[A Poem] Narcissist Evangelism
Narcissist Evangelism
INTRODUCTION
I’m here to spread the Good News,
which feels more like bad news when you look at the
estimated recovery time.
I wish there was a tri-fold that those of us who have
endured months or even minutes of This Great Plague
could greet you with in post-op.
We’re learning to:
Make demands and enforce them;
Give intuition more decision-making power;
Seek out warmth, again and again.
Our coming back to life
is contingent upon you believing us
And convincing us that
hyper-independence isn’t
the only band-aid that can
dress this wound.
HOUSE RULES
Please don’t ask
why we never left,
or if we saw the red flags;
Instead, believe that we were doing
the absolute best we could;
sometimes our best just meant staying alive
while wars were being waged.
A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Many of us were so intoxicated by the idea of change
that we forgot to secure the evidence of it
Our conditioning to
forgive and forget
prevented us from
holding people accountable
and allowing broken promises
to break relationships
that weren’t meant for us
Leaving only happens when we are willing to act as if
change is a requirement, not just a working theory
You see, recovering from people who
Call their actions love
Requires us to stop second guessing your sweet, soft parts
Because those things came at a cost before;
Good behavior was wrapped in hazard lights
Our soft parts were stonewalled
Our deepest worries, denied
These stories deserve believing
They’re worth retelling
The tension of those memories occupying
what little bandwidth we have
is like allowing the original sin
to regenerate and
replicate a gut punch
to the parts of us that
chose to trust the lie
instead of the truths our bodies were
trying to tell us
all along
HOW YOU CAN HELP
What we need need to heal
are quiet moments to look endlessly inward
and ask ourselves
How do you feel
What do you need
Where would you like to go
And leave plenty of time for our answers
Watch and wash our tears with us:
What we’ve needed most is for people to
turn towards us in our pain and say
“I see you, and I am here with you.”
Instead of worrying about
asking the right question
or saying the right thing
why don’t you just listen
Remind us often that you
believe every story
And that our love doesn’t
Require perfect scores
DELIVERABLES
The peace we seek
Has a few detours along the way
On the way, let’s make new memories
So that we don’t believe the lie that
we can’t
and won’t
find joy apart
from them.
And whatever else you do,
don’t be afraid to
remind us how
fucking brilliant
we are
