me and narcissists take 902

I was supposed to help this lady I met a couple of years ago run a retreat last weekend. It was just a half day meditation and art project kind of moment. The whole thing has been weird in only the way my life can so consistently be.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned how I met this woman. A couple years back, I believe it was the first summer we were here, I dropped my kid off for music lessons and went for a wandering little walk while I waited. I remember asking my spiritual support staff that keeps office hours in my mind, to bring me a person like they used to when I was younger and it was so easy to create adventures out of thin air and find people and feel the rush of spiritual synchronicity.

I was getting lonely. I was hoping the nudges that brought me to this winter hellscape would lead me to my people. Don’t I have people anymore?

Long story short, I end up at the gas station and the guy who rings up my sale notices my necklace and strikes up a conversation about it, asks if I’m a lightworker. I’m like yeah, something like that and smile. It’s not a word you really hear outside of online communities and even then rarely from a male. He says, oh my sister is a lightworker. Ok. And a Reiki healer. All right, I say, cool. He says I should take her number and give her a call because she’s always looking for ways to connect with people, get a group going or something to that effect. I say ok, but hey maybe ask her before you hand her number out to a stranger. He did and I walk out of there with her phone number thinking, well that was a random and quick response to a prayer.

I looked her up online, didn’t see anything weird, she used to work for the food bank so I figured she was probably a decent human being. I end up sending her a text to see if she wants to get coffee or something.

We’ve had coffee every couple of months for the last two years. It was nice to have someone my own age to talk to. During that time she would often ask questions along the lines of “but what do you want to do with your life”. When you get into spiritual subjects, because of the way things have gone down the last few years, people assume you are going to turn your spiritual gifts into some kind of online business. If your life kinda sucks like mine does, they also assume based on the near constant push about manifestation and positive vibes, that you want to find a way to make your life into some kind of heaven on earth and just haven’t figured out how to pretend to be happy enough in hell to trick reality into giving it to you. Hell is a state of mind, for those exposed to new age beliefs, not a final destination for people who rape the innocent. Cause punishment is yucky and the Universe is abundant but also not intelligent. Apparently.

I’d usually shut down her attempts to turn me into a project that way pretty easily. It helps to have an understanding about the mechanics of reality that exist beyond belief systems. And some basic lived experience that counteracts the neoliberal ethos she was trying to blanket me with: poor people are poor because they’re dumb, lazy or uneducated and don’t try hard enough to see their own potential or because they’d rather play the victim card and cling to their trauma instead of turn it off with the magic switch in their mind that good people use, which is the same thing as saying, they don’t have enough faith like the prosperity gospel message or in new age terms, positive enough thoughts. Wherever there is a poor person, you can be sure it has nothing to do with someone else’s greed or advantage, that is the message. Cause we’re all independent islands creating realities with our minds.

At our coffee dates, she spends a lot of time telling me about all the people from the local spiritual community she’s tried and failed at being friends with. And then she starts pointing out all the differences between me and them. It gets a little weird and gossipy. But hey, I don’t have friends, maybe this is what they do.

Anyways, long story short, a few months back she finally decides to watch my youtube videos and now she wants to team up with me and start a spiritual business of some kind in my town full of Catholics. Good luck with that. Nonetheless, she signs me up to give a talk at a holistic expo (not in my town) where I left feeling like evil itself had crawled under my skin. And some time after that she asks me if I would like to run a day retreat with her.

Ok, I say, with a whole lot of caveats. The biggest being, I don’t know anyone, I don’t have a social media following or network of any kind. I have no method whatsoever to market something like that. She says, no worries. She knows people. She’s got it covered. Okey Dokie. But, as you can guess, she didn’t have it covered.

She actually kind of lost her shit immediately after she reserved the spot. We were supposed to get together and come up with the outlines, the materials, the goals. She just stopped talking to me. A couple weeks go by so I send her something I drew up in Canva as a mock up that maybe she could provide to whoever was supposed to be doing the marketing since she didn’t come to town and do the brainstorming session with me. That mock up is what went out on the platforms. It was the one and only piece of marketing materials we had.

She never came to town during the 6 weeks after reserving the space. She only talked to me on the phone one time until the last week. I assumed she had changed her mind somewhere along the way and just didn’t include me in the decision process.

It was really one of the strangest experiences of my life. I’d send her emails trying to flush out some ideas, no response. Anyways, in the end, there was only one lady signed up. We were a week out and I said, hey, we have to reach out to this lady and see if she is still interested in doing this if no one else shows up. She already bought the ticket. But apparently “you can’t let the customer decide”. Ok, well, shit. I guess you’ve already made the decision why the fuck are we still talking about it? I forgot how smart about business stuff you are, my bad.

So, that was that. A week before the event she canceled it. She didn’t want to pay for the space if only one person was guaranteed to show up even if that one person’s ticket covered all the expenses. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard so much relief in a person’s voice when I said fine, just cancel it then if that’s what you think is best. Like, did she think she was doing me a favor? She went into hiding for a month, I don’t think I was the one who needed the favor.

I did let her know during that brief do what you must conversation, that I wouldn’t be going through this again. This is the one and only shot you had to get me to sign up for doing something like this. Anyways, she texts me on the Monday after the Saturday the thing was supposed to happen. My son has a bunch of stuff going on and I didn’t really feel like dealing with all the emotions of the complete nutcase shitshow this whole thing was, so I don’t respond. She email, calls and texts on Tuesday. Yeah, still no and now you’re getting weird. I figure 2 days of no response, most people back the fuck off and wait. Or say something direct like, hey, I’m sorry – when you’re ready to talk, I’d really like to hear from you. Nope. Wednesday comes and I get a text and an email saying she’s going to show up at my door because she’s worried about me.

And… scene. This is what narcissists do. Love bomb. Ignore. Blame. Establish one set of rules for them and another for you. Gaslight. Rinse. Repeat. They usually don’t realize what they are or why they are. But now I got it. Now I see all the red flags I was ignoring. They build you up somehow and then set you up to fail and then do some kind of weird why did you put yourself on a pedestal you bad person, here let me be your savior, you can’t be trusted, thing.

Fuck.

That’s who’s running every kind of movement that thinks it’s going to change the world. Just FYI.