My Narcissist and Donald

All my life I have lived in countries where politics plays a major part in how everything works. I have suffered and endured the effects of political decisions. I have never lived in the USA and neither have I been particularly interested in American politics, all I knew was that it was a complicated, a big money driven game and important to the extent that decisions made there would directly affect me living in, as Donald Trump expressed, a “shithole” country!

When Donald was elected, I was astounded that the American people chose a rude, loud, fat, ugly, many times bankrupt narcissistic businessman from a TV reality show! (A program I could not even bring myself to watch) to lead the most powerful influential nation in the world!

During his term, in about 2018, and at my age 62, when I had finally completed the jigsaw puzzle that was my life and learned that I have an abusive malignant narcissist in my life and was uncovering and learning obsessively about the characteristics that defined having a Narcissist Personality Disorder and the effects it had on me, did I start, regularly hearing unbelievable comments by DT. I started seeing all the similarities….I became fascinated with his behaviours and traits, ones that I had experienced all my life and they were now being broadcast globally!!

A total lack of empathy
Cruelty
Deflection
An obsession about hair
Blaming
Arrogance
Contempt
A condescending attitude
Entitlement and superiority
Gaslighting
The inability to apologise
The inability and unwillingness to listen
Consistent lying
Grandiosity
Absolute self-centeredness
Demeaning
Rage with abuse
A conjuror of fear
Using and abusing relationships etc etc

…. every time, he opened his mouth, and exhibited one or more of these characteristics, it triggered me, and I’d react emotionally, in a deep traumatised way, which bought my CPTSD to the fore. His actions and words caused me flashbacks! A person in authority, abusing that privilege – causes trauma. His oath was to preserve and protect the Constitution of the USA and my caretakers should have been to preserve and protect me.
I am limited contact with my narcissist, and I am healing. When I think how what he does and says and how it damages and hurts others, I am enraged and saddened by the deep trauma he causes on one hand, and on the other hand I am astounded by the extreme numbers of enablers he has. This is a toxic and unhealthy state – he can’t win or wrangle a second term…. can he??

It is 6.30pm 7.11.2020 and CNN and other new agencies have just announced Biden the winner of the 2020 Election and Trump voted out. I cried in admiration for the determination of a country to right wrongs, for those people he hurt – I cried for the little girl and my hurt and the fact that I cannot, nor could never vote my narcissist out!




Prince Albert

When you arrive as a new resident in this quaint Karoo town, you are often asked what brought you here?
The first time I drove down Prince Albert Road, to visit a friend – I felt like I was coming home. I turned off the busy N1 highway and slowed onto the dirt road, crossed the railway line and headed towards the very distant hills that are the Swartberg Mountains.


It was late afternoon, and the setting sun was due west. As I drove east toward the edge of the Groot Karoo the sun shone beneath the body of my car and long shadows elevated me, in the sparse veld. Windows open and warm dry air blew my hair with a sense of belonging. A broken windmill and reservoir just off to the left begged for a photo, I pulled over and climbed through the slack fence with camera in hand. Perfect light, warm air, and peace all around me I took the shot then just stood and breathed it in…..it represented everything good from my childhood. Warmth, freedom, safety, big sky, sand between my toes and an endless open honest landscape…. A sense of complete peace with gratitude for just that moment and everything that was good in my life….it was meaningful enough to draw me back many years later. And it is where I chose to begin again and have lived since 2019:)

Prince Albert

Prince Albert https://princealbert.org.za/history/

The last day of 65…

Over the last decade, I have tried to do something meaningful on the last day of my year…. Today was that day…but I also have tomorrow…. I am a leap ling so technically 2 days of last days….

The world is in turmoil over the Ukraine invasion, I can’t believe there is a war going on in Europe – being an African, I have always upheld the apparent safety of Europe, since the Serbian war. Surreal….how do dictators come to rule the world and are destructive on such a grand scale, and my least or one of my least favourite people think he is a genius! I don’t pray, but I hope and pray this all comes to and end sooner than later…. My life is so divorced from this reality, but it is the only life I have, and I have suffered and endured war and understand the sorrow, tragedy, and absolute futility and waste of it all!

But today here I sit on a 38-degree day at the top of a small cliff face, contemplating my life and the recent changes I have made. This last year I have planted and grown things, helped people, made new friendships, learned much, created, adventured, learned, explored figuratively and, healed some more and lived the best life I can, for who I am, with what I have – with gratitude. I think today of the people who will not reach sixty-six, who have not reached sixty-six and are unable by design or circumstance to enjoy life as much as I have this day, week, and year.

I am grateful for my health, my circumstance, my few new friends, and my connection to nature – things that give me so much joy and fulfillment as I start a new year tomorrow…or the next day:)

Listening

This is one of the most important statements about listening that I have ever read:

“I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.
Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.
You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.
If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds – in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.

When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain”– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Broken

It’s already July 2020 and we have been in “lockdown/limited normality” for some time now. Most of us have had serious time to reflect on serious issues. After considering my past and current circumstances, the “serious issues” that have arisen, the things that have made me feel uncomfortable during this time, which have engaged my psyche and have caused me to be unsettled, disconnected and a little helpless, hapless, and hopeless …. I have amalgamated into one word. That word is – BROKEN

Here are some of the definitions of Broken:
violently separated into parts
not working properly
full of obstacles
violated by transgression not kept or honoured
disrupted by change
interrupted
made weak or infirm
subdued completely
cut off
imperfectly spoken or written
not complete or full 
not fluent


Rhodesia/Zimbabwe the place of my birth and my heritage, where I lived for 45 years. Through misguided politics, corruption, war and megalomaniac leadership, is broken. 

South Africa, a country to which I immigrated some 19 years ago, with an appalling history of Apartheid, followed by an utterly corrupt and inept ANC government – is broken

My experience of the financial system and wealth equality – broken

Big Food and Big Pharma – broken in respect of what they are supposed to offer

Nutrition – broken

Politics – broken

Communication – broken

Trust – broken

Truth – broken

COVID 19 a world pandemic, a new experience to most of the world’s population – is devastatingly and dramatically moving towards being an event that puts all the world’s “brokenness” under the microscope.

The death, the suffering, the imposition of strict rules and regulations onto societies, communities, and individuals, who pride themselves with certain freedoms, beliefs, and rights, which usually portray as arrogance, selfishness and supremacy, will weaken the weakest, rattle the strong, magnify all imperfections, poorly affect the underprivileged, destabilise the comfortable and forever change the world we had become accustomed to. Whoever we are and wherever we are.

 The inability or lack of will, to see and acknowledge changes in the future, will cause more disarray, more anarchy, more anger, more exploitation, more fear, more racism, more inequality, more panic, more protectionism, more injustice, and more brokenness.

The ability, open-mindedness, and willingness to change and learn from this challenging time, without blame, without greed, without politicking, without selfishness – will equalise, stabilise, destroy all the wrongness and injustice that has endured. It will change the financial system and the perception of wealth, the use of fiat money, it will lessen prejudice and destroy entitlement. It should enhance the study of science over politics, teaching over ignorance, sharing over greed, learning over knowing, sharing over owning, wellbeing over wealth. We will re envisage how we work, how we spend our earnings and time, how we accumulate wealth, how we treat the disadvantaged and how we restore our natural environment – all hopefully leading to more kindness, compassion and understanding between all the humans in this world, a planet we don’t own, but just occupy for such a brief time.

Let’s make it a better place for all – unbroken

Albert Einstein on Crisis:
“Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress.
Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born from the dark night. It’s in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies.
Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent and is more respectful to problems than to solutions.
Incompetence is the true crisis.
The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems.
There’s no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It’s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. |
To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead.
Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it. “