them later called her out on being fake and the whole group dispersed.. it was a group based on fear... )
i remember getting off the bus with one girl that was in the group ( i assumed that she was close with all of them, when in reality she was just flattering them and using them as objects , i think everyone couldnt make an emotional connection with her so all of them must have thought that, except most of them were friends before they met her and could reason that way, while i had met her in the 9th grade ) and then i was like "maybe you should call her" and she kind of looked at me ( like, "you're close with her, you should call her" except this was like no other friendship i've had, i wasn't close with her.. i thought she was close with her ) and that look of bewilderment now i reflect upon as also not have been close..
She would be quick to not talk to me amongst a big group of people whom she could flatter, and people, being people would assume maybe that we weren't on good terms... i beat myself up for that.. i remember she would just ignore me, or just smile and act as if i wasnt there, nonaggressively but just to get attention for herself )
during my senior year though, these girls werent there anymore, and had also called her out on livejournal ( as she had been talking behind their backs, as im assuming she did for everyone ) and at school, yada yada
so she came running back to me of course and being that i felt sorry for her i "tried" again, and it was the same thing, over and over..
we took a digital imaging class in the 12th grade, where we all worked on photoshop projects on individual computers .. i remember the sickly sweet voice she would ( while grinning ) talk to me in
Joanne~~~~~ and then pat the chair beside her "Sit here!" *More grin* ..
i got tired of it, was suffering from heavy dissociation and questioning myself.. ( she wouldnt hang out with me during lunch time either.. oh only if the blonde girl wasnt there, then she would find me and hang out with me, but if the blonde girl wasnt there, she would leave me in a classroom, or i would go up to her and sit with her and the girl and she would leave with the girl laughing and blah... .. this would happen *all the time* )
-- when i tried to stop talking to her ( i came upon "Bullyonline.org my senior year and found that she matched the narcissistic part exactly ) and made a new friend, that i would instead talk to.. she would try to find certain random things to talk about, and come up to me and ask me about them, when i was obviously trying to avoid her. like "Are you going to prom?" ( also as if she'd done NOTHING wrong, ever ever. I tried to not talk to her for a REASON. because i got TIRED of her ! ) ... i wouldn't respond, and my friend said " Joanne, *N* asked you a question" and then i would just respond "Maybe"
when she wasn't getting attention from ME, she would then call over the girl that i talked to during class, and ask her for help, when she could ask any other person. If she wasn't getting any attention from ME, then she had to get it from someone who was talking to ME. She had to "steal" someone away from me, because she needed attention..
she also made it as if it were some HUGE PRIVELEDGE to hang out with her, be allowed to hang out with her and her "popular senior friends" and would occasionally humiliate me in front of them.. for example, we were sitting in a classroom ( this was a very small school ) and the teacher was there, and the teacher was playing a Sigur Ros DVD ( an icelandic music band ) and i liked sigur ros, so i said "Oh, is that sigur ros?" and the teacher was like "yes, it is " and i was just talking to her about it, and then the N would go " Haha, Joanne likes the same music that Mrs. Larson likes" to the other girl ( Shame/projection )
another thing she said was "Imagine if Joanne had sex! Hahahahaha." and laugh about it. i wasn't unattractive, i was actually pretty attractive, but that wouldnt matter because she had to degrade me to make herself feel better, and yet still expect me to accept her warmly.
there is so much that happened i feel i need and want to get out here.
will write more later
