Having just survived a year of multiple ER visits, stomach-churning injuries, multiple Cronenberg-squicky exams and, most recently, a gnarly hernia surgery I am recovering from as I pound out this screed, I am the selfsame author that wrote, here in the vaunted halls of Ruthless, The ABC’s of Breakups, as well as Working in Mental Health Might Ruin Your Mental Health.
Because I have grown up ensconced, embraced, succored, seduced, strangled, stabbed, and now finally fleeing from armies of decades-long, pathological narcissists, I’ve deigned to scribble about these convoluted Artex-murderers in the scatological rage-artillery of Ruthless Reviews, because I both adore Goat and need to vent a spleen that is currently crushed into a corner of my peritoneum by other displaced organs. Buckle ups, buttercups…
Acceptance – Best of luck with this one, Brave Soldier. Every single person you trusted has you convinced that you are nuts, your instincts are flimsy horseshit, you believe soul-deep in crumbs, your heart is a fool with feet of clay, and whatever dreams you had scratched into the horizon’s shimmering mud were the delusions of a fool.
DO NOT ACCEPT A SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING THING THESE MANIACS TELL YOU. DON’T. SERIOUSLY. I WILL WRING YOUR DARLING MOTHER’S (TURKEY) NECK JUST TO SEE YOU FINALLY CRACK A SINCERE SMILE, AND THE GAS CHAMBER WILL BE WORTH EVERY HACKING, BLOOD-CAKED COUGH.
Blackmail – If you stick to a plan, the vultures dive faster and with beaks hooked more cruelly as they hone in on the wished-for carrion they delude their birdbrains into believing your sincerity to be.
Coercion – If your particular narcs did unforgivable, sickening abuses involving sexual or mortal attacks, and you (fuck yes, keep going) managed to survive these offenses/offensives, the lunatics will, no doubt, continue to assault their escapee with unforgivable charges leaning toward some misunderstood We Were Only Trying To Help doggerel. Tune out their frequencies until you can escape, long-term and long-distance. These people and their liturgies can hop pathologies into literal “idiopathic” cancer.
Dissociation/Derealization – When the shit hits so hard that the sense of self and “me” that most of the human race takes for granted, goes for a sail on the imaginary schooner from its berth on Lake Grand Theft Auto, you may feel kicked so hard that just looking at shit through your own eyes, smelling shit through your own nose, hearing shit through your own skull-holes… becomes an exhausting exercise. Personally, I describe this as being kicked out of my own body by a giant –no, not particularly imaginative, but that towering golem enjoys poetry as much as your local meth plug enjoys learning about Rousseau’s faggy social contract bullshit– and so… grounding exercises, friend. Google them. Learn them. Save them up. Use them. I promise you; they are weapons beyond the pale.
Exhaustion – It’s completely expected that you may feel this. You will regain your strength. I fucking swear that you will. Fighting. FIGHTING is how this gets decided.
Flying Monkeys – The narcissists enlist these spineless dopes to their erosive cause. The studies about this phenomenon are as various as the “think pieces” about straight guys asking to get pegged (yawn), yet the trend persists: narcs survey, select, train, convert others to their cause of manipulating you. What genuinely fucking hurts the most? These vultures enlist your flesh-and-blood sisters and brothers, and they actually CONVINCE them. Yours truly lives with this scorn. What can you do? There are resources; seek them just as I was once forced to.
Gaslighting – A phrase more hijacked than the definition of consent in this grease fire dressed up as First World kitchen, the term comes from an old play, hence adapted for the screen at least three times, in which a lecherous, lying cocksucker tries to deny-assault his partner into doubting herself crazy. It’s shockingly effective; I type here before you, duly convinced and punching up through permafrost to escape. Once again, screaming myself hoarse, FIGHT THIS SHIT AND DO NOT GIVE UP.
Half-Truths – If you accept these, you will accept that the Loch Ness Monster might just provide killer mani-pedis. Don’t. A half-truth is a lie in (bad) drag.
Illusions – We all need these to survive the trench warfare of every day, adult, aware life. Most are harmless, but… in the hands of a practiced narcissist, be they Malignant, Covert, or Otherwise, these manipulations are pitfalls our otherwise trusting hearts can crash through and find ourselves stabbed into paralysis by.
[I sincerely hope that, by this point, you realize that I am not fucking you off with this piece. I want to save sanity and lives by putting this crazy content out into the universe.]
Jerked Me The Fuck Around For Literal Motherfucking Decades – Nuff said?
Killing Ambition – What these ghouls do, possibly worse than their other intrusions, is salt the earth of your otherwise well-meaning pursuits. At the risk of emulating the broken record, either literally inside your house, or figuratively inside your mind, fight these cunts until they run off, which I swear to you, they will eventually do because, as many far more intelligent than myself will tell you, this is the fact of the coward’s heart: they give up, they flee, they run like their armor-less ass is as bare and open to cannon fire as they had secretly feared. Say this with me, kiddo: Laugh Out Loud.
Lies – The landscape of the narcissist’s map is inked with these. Trust them like you trust any other bullshitter’s claims, and continue on your way.
Manipulation – This entire piece is about the entirety of such. You are getting the message. I believe it. 🙂
Nah bro – When the narc doubles-down on whatever goofy bullshit they are peddling, you simply look in whichever eye is not fleeing your gaze like the NPC below your sights in a COD sniper level, and whisper this mantra that Daddy Matty just gave you for Hanukkah. L’chaim!
Optimism – Is not a fool’s tool, an idealist’s foil, the retreat of gulls, victims forced behind the barricade…It is our gleaming escutcheon, blood-streaked in the new dawn’s light.
Posturing – Is what these corrosive, acidic cartoons ever actually do. Strutting like supermodels on a catwalk of collapse, making duckfaces at the camera with lens-edges eaten away by fallout…
Quiddity – “The essential quality of a thing,” according to Collins. What else can this possibly be about?
Reacting – Stop. Gray-rock the motherfuckers. They will have nothing but a wall to rage at.
Self-Respect – Feeling it yet? You will. Keep going. Daddy Matty believes in you.
Truth – Seriously, in 2024? “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” says the man-let with the crazy-hot sister (Do I really have to name him?) Reality is malleable, according to dorks (yours included, go easy sis…) with access to the works of Derrida and Lacan.
Upset – If you are so deep into this piece that the word only now occurs to you, I envy you so hard it could force diamonds from my tear ducts like the best script Clive Barker has yet to produce.
Violence – Is the last argument of kings. If we find ourselves there, we have far more useful texts than this.
Why? – I used this one before. Why? Because it’s Oh Jesus… I really am the funniest fucking writer on this site… okay, sorry, it’s fine. Right. So uhhh… why do narcissists use us, fuck our brains out, steal our ideas, make us dance like monkeys chained to hot-plates, torture us with whatever we accidentally shared from a painful past? Kay. Honey? Because they are absolutely, super-cereally, bugfucking crazy. You are NOT dealing with a reasonable human being, babe. THAT is why. I love you. I want you to survive this misery.
X – X-factors of the disorder are multifarious. There are many disconnects between causality, consequence, coincidence, cunt, cocksucker, coprophagia, corn pone, Caucasian… why are you still reading this obviously insane side road? Grow up…
Yowling Noises – You make these when the concrete reality of abuse lands on your battered skull like a beanie made of tungsten. Weighted blanket from a Japanese website, homie. Saves lives, costs too much, comes in a shiny foil package with a goofy “addressee” on the label that no respectable USPS delivery person will ever snitch out. Some countries still like us, amazingly.
Zesty New Outfit – Is what you owe yourself after you recover –even a cunt hair– from this debacle. For yours truly, it’s Miami Vice pastels I pay the extra coin to have tailored. For you, maybe it’s Technicolor yoga duds? Black-on-black denim? Sweats so baggy the entire local rescue can nest inside while you pray that their whole-afternoon-inoculations work? Get in there! You only live once, and you survived these awful, shitty, selfish, grotesque weirdo monsters! Wear the most fun shit you can lay hands on, honey! You have this vicious loon’s full permission.
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