Do You Know the Monkey Man?

The DSMV-IV defines narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) as a person having “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.” Anyone who has had the pleasure of interacting with one for any length of time will be quick to tell you that the DSMV-IV is the epitome of understatement. There’s not space enough to describe in detail what living with an “N” is like so that you can truly taste it and experience the true horror that daily life is with one of them.

Here is my rapid assessment, my quick ‘recipe’ of a life with an N. Take the sanitized DSMV definition and add these “facts”: You are the ugliest, dumbest, most wretched person on the planet. Not a single thing you have ever done in your life was correct. You make all the wrong choices. Hell, even the bodily urge to use the restroom shows poor judgment and bad life management. Take all of the money you have ever earned, saved, or will earn and burn it in the grill out back. Next, tell your boss and co-workers that you will be late to work and miss a few days due to his excessive needs. Should you ignore those needs, expect frequent visits to your work from your N and expect to be fired. Repeatedly. Now, write a letter to all your loved ones, friends, family, even children, explaining to them that your entire being is needed for the lifetime of the N to soothe his soul, proclaim his Excellency, and play stupid to his superior intellect even though he was in Special Ed classes in grade school and you skipped a grade and were in that horridly named, “Gifted and Talented” group. Oh, make sure you lie about your IQ score if you ever divulge it at all. The N will never be able to absorb the absolute fact that you have a higher score and will try to destroy you. How, you wonder?

The N wants what you have. He wants your intellect. He wants your talents. He wants your feelings. If he is not as smart, he will simply take your head in hands and pound it against a doorframe or cement floor until he is satisfied that you are concussed to the point of syncope. He is not smart enough to calculate how many brain cells are lost with each pounding, of course not! Goodness, if he were, he’d realize that a more effective way would be to ply his prey with alcohol. He has a better chance of destroying brain cells in that way. But his lack of intellect and his deep seeded, instinctual knowledge of his inadequacies are why you’re taking a thrashing in the first place!

The last time he was sitting on me pounding my head into the floor, I was able to see his face the entire time. I watched his uneven, shallow breathing through his pursed lips, watched his eyes narrow in pleasure at what he assumed was me either crying or choking for that last, precious breath before he choked me to passing out and then raped me. Instead, imagine his shock, and I really hope horror, when he realized I was laughing. A grown man - a fat, doughy, grown man, sitting astride a woman, smaller than he, holding her head in hands and banging it on the floor because she dared question him. The entire time, I had a line from a BBC animal show stuck in my head, probably pounded into place, that he quoted when he was making fun of someone, “Monkeys use tools.” I have no idea why, but the image of that beast sitting on me, banging my head like a coconut made me laugh and laugh until I thought I would pass out. Dumb, primitive monkeys don’t like their prey to laugh. What my N wanted to see reflected in the mirror that was my face, the fear, the powerlessness the submission, was not there. Instead, he saw ridicule and incredulity. He shoved off of me, placing his squatty, short fingers into my chest and pushing off, making sure he pushed all the air out, leaving me gasping and in pain, but he got off of me.  Give them a reflection they don't want to see, a mirror of their true self, and they have to run away.