Narcissistic Wound

A narcissistic wound, he called it. 

She felt those words like a sound block struck by a gavel, a sentence she wouldn’t be able to dodge. She felt that instead of sitting on a leather couch, a cup of mint tea in hand, she was propped on an exam table, wearing nothing but a white gown. Like instead of the concentrated stare of Dr. Eduardo, her latest though not her first therapist, it was a radiologist telling her they’d found a tumor.

“Do you know what a narcissistic wound is?” Eduardo asked. They were on their fifth session and on a first-name basis. Maria figured he’d taken up this casual addressing as a way to make her feel more comfortable. Open up quicker. Speed up the diagnosis. 

She shook her head. But I know what a narcissist is. 

“Someone who would be diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder has somewhat of a god complex. They are the type of person who walks into a room and everyone’s eyes are on them, they want that, they thrive on that. They have an inflated sense of importance. Need excessive attention. Most of the time, they will think everyone around them is the problem, never them.” Eduardo lowered his gaze to hook Maria’s, which was now fixated on the light blue carpet, absorbing each sentence like a bullet to her ego. “You are not that.”

“If you were that, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn't be seeking any help for any problem, because you wouldn't even have the awareness to know there was a problem. Do you understand that?” 

Maria shook her head, though she wasn’t convinced. She’d sought counseling five weeks ago, after her most recent breakup which whipped her in the face with no warning. One day, she was in love and sure she’d get married to Ian, and the next she was in bed with some man she met at a bar. A stranger, a nobody she’d never see again. If this had been her first time acting this way, she might have been able to save her relationship. To promise Ian it would never happen again, to call it a fluke, a slip-up. But it wasn’t, and Ian knew this.

Maria was a cheater. When she was younger, she argued against the notion, “once a cheater, always a cheater” but now, at 34, with a scroll worth of incidents to show for herself, she wasn’t so sure. 

“What I think you have is a narcissistic wound. It just means something has happened in your life that drives this need you have for validation, in your case, from the opposite sex. It is very common for these narcissistic wounds to manifest erotically.”

Erotically. Hadn’t she just finished explaining to Eduardo, her need wasn’t for sex. What she wanted from men was to make them fall desperately in love with her. To make them worship her. When she had the option for sex, she seldom accepted. The idea of a man inside her wasn’t fulfilling unless the said man was bordering obsessed. Unless she could see the pining in their eyes. This had been the case with every stranger at the bar, every ex who made a reappearance, her ex-husband, even her best friends’ lover— it didn’t matter, she didn’t want to fuck them, she wanted to be loved by them. 

“I will never really know why I’m like this, huh?”

Eduardo shook his head. 

It could have been her father. How he abandoned her when she was only six. She’d been daddy’s little girl all her childhood, the memory of their last hug rooted deep in her. The news that ‘mommy and daddy were separating' had been hard enough, but then he promised to call every week. To come visit her. On that first week apart, he rang on a Wednesday. He promised he was sending a bag of her favorite candy for her. The bag of candy never arrived, and he never called again. Then again, it could be because her mother never remarried, never dated once throughout Maria’s childhood, leaving the only men in her life to be distant uncles she saw every couple of years. Maybe it was because her only fountain of stable and continuous love, her mother, died when she was 17.

The whole way home, Maria bounced those words around in her mouth, back and forth, quietly and out loud. Narcissistic wound, narcissistic wound. That explained how she could've loved her husband ferociously, and yet cheated compulsively. With his best friend, with the bar owner of their favorite pub, with anyone who gave her that look. She was never quite happy, never quite satisfied. Narcissistic wound could explain why every time she felt an ex moving on, slipping away, saw a photo of them with a new lover, she’d send a message. A hook. Just enough to raise their eyebrow, to plant herself in their mind again and re-inspire a faded love. Narcissistic wound. This explained why when she was seven, and her best friend was touched by their neighbor, her only thought was, why not me? Why doesn’t he want me?’

This was August. 

She spent September, October, November, December driving back to Eduardo, who said although she likely would never shed her necessity for attention, she could be aware of it. She could spot it before it destroyed something or someone more.

Today was New Year's Eve. Maria spent the day calling her grandmother, her best friends, those distant uncles. She walked her dog and made a cup of coffee to accompany the sunset. At 11 p.m., she was sat with a glass of wine, and a plate of sliced cheese. She’d been invited to a handful of parties, bars, houses, but she’d chosen her couch and a knitted blanket over them because, on this night, she felt something new, something quiet bubbling forth. 

While every other year, her list of resolution and goals could’ve filled a page—all loud, tangible, overzealous resolves. Run a marathon. Launch a website. Save 10k. Visit Paris. This year, she only had one, a much softer one. 

Be in yourself and with yourself. Accept the parts about yourself you cannot change. Get to know them so well, you can live a kind, honest, free existence. 

When 12 o'clock hit, she ripped a piece of paper from a notebook, grabbed the pen sitting beside a candle, and wrote:

  Dear Maria, 

You are a woman who wants to be loved. Who desperately wants to be loved. This is part of you, but it is not all of you.