Willa Mitchell
I met Willa in junior high and we hung out on occasion. These were not wonderful times for me, I was lonely and vulnerable. My body was changing with no explanations or understanding. I was beaten and abused at home and she and her family offered me a place of some seeming stability in my life. I was too young not to believe their lies. It was a comfortable scenario similar to the place where I lived. Her estranged older brothers seemed absolutely normal.
I didn’t understand that their belittling and scapegoating of Myrna, Willa’s Mom, was highly dysfunctional abuse, that her high anxiety was a consequence.
The cycle of overvalue, undervalue, dump, smear, often repeated left Myrna unable to do the family taxes with confidence in her addition, for example. She couldn't use a calculator. She ended up asking me, a 13 year old boy, to do them for her in the kitchen one day which I did, I had been on my own since birth.
My turn came when we were 18, I was on my own as was Willa. We sat up talking she listened to me about the training I was getting in my job all night long, looking me with the loving narcissist stare, I mean she was good, I totally believed she valued me. I fell in deep deep love.
Within a couple of weeks I was no longer valued, and dumped. She had attempted to seduce me, but things were going too fast. I supposed some part of me smelled a rat, the communication was too one sided, there was no sharing, the intimacy of a safe place to share emotional honesty was missing. All I knew at the time was a feeling of being used, taken advantage of, like when I was approached by a street hustler. I left still in love but confused by what was happening, I needed to talk ,trust and feel, to break her family rules before I felt safe enough to have sex. With a sexual predator as it turned out.
She had cut me off instead, refused to see me or talk, I never spoke to her again.
The serious consequences of anxiety and depression set in. Out of the blue one day I became afraid to get in a car, I was ashamed and isolated, I lost my job and my place to live, deeply embarrassed and guilty, it was all my fault. I was a loser based on evidence. Just like her Mom.
Fast forward to today and I run across Willa’s Facebook page, armed with my training on the consequences of narcissism, I realized that missing her and wanting to connect again, is part of the scam, the con.
She was never a friend to start with, just some user that hunts for nurturing men to discard when she’s finished with them, like her Dad did with her Mom, over and over and over again.
