Our True Nature

Its a funny thing, the things you learn about yourself when life doesn't turn out the way you thought it would.  You get the chance to see your true self, a small piece of who you really are - without all the fluff and junk - without the illusions that we build up around us.  We get a glimpse of our true nature, whatever that might be.  For some the prospect is frightening, for others it is a godsend.  For me, it has been a bit of both. 

When all the illusions are stripped away, we only have our truth: our experiences and how we chose to use those experiences - maybe to act as evidence about something we want to believe or to support a choice we want to make.  It has been my experience that all to often we choose the belief or emotional outcome of an experience long before we even had the experience.  We decide -maybe even subconsciously - what we want to feel or do, not feel or not do and then we fit that outcome to the experience we are having.  The very odd thing is, that we then proceed to believe it!  As I look around, I see that our world is built on this fundamental flaw of self created reality 'reality'.

  One of the things that happens when you learn that someone you love is a psychopath, is the slow stripping away of that self created reality.  I have found that the lies/illusions and truths are most often mixed together, and not always so easy to decipher at first.  I don't mean that it is difficult to understand logically, but that it is difficult to 'get it'  - the pieces all fit together but it still doesn't make sense.  And then the 'self created' truths begin to erode, some slowly and some so quickly that the rest of you doesn't quite know what happened.  In a blink of an eye, you have lost something you believed was true and real - a treasured moment is illuminated and stolen away. 

Yesterday my son found a picture of himself when he was just a baby, which began the inevitable discussion of what he was like as a baby.  My kids love those stories!  The onslaught of baby stories eventually brought up questions about what their sister was like when she was a baby.  Its amazing, how in just a blink of an eye everything changes, and it takes the best part of a few days for the rest of you to catch up to that change.  That's what happened yesterday.  I was telling them how, when Kathy was born, the doctor put her on my stomach to hold.  The cord was still attached, and she was all slimy (this drew a fair amount of 'yuck' and 'ew's). I was so excited to have a girl!  I was going to be a single mom and was scared to death of parenting a boy - I had no experience with boys, but I knew how to be a girl... so I was thrilled I had a girl and she looked so healthy, all her fingers and toes in all the right places.  My life to that point had been difficult, and I was so happy to have someone in my life who I could love and would love me back.  That had been the reason I kept this baby, and didn't give her up for adoption.  Ultimately I was selfish.  I wanted to be loved.  I thought that I could love this little miracle and she would love back and that would make the world alright.  So when I looked down at this brand new life and she looked up at me, I smiled at her. And the first thing she did was smile back at me!  I couldn't believe it!  "Look, she's smiling at me" I called out.  "It's just gas" my mother said.  To which the doctor came over and took the baby, to clean her up and told us that since she was just born and had nothing in her stomach, she could not possibly have gas.  She did indeed smile!
It was one of those defining moments.  You know, one of those moments that changes you, that wraps itself around your soul and changes you.  I loved that moment.  I loved that baby and the little girl she grew into and I still love her now, even after everything that has happened.

"But Mom, psychopaths don't have emotions do they?" my son asked me.  He was right.  Psychopaths do not have the physical capacity to for love.   That was a defining moment.  A black truth that wraped itself around my soul and changed everything!

And as I sit here, I am thinking about how quickly she responded to my smile, and smiled back - how the rest of my relationship with her was built upon that moment.  I wanted to be loved, more than anything and in that moment and each that followed I chose to believe that she loved me too.  The reality of that moment is much more sinister once the illusion is stripped away.   Now as I recount the birth of Kathy, I realize just how quickly nature takes over. Since a psychopath cannot love, this was not love she showed me.  Instead it was instinct. 

I feel awed and frightened by that nature!  She was a brand new born infant, that had no capacity to love or be happy, and she smiled at me.  Of course she was mimicking what she saw me doing.  Mimicking is a part of the psychopaths nature as it allows them to 'fit in' and get what they want - even as an infant. 

I don't know if you can understand how bone chilling that thought is.  How right from birth a psychopath is a predator, and how easy it is for them to fit in.  Who doesn't want to hold precious those memories of our children being born?  Or of a childs first steps towards you, first words, or any of those moments that made you laugh or cry?  I realize now that right from birth my daughter was a predator, and how easy it was for me to wrap lies in truths and call them 'reality'.

I have learned a great deal about psychopaths lately, and just as much about myself.  Life has certainly not turned out the way I thought it would.  That little new born baby so delicate and fragile, now grown into a young woman, was not what I expected.  As I glimpse the real me, why I chose to believe the things I have believed, I find that I am not what I expected either.