Upon further review.

  It's been 14 years now. I'm still living it, especially in February. At times I find myself going back even further-- how did I end up with his father? Because at least some of Jesse's story is about that chaotic moment in my life. I don't like disclosing, it took me forever to tell Jesse's brother what I went through.  Most people who know me don't know, in fact, that I was raped in the fall of 1981, and still traumatized by it when I met my ex. Now I look back and it makes sense, that I was alone and vulnerable and suddenly uncertain about all my independence and self-reliance. I didn't trust my own ability to judge people or choose friends anymore. So I rushed headlong into that disaster. It wasn't like people who knew him didn't warn me. One mutual friend told me I'd lost my mind. I think in a way he was right. PTSD works in insidious ways, and narcissistic abusers can sense weakness like that across a room with their eyes closed.

I was injured and didn't know it. I thought I was doing fine. Letting someone swoop in, so confident of himself and what to do, it seemed natural. I was being rescued, in my mind.  So when the other side, the real side, the manipulative, abusive, selfish side appeared, I alternated between believing I deserved it and demanding he stick with his nice side. I had no idea it didn't exist. That it was just a predatory sideshow.

 Two years of wasting my life fighting with him over whether I was worthy to be loved, rather than just walking away because I no longer believed I could. And then I was pregnant. I felt like I was drowning. All the time. It wasn't until years later, another friend took me aside and said, Look, he may not be hitting you but he's abusing you. You need to stop venting at us all and put that energy into leaving him.

I went into therapy It took me 5 years and second child to fight my way back to the surface. Predictably he tried to take the kids from me. Predictably he tried to destroy Jesse's trust in me. Predictably he couldn't quite pull it off because narcissists don't really understand the other people they look down on. He had no idea how to begin to destroy my younger son's love for me. Thankfully. Eventually their father died. So we all began the long journey to healing.

And just as Jesse and I were starting to get to know each other as adults, to process all the terrible things we'd both been through, he was taken from us.