by Mawter, Jeni
Look. I’ve gotta go.
Steph rests her hand on Mat’s arm.
You okay?
She almost gets the sympathy right.
Fine.
Mat shrugs her hand off and turns away.
See ya.
Lesson
If another person, who is known to the aggressor, approaches you expressing sympathy, don’t divulge your feelings about the attack. They may be a spy for the attacker, or a ‘banker’ ‒ a person who collects gossip and rumours for their own purposes.
Later that night …
Email from Jonno
Hey Mattie, check these out. Seeing as you’re going crazy Nadia and I thought these would cheer you up.
J
1) A guy had been feeling down for so long that he finally decided to seek the aid of a psychiatrist. He went there, lay on the couch, spilled his guts then waited for the profound wisdom of the psychiatrist to make him feel better.
The psychiatrist asked a few questions, took some notes then sat thinking in silence for a few minutes with a puzzled look on his face. Suddenly, he looked up with an expression of delight and said, “Um, I think your problem is low self-esteem. It’s very common among losers.”
2) The aspiring psychiatrists were attending their first class on emotional extremes. “Just to establish some parameters,” said the professor to the student from Arkansas, “What is the opposite of joy?”
“Sadness,” said the student.
And the opposite of depression?” he asked of the young lady from Oklahoma.
“Elation,” said she.
“And you, sir,” he said to the young man from Texas, “how about the opposite of woe?”
The Texan replied, “Sir, I believe that would be giddy-up.”
3) A very homely person made an appointment with a psychiatrist. The homely person walked into the doctor’s office and said, “Doctor, I’m so depressed and lonely. I don’t have any friends, no one will come near me and everybody laughs at me. Can you help me accept my ugliness?”
“I’m sure I can.” The psychiatrist replied. “Just go over and lie face down on that couch.”
4) Elle moaned to her mom and brother, “Nobody loves me ... the whole world hates me!”
Her brother passed on this encouraging word: “That’s not true, Elle. Some people don’t even know you.”
5) Moody bitch seeks guy for love/hate relationship.
6) On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.
Email from Mat
LOL. Thanks M8.
Mat
Email from Jonno
This is even funnier. Check out this web site …
www.narcissistsguidetothegalaxy.com
It could also be called www.lifeaccordingtoelle.com
Sound familiar?
J
www.narcissistsguidetothegalaxy.com (or www.lifeaccordingtoelle.com)
Narcissism (när’sĭ-sĭz’əm) n
1. A personality disorder in which a person is so self-absorbed that the needs and feelings of others do not matter.
2. self-love; interest, often excessive interest, in one’s own appearance, comfort, importance, abilities, etc.
narcissist nar’cis·sist n. synonyms
egotist, boaster, egoist, egomaniac, braggart
Famous Quotes
→ I don’t have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
→ She was the only woman I ever knew that could strut while sitting down.
→ Every woman wants a man she can look down on.
→ There’s nothing wrong with narcissists that reasoning with them won’t aggravate.
→ I’m really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me.
→ Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
→ A narcissist is someone who after taking the rubbish out, gives the impression she just cleaned the whole house.
→ How does a narcissist sleep? First she lies on one side, then she lies on the other.
→ How can you tell when a narcissist is lying? Her lips are moving.
→ What is the difference between a catfish and a narcissist? One’s a bottom-crawling scum sucker, and the other’s just a fish.
→ What do you call an honest narcissist? An impossibility.
→ Hear about the terrorist that hijacked a 747 full of narcissists? He threatened to release one every hour if his demands weren’t met.
→ Really, I’m the most appealing, sexy, charming, wonderful, most intelligent woman walking the face of the earth. Ask all those bastards who left me!
→ My wife and I divorced for religious reasons. She thought she was God and I didn’t.
Text message to Jonno from Mat:
Narcissism, huh? So this Thing has a name …
Perfect
If you hear yourself say, ‘She’s perfect.’
‘This is as good as life can get.’
RUN
Run for your life
Do not look back
Keep running
Cross continents if you have to.
GO!
Note on Locker Door …
Reaction from Mat …
‘What the?!’
I sit in the locker room after school, knowing how much I’ll cop it for not showing up. Who does she think she is? Thoughts are jabbering inside my head. She says she doesn’t hurt me on purpose. That it’s some sort of accident. And when she doesn’t show any signs of remorse at all, those times I believe her. Those times I think she has no idea what she’s doing. That she doesn’t mean the pain she causes. But other times I wonder. She tells me I provoke her rage. That my reactions get her back up. But why doesn’t she react when I tell her how upset I’m getting? How hurtful her comments are. Why doesn’t she pull back then? Those times I’m on my knees, belly exposed, and she still puts the boot in. Don’t tell me I provoke her into that. When I’m reduced to begging is when she should pull back or stop. But she doesn’t. She revs those engines, kicks in the afterburners, and runs right over me. Some accident! And then she’ll flip things. Tell me how hurtful I’m being. Burst into tears. Accuse me of having no heart. It churns my guts. But if I try and cheer her up, apologise, wipe away the tears, she’s off again. She’s like a predator, feeding off my reactions. I’m so confused. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I feel like I’m constantly a target, and shooting at targets is her addiction. Can you be addicted to blowing people up? Then I figure, that she never blows me up in front of an audience. It’s a perfectly executed private manoeuvre. So if it’s done in private that makes it controlled which sure as hell makes it no accident. So now we’re back to addiction. Is abuse some form of mind-altering drug? And if it is an addiction, does that take away her responsibility for her actions? Does that make her innocent? But how can someone who intentionally tramples all over you be innocent? At some point there’s choice in all of this. At some point she has to stop pointing the finger, blaming me, stop putting on ‘The Hurts’ and start empathising with the hurt of others. Well, that’s what I tell myself. That’s what I try and convince myself. And sometimes it works, but most times I’m so confused …
Sure Fire Signs You’re About to Get Dumped
Life According to Jonno
1. When she’s too busy to come to the phone.
2. When she introduces you as her ‘friend’ rather than her boyfriend.
3. When she remembers the cat’s birthday but not yours.
4. When she keeps changing and/or backing out of mutual plans.
5. When she only sends text messages or emails and never phones.
6. When she looks right through you.
7. When her family seem distant.
8. When her friends seem distant.
9. When you fight a lot about stupid things.
10. When she takes a sudden interest in your brother/cousin/neighbour.
11. When NOTHING you do, or say, is r
ight.
12. When she asks you to change your clothes before she’ll be seen with you in public.
13. When you find you speak more to her mother than to her.
14. When she starts a conversations with ‘There’s something I have to tell you …’ or ‘We need to talk …’
15. When she doesn’t smile when she first sees you.
16. When that ‘wow’ feeling is gone.
17. When she talks about you behind your back.
18. When she’d rather visit her grandfather in a nursing home than visit you.
19. When her car won’t start but she doesn’t call you.
20. When she only speaks to you with a sarcastic tone in her voice.
Dumped. If only!
Being dumped would be the best.
I lie on my bed and grab my guitar. Music feeds my soul.
Thought I Knew (Lyrics and Music by Mat)
Where do you go after the show
when all the bright lights go down?
A veteran performer
To those who adore yer
A star who clings on to her crown.
I thought I knew you
Thought that I loved you
Thought you loved me, too.
But now I know you
I’m gonna show you
The only part that’s true.
You’re not the same in the dark
As you are under the lights
Take off your mask
That’s all I ask
And treat me in a way that feels right.
I thought I knew you
Thought that I loved you
Thought you loved me, too.
But now I know you
I’m gonna show you
The only part that’s true.
You look in the mirror and who do you see?
Not the heartless bitch who’s laughing at me.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall
Look out sucker, I’ll make you fall.”
Kneel before me. Kneel before me. Kneel.
If I’m such shit why don’t you throw me away?
Why do you hang on so tight?
‘Cause I feed you, ‘Cause you need me
To put your pathetic life right
Keep your sad arse in the spotlight.
Thought I knew you
Now I hate you.
Wish you’d hate me, too.
Thought I knew you
Now I hate you.
Wish you’d hate me, too.
Thought it’d be me and you
Thought it’d be me and you
So much for me and you
Search and Destroy
When I didn’t show-up I knew it was an act of sabotage. I’ve been so chicken about quitting this relationship, hoping for a miracle to separate us, but not showing up was like pulling the pin that set the time bomb ticking.
Elle took the same scattergun approach as the US army in the Vietnam war, using every weapon in her arsenal. First came the barrage of text messages, threatening everything from spreading rumours to ‘getting me’ at school. When that got no response, she upped the heat, calling me every two seconds at home. Taking the phone off the hook fired her up even more. Like a massive battleship or Sheridan tank she went for Search and Destroy, targeting my house to root out the enemy.
As soon as that door bell started to chime I froze, making out like no one was at home. The chiming turned to pounding, the pounding to shouting, the shouting to hollering, so loud I thought the neighbours would call the cops. Lucky for me Mum and Dad weren’t home.
It sounded like cannon fire.
Just as I decided to open the door to put a stop to it, all went quiet. I peered through the peephole, jumping in fright at the eye peering back. After a few moments silence I peeped again. This time there was nothing. My spirits rose. Maybe she’d gone …
Just as my pulse was returning to normal a note appeared under the door. It was a scrap of newspaper, scrawled with red lipstick, saying two words:
I slunk to the floor, my back pressed firm against the wall, my head against my knees.
She’d declared war.
I wondered if I should tell Mum and Dad. This Elle thing was getting too big to handle by myself. But I didn’t want to worry them. Besides, I knew what Dad would do. Tell me: ‘Pull yourself together and get on with it.’ Mum would beat herself up with guilt for not knowing earlier. Then the stuff about their friend would come up. Total devastation. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that if I needed my family to get through this, then there was something seriously wrong with me. If I could deal with things as a ten year old, I could deal with them now.
How to Love Like a Fish
Mr Amundsen, our school counsellor, tries to be a good bloke. Most of us avoid him like the plague ‘cause any conversation past “How was the game?” is to be avoided at all costs. None of this “How are you feeling?” stuff. So, when I’m summonsed to Mr Amundsen’s office, I’m uneasy. He waves me to this chair and while he continues his phone conversation, I check out the posters on the walls. I skim over eating disorders and depression but the one about the fish grabs my eye.
Remaining in an abusive situation is to bite the hook of a self-defeating illusion that the abuser loves you.
I read it once, twice, trying to get my head around what it’s saying.
“Touch a nerve, does it?”
I gape at Mr Amundsen, reeling inside, try-hard casual on the outside. Me and the fish mirror each other.
“Mat, can I ask you something?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
“You know when you’re little and you play chasey?”
I nod, confused about his line of questioning.
“And you know how there’s a Base, where you can go to be safe?”
The spelt out word ‘B A S E’ echoes in my head. It’s what you said when you reached Base and no-one could catch you.
“When you were little, Base was considered a place to feel safe.”
I still don’t say anything, wondering where he’s going with this shit.
“So, Mat. Where do you go to feel safe?”
A sledgehammer would have had a similar effect. My brain recoiled. My body braced. Every sphincter contracted as my lungs, heart, even my blood vessels refused to kickstart a blood flow. I looked at Mr Amundsen, knowing he was waiting for me to speak, but also knowing my throat, my tongue, my jaw were in lockdown.
“Where can you go where no one can get at you?”
I thought of school, how Elle lurked around every corner. I thought of home and the barrage of phone calls, text messages and emails. I thought of my room, trashed.
Kiss Kill. Kiss Kill. Kiss Kill.
I burst into tears.
It was the last reaction that either of us expected.
But it felt good. Like an exploding can of Coke I erupted, in squirts and gushes, full of air-propulsion sounds.
After I’d spewed my heart out, Mr Amundsen and I had a long chat. It seems that Jonno had been to see him about me. Jonno was worried and didn’t know what else to do. Bloody Jonno.
Mr Amundsen and I agreed that I should tell Mum and Dad. We agreed that I’d read some stuff he gave me and come back to see him. We didn’t agree that he would talk to Elle. He let me win on that one.
Just as I was about to leave, he told me I needed to detach. To stand back and analyse my situation as an observer, not a participant.
Just like a philosopher would.
The Emotional Terrorist and the Detached Buddhist
By now I have come to view Elle in a new light, not muted as in the beginning, but stark and harsh where each colour of the spectrum illuminates something new about her. The halo has gone, as has the shades of innocence, replaced by a flat wash of colour against a background as clearly defined as her foreground, as though the light has taken away a dimension, reducing her to a picture in a book.
I call her the emotio
nal terrorist. Not emotional because her moods fluctuate like the Dow Jones Index in a bear market, but because of their resemblance to a fundamental extremist. I do not mean fundamentalist in a religious sense, because religion has a sacred belief in a God or Gods, whereas Elle has only a sacred belief in herself. She has elevated herself to a level of cosmic importance, believing her way to be the only right way, the ‘authentic’ path to choose. And this, in the light that defies reason or contradictory evidence, I will elaborate with some examples:
One day at my place Elle came across some photos of me and some of the girls from school. They were taken one sports carnival, us dressed up with blue war-paint and belting out these war cries. We were a team, formidable, each with their arms over the shoulders of the person beside. There was nothing in it. No romance, no flirting, we were just hanging out. I was between Eliza and Gemma, singing at the top of my lungs, a kid larking about on a sports day. Elle took the photos from my drawer. She ripped them to shreds. Decimated them into a zillion pieces. “Why?” I asked. “They’re just my friends.” She looked me straight in the eye and answered, “When you’ve got me, you don’t need friends.”
Another time she told me to take my ‘Feed me’ sticker off my bedroom door. “Why?” I’d say. “It’s not causing a problem.” She gave some lame answer like, “Stickers aren’t meant to be on doors.” I tried to argue, said stickers are made to stick on things, even doors, but I didn’t get anywhere. Next thing, she’d torn off the sticker and scrunched it into a ball. At first I didn’t think much of it. After all, photos and a sticker are only little things, not worth getting upset over, but her emotions and actions that defied reason got worse. My Elle had morphed into ‘the terrorist’.