I had opened Pandora’s box of narcissism, a box that should have remained closed

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

Sometimes I wonder why I put myself into the situations that I do.

Throughout my experiences, what I have learned to do is take the lessons, all the hard knocks, all the pain, and use them as the foundation of your future.

Your question might be, how can you use the pain that you have as a foundation, and why would you want to do that?

I wanted to take a moment to speak on this, because during my recovery I had to deal with a lot of pain. I held onto a relationship that was clearly done, I repeated habits that were not helpful, and I put myself out there, ignoring my own boundaries. I bring this part up in my story now, because in my last excerpt, I spoke about going to my ex-boyfriend’s house even though I knew that he was not having me, not even a bit.

For the rest of my relationship with David, things went from bad to worse. It seemed like no matter what I did, how hard I tried, he was just not hearing me. Every week, I was getting less from him: less emotion, less time, less affection. I became very insecure during that time, because I really did not know where I stood in any area of my life. When you are feeling like this, the world can be a dark place, and due to this darkness, I was searching for a light, anything to help soothe me, restore my faith in myself.

This is when I turned back to habits that did not serve me; I was not receiving the affection, time, and emotion from David, so I began to search for it in other people, and this, this my friends, was the beginning of one of the most painful lessons of my life.

Acquiring men’s attention has never been a problem for me. I do not say this from a haughty place; I speak from a place of experience. During this time, I had closed off myself to men mainly because I had wanted to show David that I was loyal, and faithful. It was getting harder and harder to do this, and slowly I began to open myself up and entertain other men’s advances.

It started slowly; I would respond to DMs on Facebook. I had recently started my LinkedIn account, and although that platform was less for socializing and more for business, every now and then, a man would reach out to me, and I would respond.

I will never forget the day that a message flashed on my screen from a man I am going to call Narcissist M.

“Hey beautiful! How are you? I love the work that you do, and I was wondering if you could do some work for me.”

I remember looking at the message and rolling my eyes, but then I took a moment and looked at his picture.

“God Damn!” I thought to myself. In the picture was a beautifully sculptured man with golden bronze skin, and full pink lips. I won’t lie; just off his picture I decided that I would answer him back.

“Thank you so much. What type of work would you like done,” I typed?

“I was hoping that you could help me with some advertising for my fitness business. Let’s talk when you have a chance. Here is my number…”

As simple as this exchange was, I had no idea that I had opened Pandora’s box of narcissism, a box that should have remained closed. Mind you, I was only four or five months out of my initial Panamanian experience, and the world was cloudy. For me, any positive attention was enough to make me gravitate and want that attention.

I put Narcissist M’s number in my phone and closed the computer. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to reach out to this beautiful man…