What you learn about love in your prison cell.
February, in the UK, is cold, damned cold. You don’t want to be locked up in a holding cell in February.
But you do get a lot of time to think. What else is there to do, sat there alone and shivering on a two-inch thin, blue plastic mattress stained with an ill curated collection of body fluids, chucking up a stink of body odour and stale booze? You sit there because there’s nowhere else to sit and there’s not much room to pace when your entire cell is the width of three coffins laid side by side or the length of two laid toe to toe, depending on how you choose to contemplate the final demise of your sad marriage and the reason for your winding up here.
You daren’t lie down because you don’t fancy catching something and wrecking your life even more. So you sit and watch the stainless steel toilet. Well, it’s more interesting than the sink or the door and it has provided some entertainment while you struggled to come up with a plan for how to maintain some semblance of privacy while completing your business and changing your sanitary pad under the watchful eye of the camera up there in the corner that they assured you on the way in cannot see your bits. But looking at it, you can’t imagine, given its purpose, that it is shy in that regard. The cell is so small, if you were going to do yourself in, you would do it in the area they just told you is not being monitored. Well, wouldn’t you? And they’d know that, given that the recent escalation in the rate of suicide and self-harm in British jails is a scandal. Stands to reason they should want to keep an eye on you. So it was probably just another lie.
Another lie in a series of lies you’ve been buying into since birth.
So you pull the single blanket they’ve given you for comfort up around you and if you’re careful you can manage to preserve the last vestige of your fast evaporating dignity. Yes, the wigwam comes in handy. There are no bricks to count, the walls are plainly daubed in institutional and washable magnolia. So, when you cannot look at the toilet anymore and you’ve given up pacing, you can just dive under your blanket-bearing arms and rock back and forth blocking out everything else inside the cold dark tomb of your twenty-six-year marriage.
There are positives though, you discover, to being locked up in a real, actual, bricks ’n’ mortar cell, of the making of the authorities, real, third party impartial authorities, you hope. Small as it is, you do actually get that space to yourself. The person in your life who has professed to love you all these years (in spite of all your faults) may have orchestrated your stay in here, but that person can’t come in and ram home their justifications for it this time, you get a temporary break from all that. You don’t have your phone so you don’t have to answer to them or have it ready for them to inspect. Not that that monster needs to track it anymore, they know exactly where you are. Actually, when you think about it, that little bit of space is more space than you can remember having for probably the best part of your life. Space, in your life, you realise, is not necessarily quantifiable in terms of square feet and inches. Space, like real estate, wine or metal can be graded in value. What does it mean to have the freedom to roam a city shopping with your friend when at any moment the person tracking your phone and monitoring how you spend money you earned that has long since ceased to be yours, can call at any moment, making sure you’re sticking to the agreed plan and asking to be put on the phone with your friend, just to make sure…
This coffin-sized space is a new experience. It’s yours for a time and it’s safe. You don’t have to share it unless the authorities decide to make you a permanent guest. You get fed and, bonus, are free to sleep as often and as much as you want, if you want, if you can bear to lie down on that mattress. You have a choice. Imagine that. OK there’s no telly to watch or book to read but neither is there someone repeating a litany of your mistakes and doubtful future over and over until they fall asleep exhausted, giving you leave finally to find rest yourself. But do it carefully, be sure not to disturb them there quietly in the dark, your insides churning with the images they just conjured up for you, your nerves clanging against the consequences of disobedience, and your muscles clenched in constant defence. So good luck finding a peaceful night’s rest. Got the kids to see to first thing, so you’d better find a way to cope. What harm a little non-prescribed help? Not like there’s a prescription for being over accommodating is there?
Strange, you don’t feel like you need that now, here. You’re just thankful for the space to think. You realise you’ve merely swapped cells, but it’s progress. Maybe, you don’t have to go straight back to the old one. You’d convinced yourself that it was so much safer on the inside of their cell of control. Till now you’d hoped that by getting them to trust you with their thinking and plans, you could do your utmost to protect those you love. You’d believed it was better to be in a position of knowledge and influence, clinging to the hopes of talking them down, dissuading them from meting out their brand of justice to their ‘adversary of the moment’, taking the punishment in their stead or warning others that it’s coming. But they went too far this time and whereas before you bought into their terrifying portrayal of life on the outside of their particular construct for your life, when it finally became just too painful to remain on the inside, you’re getting a glimpse of the real outside now.
Yes, you’re just in another cell and the outside world, is for the moment still abiding by the monster’s terms and the monster’s narrative. But maybe, as experiences go, it’s not that bad. There are some layers now between you and that person. You get a breather. Still, thinking about yourself, isn’t that the definition of selfishness? Oh God, what have you done? You were brought up to be better than that, put family first. What will happen to them now if you don’t sort out this mess and get the monster back onside? Everything is so much easier when the monster’s happy.
Inside your wigwam, you can imagine anything you like, even alternative outcomes to the present situation. And you can do so without being corrected. You can sing to yourself. You can do that tapping exercise you saw on youtube to help calm you down. You can recite a prayer or one of those mantras your friend was telling you about that helps their group. Maybe now the monster’s not here to announce it “can hear you” as if you’re trying to commit some kind of crime or filthy habit, you may be able to do it long enough to find some kind of benefit. Nobody’s here to judge and criticise you for trying something out. Try it, see if it helps.
Only thing is, it’s a bit difficult to tune out the voices. Not yours, give yourself a break! You’re not crazy, you know that deep down inside, whatever they say. And they’re not those of the jury of inner critics your life experience has been nurturing inside you with a few seeds from family members and an articulated truckload of fertiliser from the love of your life. You’re used to them. You’ve got a handle on them and the fact that your programming, hard wiring even, has been infected by a host of viruses you shouldn’t really have to suffer. You just have to find the cure. In the meantime, you’ve managed to bash a few of them down like moles in a whack-a-mole game. Yes, you’ve done well, made a couple of breakthroughs and had some blindingly obvious realisations with the help of an interloper or two. But just like with whack-a-mole, the moles are still there under the surface, waiting to ambush you at any time. Only now, you are beginning to see that they are just that, pests that doesn’t belong in your garden and can with time and persistence be dealt with. But meanwhile, they remain pests that are blind, greedy, tenacious, smelling your fear a mile off, and unpredictable. They can pop up and chew your legs off in an instant. Your survival thus far has depended on you looking out for them and dodging the traps they lay, which can be a bit annoying when people on the outside ask you a straight forward question and expect a straight forward answer. While you’re doing that thing you do, assessing the lay of the land, reconnoitring new territory, are they looking at you like… maybe… you are a little mad? What did they hear about you? Did you overdo the demonstration a bit? Too much emotion? Not enough emotion? What are the rules out here? It doesn’t dawn on anybody that they need to explain the rules out here. Because they’re the rules, everybody knows them, dummy! So when you get a court appearance or an interview with a legal or medical representative you fuck up royally.
No, it’s the real-life voices, the voices of the other inmates that give you little rest. You hear them being dragged in kicking and screaming. Then the lull as they have no choice but to take in their new reality. Then the wail. And you wait. How long will this one take to start kicking up a fuss, call their partner, their mum, their lawyer, make demands, if they make at any at all? Which will it be this time? You can hear every word. There’s no privacy in the entire block. It’s not designed to take on board such considerations.
This is your new rhythm. Now that you haven’t got that constant menacing drone draining the life force from you, there’s a space opened up inside you. There’s a vacuum. You must be missing something. You need to be aware. You need to listen. You need to take something on board. Why can’t you work it out now that no one is telling you what to think or how to think? You even heard the two coppers that arrested you discuss your texts as they manned the desk outside. Well, you did give them your phone and password. You didn’t have to but you did it to prove you’d been set up. It’s how you’ve always proved your innocence, stripping yourself naked for your accusers. “Look at that! She tells them here that it’s ok, big smile emoji!”. Maybe, in hindsight that was a mistake. Maybe you can’t think things through properly, isn’t that proof?
Yes, that’s what all the other voices along the corridor are really saying too. None of them is in here because their life choices are working out for them, are they? In some twisted attempt to get approval from some other person, real or imagined, dead or alive, deserving or not, they have continued down the path that has led them here. Or, they’re here for trying to escape that path in their own destructive way.
You sit and listen and think and imagine. Finally… the space and peace and safety to do so. And you give thanks that at least you have recognised that there is something wrong with this kind of love. That this isn’t a kind of love at all. It’s control. Coercive Control.
Love is not being punished for being you.
Love is being encouraged to be your true self, respected, supported, cherished, cared for, believed, defended, valued, trusted and being celebrated for being you.
You’re very lucky actually. When you get to walk out of this jail you don’t have to step back into your old virtual jail. You realise, thanks to the authorities, that you have a choice. You doubt many of the other prisoners will have this realisation or awareness of who the real villains in their life are, of the games that play over and over. If they do, most won’t have a choice where to go and the roundabout will just spin them back in here again at some point. This is your chance, in this temporary safe space, to try to work out what happened, how you got here and where you can go next.
If you look back over your life, the clues are all there, we are after all the sum of all the choices we ever made, they say. But most of us didn’t make those choices for ourselves and if we did, what little free choice we had was strongly influenced by a tsunami of factors. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying to work it out, recognise poor judgement and make changes going forward. Forward is all we have now and what a marvellous gift, if we play it right.
You will work it out. You have to. For the sake of your children and their children and all the children of all the voices crying out down this long corridor to hell, you will do the work and you will make hard choices and you will walk barefoot across the hot shifting sands of disappointing those who profess to love you. You will find freedom and seek out normal as in joyous relationships with level headed people who love you for being you.
Trouble is, in spite of this flash of insight, you still really, deep down feel that if you just try to reason with the moles, make sure they’re OK, feed them, take care of them, listen to them and make them a beautiful garden, they’ll stop digging it up.
THEY WON’T.
There is quality space out there for free. Your walls are creations of fear and conditioning. What will really happen when you unthink them?
To understand more about Narcissistic Abuse, check out our series starting with:
