Naked Came I

Why artists are plagued by and are susceptible to narcissists

This is what my wife, Edi, was headed for: “It’s ugly, it’s horrific,” she said. Tara a colleague from the volunteer organization Huntington’s Society was talking about her Mom with Huntington’s disease in the final stages of incurable brain death. “She was laying and thrashing, she had to be fed thickened food, was in a diaper and choking on her own saliva. There is nothing more horrible. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.”

I came away from relationship with Edi and her gaslighting, which caused guilt of not being a good enough care giver etc. I mean there was a list; ‘you’re not even a nice guy’ was the thing she said to me when she fired me, and that I was alienating her support system of rich fascists, by being assertive.

My job, and our relationship was a job, at the end, was to carry boxes and shut up. I put up with it to finish my education, having finally got to art school at age 40 after I met (she was hunting in my coffee shop) Edi and we moved in together in a house her father owned, rent was non existent so I went to art school for six years on student loans qualifying by describing our relationship accurately as a roommate situation as the sexual love bombing bliss had ceased, predictably.

I was in a major transition in life and an easy target.

I spoke to the staff social worker at the Huntington’s Society and told her our relationship had deteriorated to the point of being forced to move out and leave the house to Edi and her father. Her advice was that this was a gift because I was avoiding 10 years of horror by watching her decline and slowly die. I mean I was, and still am, in love with the image I built up of her, some say it’s really a self reflection, as narcissists hold up a mirror. Its called appropriately, mirroring. Run, leave the assets and don’t look back was the professional advice. She’s not the woman you thought you were marrying. She never was.

I had become extremely anxious and guilty and depressed, having moved out and into low rent squalor returning to a job at a taxi company, shamed by Edi, her family and friends for the 2 degrees and teaching certificate I had just completed upskilling. The art degrees, they said, were good for nothing as was I, and after 10 years of fighting them, I finally sank into depression and agreed. I sank into depression and anxiety, due to my self esteem coming from the house I now didn’t own part of, being committed in relationship and others liking and approving of me. Self esteem is the worse disease known to man, if you have it you can lose it. Dump that notion and focus on strategies for satisfaction instead. (Albert Ellis)

The process of being manipulated by narcissists and their flying monkeys is very similar to being in a cult. Overvaluing during the love bombing stage, undervaluing “you’re not even a nice guy”, dump and smear. No one returns my calls.

Tara my fav therapist explains: Video: Love Bombing, Brain Washing, Trauma Bonds, Narcissists and Borderlines, Part 2 (shrink4men.com)

So the way out of the notion, I must be liked and do well or I am a shit, the concept that most of us have and artists especially used to get manipulated by is: is there any evidence that I’m a shit?” There never is any evidence for any all or nothing notion, it’s black white fallacy. A rational response is: I am a shit because someone with a personality disorder or a major deteriorating brain disease doesn’t like me because I stood up for myself? Appropriately? I am a shit because anybody doesn’t like me? Their likes and dislikes only describe them.

I was 2 when my father died, a coal miner, of lung cancer. My siblings, all older, and my remaining parent were traumatized. I was too young, all I knew was that I was abandoned by them and their trauma, they shared a major life changing event and I didn’t. So I didn’t deserve care. Effectively an orphan.

This set me up as a typical target: kind, generous, trusting, eager to please, conscientious, competent, talented or “gifted” and, most importantly, have a desire to cooperate and find compromise (Namie, 2003)

Growing up, bullies, the stupid sons of drunken sordid tradesmen, chased me into the sanctuary of the library, where books of rational atheist scientists, and science fiction authors became my fathers. I was taught by Asimov and Heinlein that anything was possible, counteracting the gaslighting of narcissists at home.

I learned from one book especially that a young boy, near sighted and poor, like me, could become an artist and fight the conventions of the day. The book was Naked Came I and the artist was Rodin.

These days, as in Rodin's time, the gatekeepers are the art galleries which cater to the rich upper class industrialist fascists. Often their inbred spawn are sent to the art school to have a career teaching and showing their squalid rubberstamp mark making so they don’t enter into and fuck up the family business. In the past it was the religious career for the inbred morons. Today it is the art school especially in Calgary, a rich oil town. They are taught an art technique which any monkey could do and then they repeat it for life, aka Betty Crocker art.

My letters of rejection included terms like ‘too creative’ or in other words uncontrollable. Whoever controls the art controls the message.

So, tech having just built the internet, I headed to the world wide web to show eclectic work of a digital origin. Now, when narcissists try to infest my life by love bombing me with naked selfies and emails about how wonderful I am, I can see it as the manipulations of one dimensional personality disorders that it is.

You see there is no such thing as talented or gifted (by god). There is only satisfaction and hard work. The purpose of life is satisfaction, the way to achieve it is hard work, generally.

This ain’t rocket science.

This is rocket science: