How I found closure without confronting my abusers

[Papa Coco]

I'd like to share my experience with closure. I'm not saying that since it worked for me, it'll work for everyone, because my abusers may not have been the same as everyone else's. Mine were pedophiles, narcissists and sociopaths. But I figure if I openly share my experience, maybe some parts of it might help someone else a little at least???

In 2001, when I was 41, I tried to make contact with one of my abusers. Through a fluke, I was given his phone number by someone who'd found me by accident on the internet (Which was just a new household toy in 2001). I spent a week working up the nerve. I'd spent 30 years wanting to ask him why he'd done what he'd done to me. What had I done to make him abuse me the way he had? He was my best friend! How could he attack and then abandon me the way he had? 

At 41 years of age, I had been having chronic, violent nightmares about him and about those days at Catholic School ever since I was ten years old. Parts of my brain and heart just burned with an endless, boundless need for him to explain and apologize to me. He needed to see how much pain he'd caused me. I was just sure he'd apologize if he knew how much pain he'd caused. He was my best friend! I still felt my heart's connection to the best friends we'd once been. And I needed to know what I'd done to cause him to hate me so I could apologize to him too. At that point I still believed I'd played a part in what he'd done. I needed this for closure. For over thirty years I just couldn't find any closure.

The day came. I set up a time when my wife and kids were all busy and no one would bother me. I locked myself into the bedroom and dialed the number. It was his place of business. One of his employees answered. I asked to speak with him. She put the phone down, then came back and said "he's with a customer but he'll call you back shortly." 

He never called back. Ever.

Ten years later, while I was still having those relentless nightmares about reconnecting and apologizing to each other, I learned the words "Narcissist" and "Sociopath." I started reading books on who Ns and Ss were and why they were so cruel. I immediately saw him in the pages of those books. Word-for-word. He was a vampire, sure as could be. I quickly recognized how he'd charmed his way into my life. He'd tricked me into inviting him into my heart. Then he started sadistically leaching the energy from me slowly over the next few years. He'd diabolically groomed me for what he eventually did to me at ten. I started to really, truly understand that Ns and Ss are animals. Vampires. Predators. No better than monsters or hungry alligators in the pond. I started to recognize that being the victim of a narcissist/sociopath was like being struck by lightning. It happened to me because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was accidentally born into their family or put into the classroom with them. At the time that I was being abused by him and by key members of my own family, I didn't know how to defend myself against these vampires. But fast-forward to 2010, at 50 years of age, through reading books and webpages on Ns and Ss I began to realize that this person, and my own siblings, were, in fact, my original teachers in the "School Of Hard Knocks." They were the Ss and Ns who taught me how to recognize future sociopath/vampires and how to avoid ever being targeted by one ever again.

I got my closure through those books. Knowledge is power, and knowing they were just common monsters, or "dogs that bite," I somehow cut the heart strings that had been holding me hostage for 40 years. I disconnected from them all completely. The weight of all their abuse lifted off of me as if by magic. The nightmares ceased permanently. I learned that my abusers will never apologize. I learned, and finally really understood, that they were mentally ill, and that I was just one of the many, many victims of their long, miserable, hate-filled lives. It gave me some joy to read about how people with that mental illness pretend to be happy with what they've done, but that their smug happiness is just a ruse. In reality they are truly miserable. They lash out at good people to temporarily relieve the pain of their own poisonous hatred that's scorching their organs day and night. Ss and Ns know down deep that they are unloved and unlovable. I really began to see that even though I was their victim, I was also the lucky person in that story who knows love. I hurt because I loved them. They don't hurt because their hearts are cold, poisoned corpses rotting in their chests. It turns out they really are jealous of people like you and me, and that's why they hurt us. It's some, sick, reptilian, unevolved sense of revenge that they administer daily to the people who have what they know they'll never have. Love. The good news is that as a person who knows love, I can heal from their abuse, while as Ns and Ss they're doomed to only get worse and worse and worse until they die a resentful, often violent death.

A few years ago, I got cold-called by a person who knew me from Catholic School. He found me, also via the internet. His entire reason for contacting me was to apologize for not stepping in to help when we were in Catholic School. I don't know if he was in 12-step-program, or what, but for some reason he was trying to confront his own guilt for not helping. He also informed me that not long after I'd tried to contact my abuser, that monster died a long, slow death with AIDS. No part of me felt anything. I felt no sympathy nor joy. I did, however, gain some relief that he was no longer a threat to myself or anyone else.

In the end, my closure came without ever having to confront the abusers, but from learning the truth about who they really are. My particular abusers, pretty much all of them, were cold, heartless, jealous, angry, vengeful vampires. Some were just uncontrolled pedophiles. Some were hateful siblings, one was my best friend-turned-abuser. I was nothing more than a meal to each of them.

A sociopath is like a three-year-old who just wants whatever is in your hand. They'll fight and cry and lie and steal until they take possession, or destroy, what you have. They literally do it out of simple jealous rage. The next morning, they wake up and start over. Again, they just want whatever is in your hand again, and they repeat the day all over again. They do this until you finally walk away and stop playing in their sandbox with them. When you finally vanish from their lives, you no longer mean anything to them. They have no heart, so they have no connection to you. They turn all of their attention onto the next victim and play out their mental illness all over again until that person finally leaves also. Then they find another victim, and the cycle repeats. To a sociopath, meanness is an addiction and, just like with a drug, all they need is the dopamine fix they get from hurting someone again every day. And like a drug addiction, it escalates until it kills them.

When I learned how to spot and understand sociopaths, the target fell off my forehead. I'm no longer their prey. I'm safe now. Empowered. I can see their fangs from across the room and I no longer wander into their reach.

Somehow that's where I found closure. I discovered that the true reason they'd abused me was because abuse is what they do. And all I'd done to be their victim was I happened to be born into, or wandered into their miserable, hate-filled lives for a time.

[LittleBlueBird]

 

[Larry]

thank you for sharing that. 

[natureluvr]

This is very powerful.  I'm bookmarking this, and will reread it.  I'm very happy you found so much healing from your abuse! 

[StartingHealing]

Papa Coco

Thank you for posting this.  It gives me hope that I can get to that same point in my life as you were in yours when you posted this.

Wishing you all the best