The Narcissist’s Stare

Why do they stare if they don’t care?

Anyone who has been a narcissist’s scapegoat has experienced the way narcissists stare at their victims obsessively.

Even when you see them from afar, you will catch them staring at you.

Due to cognitive dissonance, the narcissist’s stare can be confused as having someone who genuinely cares about you.

But obsession is not the same as love.

The narcissist stares BECAUSE A PREDATOR HUNTS ITS PREY.

It’s just what predators do.

It’s their nature.

1) They lack a stable identity.

Their first identity was a mask, imprinted on them by their narcissist parent who discarded them. Since then, their identity has been whatever identity they can siphon off from their supplies.

I have narcissists in my past who latched onto me and discarded me, and it’s as if they absorbed parts of my identity for life.

An old best friend often posts quotes of my favorite author. An ex writes statuses making arguments that are verbatim things I said years ago.

And well into devaluation, I’ve seen them mirror me.

For example, I got braces, so did my narcissist sister and best friend.

Their identities always morph based on who their current supply is.

So, they stare because they’re studying. They’re designing their mask.

2) They really f&$@ing hate you.

This makes no sense, I know.

You love them. You love them so much.

Well, when you love them, indeed, they believe in that: They love themselves too.

Your love is how they EXIST.

So why then do they lie? Why does your birthday piss them off? Why do they cheat? Why do they feel so agitated?

It can’t be them. In the narcissist’s mind, their behavior must be…

YOUR FAULT.

YOU DESERVE IT.

NPD brains are shame-avoidant.

If the narcissist could look at their real self honestly, they’d hate themselves.

THEY CANNOT SURVIVE THAT.

Therefore, the narcissist stares at you

Because they hate you.

They hate you so they can avoid hating themselves.

They stare at you as a projection of self loathing.

It’s survival mode.

3) If you continue to survive, if you continue to succeed, if you continue to smile, if people continue to love you, then you are really becoming a threat to their mask.

You are a threat to their grandiosity.

You being happy or successful makes them feel angry.

It feels like a threat.

IT’S A THREAT TO THEIR IDENTITY, THEIR EXISTENCE, THEIR NOTION OF PERFECTION AND ENTITLEMENT.

They are extraordinarily jealous.

Ghosts are always jealous of the living.

Therefore, the narcissist stares at you because they want you to die.

Predators hunt. 🪦 🦓 🐆 💨

If they are lucky, you’ll accept and internalize abuse until you get very sickly and die of some disease. They’ll get supply just watching you suffer.

But they’re willing to go to all kinds of means to ensure supply dies if that doesn’t work.

And they get away with it all the time.

They kill in covert and overt ways and it feeds their grandiosity.

To a narcissist, life is a game. Death = losing.

When you die, they are both victim and hero.

Ironically, the reason they stare is so they never have to stare at their real self.

A horror; a void; a lifeless, loveless nothing.

A.M. Champion is the author of She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient.