New and want to share my (long) story

[Therner]

Trigger Warning: some mentions of alcohol and drug abuse, and some physical abuse.



My BFF of 15 years is a narcissist. Confirmed/diagnosed. I only found out recently what a narcissist even is. I see so many things online about Narcissist Abuse in the context of family or romantic relationship so I just want to share my story and the experiences I had.


I moved to a new state about 3.5 years ago and N was my best friend from high school, I moved down the street from her. Everything was great at first, although I had gone through a series of traumatic events (losing my job in healthcare) just before moving which really laid a foundation of abuse, looking back. I started spending every waking second with N. I started working for N. We went on super fun trips together. Her friend were my friends (I thought). She told me how happy she was I moved here, how I had "saved her", how we were best friends forever! Everything was so fun!!! But, N is an alcoholic/addict and I slowly started drinking with N, trying to keep up with her lifestyle, I put thousands of dollars on my credit card to keep up with her. I *completely* lost myself by year 1 after moving. My relationship with my boyfriend (now husband) was falling apart, my small business (which was my main income) hit an all time low as I started helping her with HER business (aka RUNNING her entire business for her instead of focusing on mine)



I don't know how to explain when things started getting abusive. We had been in this new state for a year. There was a large vacation to Hawaii planned for me, my boyfriend and her and her SO for N's birthday. I suspect her SO thought it was "too soon" and wasn't really on board for such a large and expensive vacation because they broke up quickly and right before the trip. This isn't a vacation my boyfriend and I would have ever planned to take on our own, but I did it for her birthday and just thought it would be so fun to go on vacation with N. When N's SO broke up with her right before we left, N cancelled everything. I was shocked and hurt that she wouldn't be coming to HER birthday trip but obviously so understood. We couldn't afford to NOT go through with it (she didn't get any refunds for airline or accommodations and that's not something I could afford to do) This was the moment the abuse started 100%. She didn't want to hear anything about the trip, I didn't feel comfortable taking and sharing photos etc. I felt guilty the entire time we were there, not only because she didn't come but because I didn't feel comfortable even going to Hawaii to begin with (for personal reasons, sorry to the native people of Hawaii!!!) I assumed she didn't want to hear about our trip because of her breakup etc, which makes sense, so I just kept it to myself. The whole trip really was tainted with guilt and it was really expensive for us. We have good memories but the entire experience was under a fog of guilt.


After this she was having a lot of failed/quick romantic relationships that would absolutely blow up. I would be forced to do more and more for her, and if I ever said no or complained at all, she would get mad at me and tell me she could find someone else to do it for cheaper. She paid me well so I obliged. I worked really hard. She always told me she was "training me" so I could take over one day. It was a lucrative business. It would honestly take me 10 years to make what she did in one. It became an endless cycle that culminated with me doing every aspect of the job for her. She would go on luxury vacations with whoever she was dating at the time and I would work so hard while she was gone. Sometimes if it was windy here she would call from out of town and I would drop everything to check on her house if the "power had gone out" etc. Anything she wanted I said yes. She would come back from her many vacations and not pay me for the work I had done, or would belittle the work I did and say "it's not hard, it's not a big deal, what did it take like 15 minutes" and I would drop it. I thought she was right. Shame on me for tracking my hours I guess? During this time she also made some remarks here and there about how she liked to manipulate people, she said she would use words like "would you want to *blank*" instead of "will you *blank*" because it "made people think it was their idea and not hers". This stuck with me and would later become a sign of her controlling nature and narcissism.


Also during this time, I had asked her to watch my cat while we went away on our only weekend trip of the year (after the Hawaii trip the previous year we could only really go on small trips and only once a year, I'm a homebody so this is ok, I'm not vacation crazy) I would text asking about my cat and she wouldn't text me all day long until very late with an update. I made excuses in my head like, I shouldn't have asked, it's my fault. We came home and my cat had NO water. Completely dry bowl and filled litter box. I was so upset by this. I LOVE my cat. I would drop what I was doing to check her house when she was away but she couldn't just feed my cat? Why? I never said anything because again, my fault for asking. Maybe I should have specified my cat needs water? I shouldn't have asked so much of her (sarcasm)


Her drinking and drug abuse escalated. Eventually she started getting violent when drunk. One night, she had friends from out of town come over, I didn't know them well...she was wasted, black out drunk. I was sitting on a tall barstool chair and she came up behind me, grabbed me by my throat and threw me to the ground, dragged me and choked me. I couldn't breathe. I was on the ground and she had her hands around my throat. She was laughing hysterically as her friends just watched in shock. I was very upset but wrote it off to her drinking.


Another incident, after seeing a movie we were driving home. I dropped something and it rolled under my seat, I took my seatbelt off, crawled to the backseat to get it and when I was crawling back into the front seat she slammed on the breaks. My body shot forwards and crumpled onto the dashboard. I was shocked. That's when I realized I had broken her windshield with my FACE!!!! I couldn't believe it. I was shocked. She was again laughing hysterically and not at all concerned about me. I didn't know what to say. I dropped it but couldn't stop thinking about how it could have been worse. What if I had gone through her windshield, what if it was worse? I laid awake at night thinking about this...Looking back I'm so ashamed of this incident, and I realize how absolutely crazy that situation was. She never apologized and drove around with a cracked windshield for months until finally getting it fixed.


After this incident I stopped drinking with her and tried to limit my time spent with her. She did NOT like this!!!! She was using hard drugs and that's just not a lifestyle I'm into at all so I started distancing myself as much as I could. She was dating someone new (D) who moved in and started taking over my job for me, started being her sugar baby and drinking/drug buddy etc. I was so relieved, but not safe yet.


Over the following months I repaired my own relationship with my boyfriend. We had hit rock bottom of our previously great relationship, looking back I spent more time with her than him, and I believe she was trying to isolate me from him. He's a genuinely good person and he stuck up for me a lot when she would verbally abuse me in front of him. One time he snapped at her and said I was not her punching bag. She was shocked!!!! Someone had called her out for bullying me??? This shook her.


After repairing our relationship we decided to get married. We got engaged on my birthday. I didn't want to tell her because I knew she wouldn't be happy for me, she had just had a break up with D (shocker, another very dramatic breakup!) but my fiancé announced it to the room. Looking back this is a huge red flag, why wouldn't my best friend be happy for me??? This is when all hell broke lose. Seriously.


She got a DUI the day I booked EVERYTHING for my wedding. I set a date, we booked everything and I told her when and where our wedding would be! At the time I had convinced myself she cared. Not an hour after I had announced our plans, I got a phone call from D that N had an accident and I needed to come NOW. We drove past her flipped, totaled car on our way to the hospital. Her personal belongings strewn across the road. Her car was on its side in a ditch. She had crossed traffic, flipped her car, and crawled out of the sunroof. When I got to the hospital N was in the back of a police car covered in blood, and completely beyond wasted. She was pounding her head on the metal of the door. I will never forget the look in her eyes, the cops let me speak to her but it made it worse. I picked her up from jail at 3 am. Cut her bra off of her. Held her while she sobbed. I mean it was just insane. The next day I asked if she was going to physically SEE the damage done to her car (she loved her car, although it was always filled with trash) and she said no. I told her it was really unfair and traumatic that my fiancé and I had to drive by her totaled car. She didn't remember anything that had happened. I explained what had happened outside the hospital. I told her that I thought she needed to see the car to see how serious the situation was. I raised my voice, I told her this was serious...This is what made sense to me at the time. I just thought she should face the damage done. She SCREAMED at me after I asked her about her car. She never did see the car, she left it at the junkyard and they kept it for parts. I felt bad and just thought she was going through a lot already and maybe it wasn't fair of me to say this to her right now.


I waited a few weeks and didn't talk about my wedding at all. Side note - we planned to get married only 2 months from our engagement so I was planning things FAST. I eventually asked N to be my maid of honor, because at this point we were still BFFs right? Well. I had to ask her twice, because the first time wasn't fun enough. And even then it was just ignored. She kept telling me she cared. Another side note, the DUI did not stop N from drinking in excess or using drugs. In fact her substance abuse got WORSE! She got really into coke and became a mean monster. If you know people on coke you know what I mean!


Long story short, she never did anything for me at all for my wedding. No dress stuff, no planning stuff, absolutely nothing at all. I didn't even know if she would show up. I wrote it off as being bad timing because of her accident and DUI and I just planned everything by myself. I thought it was my fault for asking or expecting any type of support at the time. Again, I couldn't afford to just cancel or move everything for my wedding to better fit her current life choices. I couldn't rebook everything for her. I set a date and that was it. I don't have any family, no mom or anything, no other friends here, so it was a very very lonely experience. It was really a sad time for me. I journaled a lot during this time and this is when I started looking back at our friendship and realizing how toxic it was.


The wedding came. And she couldn't have been more miserable. I booked hair/makeup for us (originally just for me but she asked to join so I booked an extra hour for her as well) and she showed up hours late so I was just in this hotel room completely alone. It was really sad. I just tried not to let it get to me and was thankful she was there and hopeful that deep down she really cared. Our ceremony was really fast and quick. She texted through the entire ceremony, which I didn't notice until we got the wedding photos back and I could literally see her on her phone, her phone visible in some photos. Who texts during their "best friends" wedding ceremony???? We took photos and I asked her to come with us while we walked around the downtown area with our photographer. My husband bought a water bottle and GOD FORBID she had to hold it while we took photos. She was miserable and would wonder off into bars and throw back drinks and proceeded to get wasted. Now, at this point, I had stopped drinking because of her DUI. I was just shocked and heatbroken. She came to dinner and disappeared as fast as she could afterwards. Like just vanished. Didn't even say goodbye after dinner, just left. 


When we got back from the wedding I just couldn't even look at her. I avoided her at all costs. I just couldn't be around her. I maybe saw her like 3 times in the months following our wedding. I was just so.....hurt. So beyond hurt. I focused on my own business (which is thriving, best year EVER!) and started focusing on me and my mental health and my new husband.


N started therapy and told me her therapist diagnosed her as bipolar and a narcissist. I went home and googled it. OMG. WOW!!!!!!! This explains EVERYTHING!!!!! I couldnt believe it. I started to notice the way she talked about her other friends. How she treated people. Little things she said here and there were adding up. I started to pay attention. It really woke me up. A few of our friends had weddings after mine and she talked relentless shit about them. I think she went to 4 other weddings and none of them were good enough for her. I realized, wow...what did she say about mine??? Was she on her phone talking shit about mine (I'm thinking the answer is YES in fact I have photos of it in my wedding album!!!)


I decided I would no longer be her yes man. I started to grey rock myself. I would no longer say yes to things she would never do for me. Ride to airport? No. Can you work for me? No. Check on the house? No. She was not having it. She would text me relentlessly, send me stuff on instagram constantly. She really knew what to say to draw me in and get a reaction from me. I started to learn how to "grey rock" better and she was forced to hang out with new people. She would complain about them to me and tell me very personal things they had confided in her. Everyone's drinking problems were worse than hers. Everyone was more fucked up than her, etc. On a few occasions they would text me concerned about her and I wouldn't know what to say. She would love bomb them and then ghost them (discard). It just all really added up for me, if that made sense. I started to realize if she was talking about very personal things her friends were telling her, then she was definitely doing the same about me, probably for years. I felt sick and stopped telling her personal things happening in my life.


Almost a year later she finally had court and she lost her license. I don't work for her anymore but sometimes I do take small jobs for a friend of ours. She lost her license and needed rides to work sometimes. Well, I told her I would not be driving her around at all and this...this set her OFF!!! I don't care if we live on the street and are going to the same location, I am not her servant and I will not be there to provide services when she really should be sitting and thinking about how she could have seriously hurt or killed someone by driving drunk and on drugs. Not to mention she had almost a year of freedom between then and now. She got so mad at me for telling her NO.


Well. It was a long time coming and...today I blocked her number, I blocked her on every social media platform I have. We still work with each other sometimes and she was there today and had her back to me the entire time like I did something wrong!!! It was just so wild. I am not the bad guy. I had served her loyally for years. I had defended her every time she broke up with someone, had a disagreement with someone. I was literally her little servant (supply) for almost 4 years. I am not available for her to use and abuse. I am in a place emotionally and mentally where I can set boundaries and take control of my life. I used to be afraid of what would happen if I went no contact, but imagining my life narcissist free is an actual DREAM. If I was in a relationship with this person it would be considered domestic violence, that's how I see it.


Part of me feels bad for her, maybe she did love me? Maybe I am too sensitive? Maybe she needs help. Maybe I shouldn't have cut contact when we still have to work together. But after typing all this out...I'm going to have to assume I was nothing but some GOOD ol' narcissist food!!!!

Thank you for reading my EXTREMELY long story and if anyone can relate, or give me any type of advice or encouragement, I would appreciate an outsiders perspective on this situation. I am also happy to answer any questions! Thank you for letting my have the space to share my story.

[bloomie]

Hi and welcome. Thank you for giving us such a picture of your journey through the dark times a relationship with this person has been. What a long and painful experience.

It is one thing to have hindsight from someone so compelling who woos us in and slowly reveals how dangerous and malevolent their behaviors can be and another to be nose to nose in the thick of it. It is so easy to harshly judge ourselves and be filled with shame over how we ended up in such a toxic relationship, and then why we stay in spite of destruction taking place all around us. 

It is also easy to miss the potential friendships have to be just as harmful to us as any other, more recognized relationship, like an intimate or familial relationship. Again, another way the impact on our lives can be negated and we can sit in undeserved shame and embarrassment if we are not careful.

I am so thankful you have broken free and ended this relationship. A powerful turn toward health and healing from all of this. BRAVO!!!

I am also so thankful you have joined us here. This is a community of people who have experienced similar and who get it. We get the trauma bonds and unhealthy ties that can bind us to people whose behaviors become human wrecking balls to our good and steady lives, to our inner strength, to our businesses, relationships, good name, and other vital relationships.

Sharing and participating here in this community has been one of the most helpful things I have ever done to recover from my own unhealthy soul ties with people who were unsafe and who brought tremendous harm to me and my life.

My sincere hope is that by reading and being validated here any lingering fear, obligation, guilt or shame will dissipate as you really begin to understand you came up against a master manipulator and out of control addict. Something none of us are equipped to quickly recognize and handle accordingly until... sadly, we have been nose to nose with one for long enough to be devastated by them.

In other words, you are not alone and we welcome you as you process and heal from this relationship.