Life Is Full Of Clues

Diary, Health, Life And Love, love, memoir 3 Minutes

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The day before yesterday, Wordle’s answer is a five-letter word “nanny”. And I put in a very lucky first word “moany”, for which “ny” are the right letters in the right place, and “a” is the right letter for the wrong place. After my lucky first-word break, I went on to guess three words, each with different composition of remaining 23 letters. Of course for each word, I was told that no letter and no place is correct–everything is wrong. It was after all three words are completely wrong that I finally realized that “a” and “ny” in my first word are probably the only alphabets the answer is going to have. And the only word that uses “a” and “ny” and nothing else is “nanny”.

I was so blind to the clues Wordle was trying to give me. I should have guessed after the first completely wrong word that probably the answer only has “a”, “n”, and “y” and nothing else. However I didn’t take the hint. I continued to work on the remaining 23 letters, wishing that I can bump into a correct letter among them. I ignored the hint and continued with my misconception and guessed two more words that are completely wrong. Eventually, I realized my mistake. How dumb I was.

Life is full of hints and clues. Often it is me who is too deaf or too blind to pick up the signal. When I eventually come to realize my mistake, it is too late.

For example, I’ve been a “grey rock” for years. And I’ve heard my friends talking about my non-responsive trait for years, but I just didn’t pick up their hint. I mean I didn’t realize that being a “grey rock” was a good survival strategy against my narcissistic parents, but it is very dysfunctional to practice it on one’s friends or people one has to cooperate with. Those normal people I have encountered want me to be a normal person, but I am not. I only look normal–my mental health is hardly normal. I have all the symptoms of a victimized adult who grew up with narcissistic parents. Well, probably not all symptoms. I didn’t become a nurse or a social worker, which are two professions that narcissistic victims love to choose. Or some other jobs that will provide one with social contact while not requiring one to have intimate associations with others.

And there are other examples. In college, I ignored two boys who had true interest in me and wanted to have a relationship with me. And guess what, I chased after a boy who had absolutely no interest in me. His rejection of me only made me think he was a powerful figure, as powerful as my parents. And striving to get my parents approval, as well as this boy’s approval, was my biggest aspiration at the time. My parents never approved of me–they hated children in general and me in particular. This boy asked me to do a lot of things, and I did all of them willingly, like a good slave, wishing that he could like me and my labor. I even tried my best to get hard-to-get material for him, only to realize later that he was doing that for the girl he was really interested in. The more he rejected me, the more I wanted to “love bomb” him. It was really insane. There were a million clues, but I ignored all of them. I even took pride in my own stubbornness and my own passion in overcoming an obstacle.

There have been so many other instances, in which I was deliberately blind to what it was, choosing to believe what I wanted to believe. I want to dig each of them out of my memory and write them in my posts. It gives me a lot of pleasure to write about my past, the old me, the sulky victim of narcissistic barbarity. This is my way of becoming a lighthouse to myself and to others.

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Published by haoyando

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15 thoughts on “Life Is Full Of Clues”

  2. Being in France, I am currently looking at everything through the prism of France … and it strikes me that many French waiters, shopkeepers etc are “professional grey rocks” – to invent a phrase. They are ultra/polite and professional, but very detached. However I guess they are like this for cultural – rather than psychological – reasons (in most cases).

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    1. That’s a very nice phrase indeed. Custom service people often wear such a mask to be polite but very detached. Actually a lot of people practice such a detached style, more than we would like to think. It is said even if with intimate relationships, 30% of humans practice an avoidance attachment style, either by habit due to upbringing or by choice.

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  3. Isn’t it wonderful to be a writer and have a way to exorcise what torments you through the words you write?! By the way I had no problem with NANNY but after using the starter word LEAST for such a long time, I switched the very day BEAST was the answer. Argh!

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    1. Oh, I remember the day with “beast” since it took me several guess to get it since I am not accustomed to have e and a being put next to each other. LOL. “Least” sounds like a great starter word. I am going to use it from time to time. I have to say writing is very therapeutic, which I don’t know how to spell without the help of the autocorrect.

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  4. Growing up with narcissists left you scared and with PTSD. That’s why behaviour that’s normal for you may be dysfunctional for the majority. Don’t be too hard on yourself about your past as it’s not your fault. Growing up with narcissists is something you had no control over.

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    1. Haha, so true. I only regret that I missed all the clues. LOL. I think the fact that I looked normal and could function normally really obscured the fact that I was in reality bearing mental scars. If I had become a problematic teenager or stepped obviously out of line, i could have been forced to face my scar at an early age. However I was only sulky and pretended that I was normal. When a scar caused no obvious symptoms, it was hard to realize there was a scar there.

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        1. Yes, people refuse to believe that other people have hidden traumas. These are often also the people who deny their own trauma and who unwittingly inflict trauma on people around them. I am so glad that there are more awareness right now, but sadly it is not enough to counterbalance so many years of deliberate disregard of this issue.

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        3. Yes, finally there are some progress and people are allowed to express and vent their mental issues. I mean it used to be that people were forced to be silent on this.

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