After almost 2 years of no contact, my Narcissist, Rapist Ex texted me

Abusive narcissists never change, even when they’ve done irreparable harm.

I should have known my day was going to be shit when on Monday morning, the very first thing that woke me up was the chiming of my phone. I’d gotten a text message. Blurry-eyed, I stared at the strange number on the screen and the simple message that said, “Are you okay?”

At first, I was confused. Who was texting me from a random NJ phone number? The number looked familiar, but it didn’t register right away. Then, as my brain started to clear from its sleep haze, it clicked and the anger started to creep in. I realized who’s number that was.

The last time I spoke to my rapist ex (we’ll call him D for douche) was about 2 years ago when I found out the dog we’d shared had died from cancer. Before that, I hadn’t spoken to him for about 3 years, but that’s also because I’d changed my number. I’d had to find out about Rocky (our dog) through Facebook via mutual connections. D had not bothered to call me to tell me that our dog had died.

But sweet little Rocky was the last true connection between the two of us. I’d rescued him after all, and he was much more than just a Boston Terrier to me. He was brother to Milla, my boxer. He was companion and fearless hiker. He was heart and soul and warmth and lightness. He was joy personified. He was also the last reason why my ex and I should ever have to talk to each other again.

After reading the Facebook post and mulling it over in disbelief, I made the hard decision to break my no contact rule and I’d called D on that long-ago day to confirm if it was true that Rocky was gone. I had to know.

Come to find out, Rocky had been gone for four whole months and my ex had not bothered to tell me. Hadn’t even tried. I was still in contact with his nieces and he knew it, so if it was important, there were ways to reach me. His nieces (who are closer to me than they are to him) would have relayed the message. When I left Rocky with him, I’d made him promise that if anything were to happen to Rocky to please let me know. It was the only thing I’d requested and the only reason why D should ever contact me.

After that call, I deleted him off my contacts. I cried for a week and then Milla and I drove to a lonely beach in Northern California, burnt a candle in a cup at dusk, and said our goodbyes to Rocky until the day we’d meet again.

It was just one more inconsideration and heartache at the hands of a careless man. Leaving Rocky with D was one of the biggest regrets of my life. The story behind why I had to leave Rocky behind is far too long and too sad to tell here, but the decision hadn’t come easily.

And by calling D to ask about Rocky, my ex now had my phone number again. The call had been cold, short, and strained from both ends, just a quick ten minute conversation about what had happened. It gave me zero indications that he’d ever reach out to me again.

Fast forward back to the present. Now, some might say, “Why is she making such a big deal of this? He’s just asking her how she is. What’s the big deal?”

The big deal is that I’ve been caught in this web before. I’ve played this game with him all throughout our up and down relationship. You see, by asking “Are you okay?” instead of “I was thinking about you” or “I miss you,” he’s putting the blame and guilt back at me if my response is heated or angry. It’s manipulative. It’s conniving. It’s his ticket to say, “I was just being nice and look at how unhinged and bitchy she is by her response.”

The big deal is that he isn’t just an ex. He’s also my rapist and he knows it.

We hadn’t spoken in two years. What would make him assume that I wasn’t okay? By phrasing first contact this way, he’s putting it on me instead of owning up to what it is he actually wants. He’s also passive-aggressively tip-toeing the water to see how I’d respond. He should know how I’d respond since it’s no question how things were left off.

Let’s get something straight here. It’s not like he and I had a nice, friendly breakup. I spent 20 years with this man. Twenty years of being emotionally dragged back and forth, of being lied to, cheated on, pulled close and pushed away, broken up with and gotten back together again when it was convenient for him, blamed for his failures and insecurities, tossed around like a rag doll, and treated like I was the most disgusting thing under his shoe.

He would snicker at me like I was fat, disgusting rotting flesh that he couldn’t be seen with; and then I’d go hide in a corner to cry and lick my wounds while he went off to play. When I start to feel better about myself again and he was bored or miserable, he’d come back around and try to hook me back in. He would also obsess about all of his girlfriends past and constantly compare me to them. And of course, I could never measure up.

I was stuck in this cyclone of constant high emotions. Love bombs, severe rejection, anxiety, instability (never knowing if he was coming or going), fear. Rinse and repeat. That’s all I knew when I was with him and there were rarely moments to stop, assess, breathe, and allow my emotions to even out.

Only when he was well and truly out of my life did I start to gain a real sense of myself and to allow my emotions time to heal and stabilize. When he was around, everything felt heightened and desperate; and like a hurricane that blew through, it took a long time in the aftermath to clean up and rebuild.

I was 10 years younger than him and so trauma bonded to him that I put up with all of it. I was a naive 18-year-old kid who’d never even been on a date before him, and he was 28 and had already been married once before.

And then, when I was at what I thought was my lowest point, where I was sinking fast into depression, I asked him for help. We hadn’t been together for two years at that point but he was the closest thing to family I had in the area, and we’d had such a long history together that I thought he’d still be a friend. Looking back now, it was my desperation convincing me that I could count on him. There was nothing romantic between us by then. I felt absolutely no attraction towards him.

I just needed some safety and comfort while I tried to pull myself out of my depression.

He took me into his home to “help” me only to treat me like I was scum and then rape me when I had no defenses left and nowhere to go. He’d take every chance he had to tear me down, telling me how much of a “shit ass” I was and how great his then-girlfriend (now wife) was compared to me, how easy she was to get along with compared to how I didn’t agree with him on everything, how much prettier and hotter she was compared to me. Raping me was just the final stripping of my self-worth and my dignity.

He did it because, for the first time in our knowing each other, I was “less than him” and completely at his mercy. For the first time in our history, I depended 100% on him for survival, and all of his built-up resentments for being with a woman who was “always better than him,” he got his revenge. Every time I made more money, every time I got a promotion, every time I showed my intelligence in a conversation that made him feel inadequate, every time I did something to better myself, he felt like it was a personal slight and a spotlight on his own failures and shortcomings. There was no win for me no matter what.

Bring myself down, I was too “fat and dumpy” to be around, too embarrassing to acknowledge.

Bring myself up, I was “too much” — too smart, too pretty, too “show-offy” simply by existing and having other people notice me more than they notice him.

It didn’t help that I was Asian and he fully believed in the Model Minority Myth. His initial attraction to me was because he also believed in the demure, obedient, silent Asian woman stereotypes too. He never expected this Asian woman to not walk three steps behind him and to want better for myself than the circumstances I was born into.

I silently endured it all because in my mind at the time, I felt I had no choice aside from death or homelessness. My depression had gotten so bad that I had to compartmentalize myself into tiny boxes of functional numbness or I’d break into a million little pieces. I needed serious professional help, but I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know that what I was going through was depression and PTSD and that he was also a major contributor to it. That knowledge wouldn’t come until later when I finally had time to think and assess and confirm it with a kind therapist.

After everything D had put me through, there is absolutely no reason why he should think I’d be nice or friendly to him ever again. He’d gotten what he wanted, after all, didn’t he? He got to move on with his life. No contact from me, the pebble in his shoe.

Meanwhile, five years later, I’m still dealing with fear of intimacy, anxiety, and PTSD from all the things he’d done to me. I still can’t let a man near me without consciously telling myself to relax my shoulders because he’s not my ex and he’s not going to hurt me. There’s always a pause where I have to catch myself, yet even with all that work, I still can’t let any man into my inner space because of what this one man did to me.

It’s terrible to admit that this asshole still has this much hold on me and I am working on it. I am working so hard on getting over it so I can move forward. I’m nearly there, and then he had to pop back up because of course he did.

Even now, as I write this, I have to remind myself to breathe because my body is automatically wound up the way an oncoming panic attack feels. I have to tell myself I’m far away, he can’t get to me. He can only get to me if I allow him to. I have power over my life now. I have to tell myself I’m okay.

I took all day to process his text, going through a myriad of emotions. Disbelief. Irony. Anger. And then laughing at the knowledge that after all these years, he still hadn’t changed. He was still playing the same games. A “caring” text to hook me back in and the gall (the arrogance? the audacity? the balls?) to think that his text would be welcomed. And of course, when he had me, he’d just abuse me all over again. That’s the cycle.

But not this time.

I’ve had a long five years of soul searching and growing, of thinking and healing. I’m not some trauma-bonded girl anymore.

I still haven’t responded. I’m torn between putting him in his place and then blocking him or just blocking him. The unresolved anger in me wants to say to him, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you contacting me? Are you dying? You better be dying. That’s the only thing that would make sense why you would contact me. Either this or you’ve found out your dick is about to fall off and your doctor has mandated you contact all the people you’ve forced yourself onto in the last 10 years.

“Does your wife know you’re texting me? You know, the wife that you said was so much better than me? Do you think I don’t know your stupid game? You probably still do this shit with every girlfriend you’ve ever had and during the entire time when you were with me, all two entire decades of it. You literally treated me like shit the last time you saw me, and now you’re just going to send a nice little text to check in on me and think that you’re going to get nice, warm fuzzy responses? Fuck off. Fuck all the way off and lose my number permanently.”

That’s what I’d want to say, but instead, I think silence is better. I think blocking him would be better. We can’t always escape the ghosts of our past, but we can choose not to engage. Narcissists literally can’t let go, and this one always seems to come back around when I am finally starting to feel better and to feel happy. It’s as though he’s a dementor and when he senses happiness, he has to come back around to suck it all away. Narcissists need the attention and depriving them of acknowledgment is probably the best revenge there is.

Moving on, being happy, living your life is how you reclaim yourself. He’s never going to change. He’ll always be a miserable, attention-seeking, joy-sucking ghoul just yanking the emotions of the women around him. I kind of feel sorry for his wife, but I also don’t because she’s an awful person too. She knew what he was doing to me. She condoned him raping me. I don’t care what her justification or reasoning is.

Maybe he was right all along. She’s perfect for him. Two miserable trolls — one, too permissive and putting “her man” above all else, and the other knows no boundaries.

I’d wish them luck, but I can’t find that I care enough to. Meanwhile, it’s time to add this number to my block list.

.

.

.

.

Hey there! Like my stuff? Read all of it by becoming a member: https://yiavue.medium.com/membership

You can also subscribe here to be notified of all my new work: https://yiavue.medium.com/subscribe

Or help me finance research and other writing initiatives by supporting my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/yvuewriting