Can an empath be broken by a narcissist?

Absolutely. I know I was, but, the breaking of people like me, is like breaking a perfume vial, shattering it to pieces, only to have the alluring scent waft out into the atmosphere, to touch the lives of others, in increasingly profound ways.
It’s like crushing nutmeg, or coriander, and smelling the aromatics, salivating, tasting it in the air, imagining just how sweet and tantalizing this must be, craving for more than a simple whiff.
What we have cannot be contained, and isn’t meant to be contained. Our essence is meant to be shared, to heal, to nurture, and to love.
The Narcissist has no clue just how strong and beautiful we will become, in the aftermath of the hell that they inflict.
Those of us broken to bits by the gutter kings among us will always rise from the ashes, becoming beautiful, unstoppable creatures of divine wrath, with healing in our wings.
Fire purifies. We didn’t ask for it, but we got it, we survived it, and we rise above it, which is something the Narcissist cannot do.
You crushed us, you broke us, and now you cannot stop us. How sad for you, to watch us bloom and grow, while you perpetually wither away on your path of chaos and destruction, forever lost in self-delusion, blaming the world for your self-created sorrows.

My reflections are dark, in this room of many books and precious things, dark as the
mahogany that holds my treasured books. I realize they are only precious to me…but
precious nonetheless.

Who wants rocks and animal skulls carefully cleaned to gleam
white in their mortifying smiles? Who cares for the packed shelves, slightly foxed
antique books two deep, on obscure subjects most would not even find diverting in a
passing way? Why would anyone find pleasure in the bits and bobs, little treasures from
my excursions into the wild, to faraway places? I seem always come home with pockets
full of rocks and flowers pressed betwixt the pages of some old book gleaned from a
church bazaar whilst wandering in the North York Moors. What does it matter to
anyone else?

Well it matters to me; these are the treasures of a lifetime. All acquired
lost in the woods, one with the moment at hand. I do not think I will ever make sense to
most folks, but if I could make sense to myself….

Life is mysterious; it is like a forest- from far off it seems a unity. It can be
comprehended, described, but upon closer inspection it begins to separate…to break
into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious
detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, verdant foliage, fallen
trees, small beasts that flee the sound of a twig snap, insects, silence, and even epiphytes
and flowers. The detail is more than enough to distract. The vertical of trees, the crazed
silhouette of fine branches on the sky, pools of small life, the endless game trails that
lead to nowhere….

All of this, dependent and closely woven, is deceiving. We are layer upon layer like the
noble forest. There are two kinds of life, there is the one you believe you are living, and
there is the other one so subtle it cannot be taken in. It is the other that causes the
trouble. The other we long to see….

Conversations with a butterfly

As I sat on my back patio today, a purple spotted butterfly came by. He landed at my feet. And I admired him in the sunshine in all of his glory blue and red markings. For some reason, I guess since I had no one else to talk to or maybe all the horses and dogs and cats had heard enough of me for one day, I struck up a conversation with this lovely butterfly.

I said to him, and it was definitely a male, Nature has vanity he had all the reasons to be vain.  For he was indeed a beautiful specimen, to be admired by all eyes that cast upon him. I thanked him for coming by that day as I needed a little pick-me-up that I hope he has done his job well, and I hope that I would see his progeny in the coming months and years. 

As if to thank me for my compliments, he came and lit on the tip of my finger as it rested on my leg.  Surely, he could not know what I was saying and surely I could not know what he was saying back. Yet for fleeting moment, it felt as if we had an understanding.. I wish them well as he took slide again and sat there marvelling at all of the charms of nature.

CvWG

July 2019

Wasteful Ineligance

I Read

I read to my children, every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet, fertilizing the ground.  I feed their eager minds with the stuff of imagination. Some stories I have never heard of, and others I knew as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone.  What is the real meaning of these stories, I wonder? …. of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, empathic dragons, honest fisherman who live in hovels.  I want my children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape.  I want them to know both degradation and sainthood, the former without humiliation, the latter without ignorance. I am preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered.  I long for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but I cannot find the line, I cannot recognize it. It is more precious than anything else they might own, but I do not have it. Instead, in an even and sensuous voice like my mother’s, I steep them in petty myths of Europe, of snowy Russia, the East, of anthropomorphized animals.  The best education comes from knowing stories- purity comes from that, and proportion, and the comfort of always having an example close at hand.

~Charlotte

3.19.09

Stillness

A strange stillness resides in the eye of a horse, a composure that regards the world from a measured distance.  Reassuring that he holds you in his deepest regard unforced, an awareness of shared commonality lacking any hesitance.  Slow and steady breathing, big heart deftly beating. Thoughtful and complicated, a mind that tolerates little digression.  Sentient beast occupies the moment with you, intervals that seem so precious and few. He patiently waits for you to grasp his opinion, ready to reiterate an equine point of view.  Then it is your turn to confide in him, deliver all the unseemly truths. Whispered softly into the privacy curtain that is his mane without any reproof.

So step into his existence.  Absorb his wizened features. Dally in all-seeing eyes and admire his depth of vision.  To seek enlightenment communing with his great presence is panacea reserved for very few creatures.  To seek it is to find solace renewed.

~Charlotte Greer Slater

7.11