Rules:

I don’t feel bad about it I feel pretty giddy! It’s nice I looked it up online and they’re like $50.

It’s punishment for how he left things. I had my eye on it since he had started working there so even though he’s a runaway coward I feel like it’s even.

Does anyone else ever feel like with the way you mask and pretend and navigate life you should automatically be a professional actor/actress?

Like I’m always putting on a performance for a multitude of reasons, faking empathy because duh, faking emotions/friendships for personal gain, playing up aspects of my life to induce jealousy and envy, masking my vulnerabilities, making myself into whomever I need to protect myself and my ego and survive. My insane ability to lie on the spot no matter what, and also the way I completely hide my fears even if I’m pissing my pants, just so others people don’t perceive me as weak or vulnerable

It just feels like an untapped talent at this point

I know I don’t have the credentials to be an actual actress but god I’d be lying if I don’t think I’d be naturally good at it with 0 training or work

so if you're jealous of somebody or you feel that somebody is better than you in some way, do you find yourself unable to rest until you've rooted out a flaw or somehow justified their alleged superiority?

if and when the jealousy (or should i say, the agony) hits and i feel second best to someone, i'll scrutinize and analyse them like some kind of fbi agent. i'll scour their socials, i'll read their wiki page if they have one, i'll dissect any and every piece of information i can find about them until i can prove that they are inferior to me in some way. if this doesn't work, i'll set about proving to myself that they had an unfair advantage that i didn't (i.e money, famous parents, etc), or that they're years older than me (which eliminates the threat because i'll convince myself i'll be able to catch up).

if i can't come up with something or find some way of justifying my own inadequacy, i will feel it like a physical illness. the jealousy and the pain of it is hard to describe but it;s like my heart is being battered in with a meat tenderizer. and this will go on and on until i find some other perfect person to fret over and then the whole stupid cycle begins again.

is this an npd thing or do all humans do this? i find it very hard to tell sometimes. thanks if you can shed some light on the situation. it would be appreciated as generally speaking i never know what the fuck is going on

There’s a hole in my chest

Where the mirror should’ve been

What my parents should’ve brought

There’s nothing but emptiness there

I can see it

I can feel it

There’s pain where love should be

Hate and anger instead of compassion

Shame and frustration instead of empathy

Apathy where everyone cares

And chaos where there should be stability

My love is your hate

My pain is your trust

My suffering your dignity

Feel it, touch it

Here on my chest

Don’t burn yourself, dear friend

Or you might get my scars embedded

Into your very little heart

My syncope is your destiny

I feel I am the monster I ought to be

I should’ve been a burning child

Instead I am the charred one

That wants to stand alone, energized

With my wings burning

So I can distract myself

From this hole in my chest

I’m a covert / inverted narc & my father is a grandiose narc.

My entire life he acted like every single one of my achievements & failures made or broke his life.

If I had achieved something great, he’d use my social status to gain leverage among his friends & brag to the extreme.

If I had failed or made ANY mistake, I’d receive paragraphs over text reading me to filth about everything that is wrong with me.

He gave me a world view that the entire world begins and ends with me, as if I can make the sun rise and the sun set.

I became an extremely high achiever but with crippling social anxiety and high functioning permanent depression.

I felt like the worst bitch alive if I had to reject a nice guy & would see his sad face months afterwards. I TRULY felt as if I wrecked his life & destroyed any chance of serotonin in his brain.

OF COURSE I would think that based on what my father taught me.

He’d either rage & yell at me for hours or shower me with admiration for my wins.

There was no in between.

I was invisible until I either failed or succeeded.

Can you imagine the PRESSURE a tiny child feels when they’re made to believe that they have “the power” to make someone hApPy or send them into cardiac arrest?

The level of magical thinking & a sense of godly power over EVERYTHING this instills in someone?

I truly thought the world revolved around me, and not in a good way.

I’m disgusted & repulsed, working through eroding viewing the world through my father’s eyes.

I’m sick and tired of constantly being elated by or dying by his sword.

He constantly would say things like I’m inadequate & that people would turn away from me once they “found out how I truly was.”

I don’t harm anyone. When I’m not on a stage or at a conference somewhere, I’m a recluse.

I don’t enjoy putting others down. In fact I hate hurting anyone.

I’m so sick and tired of everything.

I know he’s traumatised by his sadistic mother but that still doesn’t diminish all the ways he fucked me up, and all the work I have to do now to be responsible and undo all the damage he has done.

I truly feel like I’m not allowed to exist unless I achieve 24/7

As if if I just do my job & nothing else - that I’m a waste of space.

Fuck this shit.

So, I cut off all forms of supply when I entered collapse 5 months ago. Not really on purpose, I was just way too dysfunctional to maintain it. But I stayed cut off from everything when I started getting better. I threw myself into every single form of self care that I could (yoga, meditating, journaling, body scans, progressive muscle relaxation, therapy, self compassion via ifs). I've been naturally processing emotions like fucking crazy. And my memories have been resurfacing. Instead of understanding what I went through as a concept, something that seems distant, I can feel what it was like to actually be there. Super depressing and at the same time extremely relieving. Like, I wasn't crazy. It was actually THAT bad.

To anyone here who has done EMDR, when I cry outside of therapy, I feel a similar sensation to when I do EMDR. Like I'm peeling back the layers of an onion. It comes out of me easily, like it needs to be released. And then afterwards I feel lighter. Like there's a heat map in my body where I can feel emotional pain. And when I process it, I can feel a cooling sensation in certain spots.

I have so much healing to do. But it's gotten a lot easier for me to identify what I do that's narcissistic vs what isn't part of any delusion like the crying and feeling pain.

I no longer feel as angry, I have a bit more control over myself. I can see people in a different way that I couldn't before. I'm still having narcissistic tendencies, but I don't feel so upset about having them anymore. Because I recognize that they were there for a reason. To protect me. And I'm hoping that the safer I feel, the more I allow myself to process and grieve, they'll naturally turn into something else.

Anyone else at a similar place or has gotten even further in their recovery process? Is feeling our emotions the way out of this? Or is that too simplistic and delusional lol.

I recently had dinner with an ex who I hadn’t seen for three years. It was a chance for us to catch up, but really just a way for him to confront me about all the ways I mistreated him, which I accepted because I felt he needed closure. Anyway, he said that in his healing journey he discovered that I was a narcissist. I did get a diagnosis in Nov (but he doesn’t know that of course) but why am I so angry and offended that he would diagnose me as one and share that with me?!

The way this disorder is discussed online and the narrative around it makes us sound so evil and cruel and as if there is no room for us to make any improvements. I’m happy for those that seek those resources and feel like it helps them cope, but you cannot seriously be telling me that that many people have NPD out there?? I feel like people are unofficially diagnosing their exes and just adding a mountain of trash to what we do and vilifying this disorder even further.

Anyway, I’m trying to figure out why it annoyed me that he brought this up? Is it because I feel he is empowered now and can read up on all the five thousand advice boards or videos that are available to deal with us? (Which don’t you think that the whole online space is a bit obsessive too?) Or is it because i don’t want him to think of an image of me/view me as something I have no control over/haven’t crafted myself? I mean, he was right.. so I guess it pissed me off even more. He gave me this look as if he felt sorry for me, which was also annoying.

I denied it of course and just laughed it off. I don’t think I’ll ever disclose my diagnosis to regular people literally ever. I’m aware of the things I do wrong and the people I’ve hurt, but I’m also hurting and want to be better and I’m not going to be labelled as someone that is forever tainted as a bad apple and rotten to the core that’s incapable of changing, which is the reputation this disorder has gotten on the internet.

It’s so hard for me. I hate it. But I’m getting better at accepting that I have made mistakes. I had to end a relationship recently that I believe was becoming unhealthy for me.

I’ve been self aware now for about a year. She kind of knew what I was but she was in denial about what she was. I’m in therapy. She was not. I’m learning to cope in healthier ways. She is not.

So I know I made the right decision in leaving. And then I feel the shame waves hit. You fucked up here when you did this and etc. I start fixating on all the things I did wrong.

And I have to remind myself that I need to give me grace. That I need to give me love. Just when I start to sink and spiral in that dark place I pull myself out and start talking positively to myself. I go for a walk. I meditate. I am 100 percent sober. No booze no drugs. Just the gym and work and the church and my friends.

I don’t have new supply. I can get it rather easily. But I don’t want it. I really need to take care of myself right now and that is so hard for us as we really thrive on that external validation. I’m going to kick my ass in therapy and get these traits to go down. I’m tired of this disorder and I want my life to be more balanced.

I’ve cone a long way and I know you guys can too

I'm sorry but my therapist hit me with this curveball today and I've never heard of it. I've looked online a bit and I only found stuff like "how to recognize the obsessive narcicissts in your life and how to chase em out of it" stuff, which explains literally nothing to me and only pisses me off...and I had 0 guts to ask the man himself cause after this session my ego was wounded baddd

I probably dont have to elaborate too much but you probably know what I mean since most of us probably got traumatized growing up like that. The obsession with how we’re perceived and status etc:

The above, I used to feel so scared that people can hear me, I constantly punished myself for thinking the way I think feeling the way I feel doing the things I do, i just hated myself so much that I could not let that version of me out for a longtime.

Being vulnerable with myself or others was never easy for me, it still isn't but i am trying. Its not at all easy for me to express what I truly feel. I am afraid of people using it against me. I am afraid of showing the real me to the world because. If I myself judge and criticise my true self, how can I expect others to trust and nurture my true self? How can I think it will be accepted with loving arms.

Most of it has got to do with my childhood, when I tried to express something I was shut off by my sibling and parents, laughed at or mocked. I remember baby me like just 4 or 5 years old bawling my eyes out, while I looked at my mother and sister laughing at my display of emotions.

I used to feel someone is always looking at me from a secret camera, theres a chip in my head through which my thoughts can be heard to my family or friends.

I was judged, mocked and criticised so much so that I internalised it and I bullied myself into not fully being myself.

i just want to know if anyone has been better off healing?

this isn't a post to ruin people's hope i jsut genuinely want to know since it will save me time and pain going on a journey that has a dead end anyway

Healing could go 2 ways

1. I find a bit of identity and leech off others kindness less to feel semi-regulated and this long hard journey will all have been worth it

or

2. I just end up worse than the start. I end up depressed and the npd stays, i'm the same but unhappier and more unstable.

Guys idk if there's any point healing if it's not even possible idk??

Nobody ever likes me because I am so avoidant and uninterested in even trying to make connections nowadays after all the fucked up shit I have done and put people through and dealt with from other people. I am so angry at the world and my parents and myself. I realize that I am the problem, that it has always been me and I can't run from knowing it anymore. I barely have social skills at 27 years old and I ruin every potentially good connection with somebody because of my avoidance and lack of interest in anyone's lives. I'm so false, pretending to be sweet and gentle when I am full of anger and ugliness. Nobody knows who I am. I'm in my alcohol addiction again as well and no part of me feels any inspiration to stop and make a better life this time around, aside from the part of me that vaguely wants to stop to maintain some of the beauty I still have instead of aging myself more of course because I'm a vapid bitch like that. I used to want better but that was when I was still lying to myself about who I was to some degree. None of it seems worth it to me now. I want to be dead and I wanted to die even when I was sober, to not deal with this burden of existence when I am the wrong thing in such a deep and significant way. I feel so much shame for the pathetic way I live my life. I feel like a loser, and I fucking AM a loser. There's no getting around that and I hate it so much. I live in the shadows. I like nighttime the best because nobody can see me as easily as in the daylight and it makes me feel free. I am not made for this world. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit so fucking hard.

You need supply. So for all the bravado of strength, you are still vulnerable and reliant on others admiration and attention. This a very weak strategy, as finding supply of that sort is hard, but also because you are effectively sacrificing your own agency and instead subordinate yourself to your need for supply.

Like a desperate drug addict, your only focus is your next fix.

It's a disorder, so duh. This behavior doesn't come from a strategic perspective, but as a result of something gone wrong.

However, there surely has to be a better solution than subordinating yourself to the desire for supply. This supply-chasing is not just a futile endeavor, but it makes you vulnerable to collapsing, which is a truly awful feeling.

There has to be a way to exit out of the frame of narcissistic supply-chasing. Maybe substituting it for another frame. There is enough richness and agency in the world that this has to be possible.

What if you reject the notion that you ought to seek supply? Or perhaps finding supply in a way that is safer, and that does not put you at risk of collapse.

Tell me if this picture makes sense to you.

Healthy personalities are like bubbles 🙂 but human-sized ones. Like people surrounded by a bubble. Safe and whole. With different colours as personalities.

Borderline personality disorder is a grey, gloomy bubble with a big hole in the back. Or with a very thin permeable wall - very fragile and feeling empty inside. The core feeling is emptiness and being lost.

Narcissism is an opaque, heavy, dense ball like concrete or gold (depending on the type) with a big crack in the back but not fully open like the bpd. The core feelings are resentment and anger (in tandem) and fear to some extent (that they may be cracked).

Ive been in a romantic relationship for about a year and only till recently (few months or so) the tension between me and him have been holding me at my neck. I dont think that he feels any tension between us, it is like 90 percent me being insane i suppose. Though i feel so incredibly guilty since our connection is putting me in an endless torture and i see no way out for i love him too much to take a break, when im with him its torture and when were seperated its torture. Ive found that everything i say and think leads back to my ego, i cannot feel any sympathy for him and i cannot feel happy for him since any accomplishment he achieves only nags at my envy which immediately pushes me to respond in suicidality and aggression. I catch myself having horrible thoughts about him and it kills me because i love him.

And when he searches for empathy i cannot give him anything genuine because only I can be the suffering one needing validation here. I have found that breaking myself down into my insecure small self helps me love him more but that is not who i want to be and its only a plaster on the gaping wound. Every way i turn to is hell and i dont know what to do, everything is a competition between us, well on my side. And i assume that everything he does is him trying to win from me with whatever ‘arms race’ is boiling in my head, which leads to insane meaningless confrontations, rants, and arguments which im constantly seeking to validate what i feel, but i also barely know what i want from him. I snap and make foul accusations that dont serve anything and then i feel like shit for another eternity. I always search to put the blame on him even when it is probally me starting things that end with nothing, I feel threathend by his love and my mind keeps lingering around the worst. Ive tried explaining my envy to him without sounding like too much of an asshole but i had not gotten the response i wanted and my boyfriend also seems to be clueless. I manipulate him without even realizing at first yet it is what i keep reaching at to make myself feel better, and he told me that he feels small under me and even though it is supposed to fuel my own ego it just shattered it with guilt.

I feel this competition and tension tightening onto my throat and i cant take it, but its all in my own head. I just dont know what to do with myself, i wonder why i cant just be happy for people, why cant i just see him as my boyfriend, instead of an enemy i need to destroy?

I am terrified of normal folk.

I feel like a beast. A nonhuman among humans. To know that they want to hurt me. To know that they want to burn me at stake simply for the way I am. Simply because I'm different.

So much media detailing the horrors of 'narcissistic abuse', but what does it really mean? They paint us as wild animals who are unable to think. Unable to feel. That we are dangerous and vile beasts who deserve to be stomped out and discarded.

I am a creature. I tuck my tail between my legs and flee from confrontation. I am a coward, no matter how much I insist I am some divine being with supreme intellect.

I am a pathetic dog. I am an obedient and quiet thing chained to the ground. I fold just from words.

I want to be set free.

I’ve been dealing with severe family drama. My reputation is permanently damaged. I am completely emotionally burnt out. I feel trapped, stuck. I’m aching impulsively, I’m severely paranoid, and I feel hollow and lifeless. And I’m filtering this.

It’s damaging my relationships—my everything—and the person involved doesn’t even understand how much damage they’ve caused my entire life. Yet they feel like it’s right to get mad at me, as if, growing up, they weren’t the freaking adult.

I just want to fix this. But to fix this takes energy, enthusiasm, being hopeful—not having all the energy sucked out of you and being completely unable to act like yourself, think, or anything. And I know everybody’s starting to doubt me, but the world feels so fucking hopeless.

I’ve started punching the walls just to find some semblance of peace, and that is the nicest of these thoughts. It doesn’t feel like there’s hope for things right now. And I know for a fact nobody will listen to me.

And this is only half of the story. I don’t feel comfortable sharing the rest. But honestly I don’t know what to do I’m a lifeless can being crushed under the pressure.

Have a question about narcissistic personality disorder or narcissistic traits? Welcome to the bi-weekly post for non-narcs to ask us anything! We’re here to help destigmatize the myths surrounding NPD and narcissism in general.

Some rules:

• Non narcs: please refrain from armchair diagnosing people in your life. Only refer to them as NPD if they were actually diagnosed by an unbiased licensed professional (aka not your own therapist or an internet therapist that you think fits the description of the person you’re accusing of being a narcissist)
• This is not a post for non-narcs or narcs to be abusive towards anyone. Please report any comments or questions that are not made in good faith.
• This is not a place to ask if your ex/mom/friend/boss/dog is a narcissist.
• This is not a place to ask if you yourself are a narcissist.

Thanks! Let’s all be civil and take some more baby steps towards fighting stigma and increasing awareness.

This thread will be locked after two weeks and you can find the new one by searching the sub via the “Ask a Narc” flair

~ invis ✨

Anyone who is from USA, can you guide me through how to get a therapist ? I am new here in usa and i am having an extreme depressive episode because of the collapse i think. I talked to some insurance companies and they told me i cant start a insurance plan now and i have to wait till end of the February to start a plan. I am going through a really tough time and Don’t have anyone to talk to.

I am having a lot of suicidal ideation too and i want to get help as soon as possible.

Be a friend.

---

I’ve always had a tormented relationship with my birthday. When I was in my twenties, I needed every one to be a multiday, expensive, extraordinary celebration. Inevitably, I would be disappointed at some point (when my partner’s attention momentarily strayed, when I didn’t feel special enough, when I didn’t receive a thoughtful ‘enough’ gift) and resort to sulking. I was an emotionally stunted, ungrateful diva - in true unaware narc fashion. 

As I crept into my thirties, birthdays took on a much more somber quality: one of existential dread. Every February 2nd now stands as a stark reminder of all my lost dreams and opportunities, of my march toward annihilation. (Vanity, too, plays a minor role).

I am conventionally successful, I suppose; I have a prestigious career with very high earning potential, two loving relationships, and a best friend who means the world to me. I should be grateful, but my persistent sense of entitlement pushes away any possibility of contentment.

I am so dissatisfied with nearly every aspect of my life.

I am shattered by the thought that I should have accomplished so much more with my life by this point, having been primed since birth to become a wunderkind. I am wracked with envy for those who've already 'made it.'

I think:

I should be famous by now.

I should be making a Big Impact on the world by now.

I should be, at the very least, a better adult.

I feel:

Emotionally stunted, still - so much younger than my chronological age.

Ashamed of my ‘wasted’ existence.

Ashamed of my puer eternus complex.

A pervasive sense of despair: was I never, in fact, destined for greatness? That just can’t be so. I don’t know how to survive without a grandiose ideal to strive toward; I don’t want to be alive if it means just being ordinary. What is the fucking point?

I’m curious to hear from other pwNPD about your relationship with your birthday and aging in general. 

Fuck this. 

People are always all malignant narcissist this malignant narcissist that but there doesn’t really seem to be a clear definition of what it even means. “malignant” implies cruelty, but some people define it as meaning npd with aspd traits and those diagnostics don’t guarantee you fit that description. Or some people use it to mean a sadistic narcissist, which i think is more fitting given the word “malignant”, but sadism is more of its own thing and isn’t exclusive to NPD which makes that usage misleading.

Point is this term is dumb and feels more like a byproduct of pop “psychology” than anything but still gets tossed around a lot in cluster b communities more than it should.

I was just reflecting on how I use people to get my needs met. I vent to friends, or open up to them about some horrifying childhood experiences, and then when they don't empathise with me in "the right" way, I resent them.

I kind of logically know this doesn't make sense, but today it clicked for me. If there is a "right" or "wrong" way for someone to support me, why can't I do the same to myself? why do I NEED an external person to validate what I know I already feel inside? I think it's because I don't accept myself as a worthwhile person, hence my own advice/feelings/opinions don't matter unless backed up by someone else. It's extreme self doubt. I know this is super obvious and one of the cruxes of the disorder but it just hits different today.

i am very aware of myself and what im doing yet im constantly so struck by envy, if i cannot be everything i must be nothing and the idea of being worse than anyone else seems to be the only thing pleasing me if i cannot prove myself in more positive ways. i feel so sick i hadnt eaten for a day and im probally giving myself an eating disorder yet the idea of being sick and garnering attention and being covered in scars and gaping eye bags is cradling me to sleep. this sounds like a cry for help but all my cries for help are cries for validation because i dont have anything to cry about. Im so horrible and i make it a competition between others which is the worst.

Can we focus on the pea? Not the princess, not the prince, not the queen. The thing no one saw but everyone insisted mattered. The irritant under the weight of twenty layers of insulation. The unseen wound. The explanation that made no sense but would determine everything.

You would think, after all this time, that someone would have removed the pea. Not studied it, not turned it into a metaphor, not written whole treatises on its significance, just picked it up and thrown it away.

But no. Because the pea is important. The pea must remain. Not because of what it is, but because of what it allows.

It justifies. It explains. It turns suffering into something legible, something everyone can agree upon. No one argues with the woman who wakes up bruised. No one tells her she imagined it. Not when there’s a single, round excuse sitting right there, waiting to be blamed.

It’s funny, in a way. The smallest thing being the most important. The least visible thing deciding someone’s entire worth. The logic is so fragile you would think it would collapse under the weight of the first question.

Why not check for bruises? Why not lift the mattress and see if she was lying? Why not consider, for even a second, that maybe she wanted to feel it? Maybe she needed to. Because what’s worse than suffering? Not suffering at all.

So the pea remains. It has to. If it weren’t there, how would she explain the way she feels? How would she convince herself that it was real? And if the pea was removed, if someone reached under the mattress and plucked it out like a useless thing, a thing that never should have been there in the first place, what then? Would she still wake up bruised? Would she still be a princess? Would she still be anything at all?

Better not to think about it.

Better to leave the pea where it is.

The Queen already knows.

She knew before the girl arrived, before the rain-soaked dramatics. She knew before the first polite word was exchanged, before the girl’s wet shoes left prints on the floor, before the orchestrated ordeal of the mattresses was even set into motion.

Because this isn’t about testing. This isn’t about discovery.

This is about confirmation.

And the Queen has spent far too long in this world to ask a question she doesn’t already know the answer to.

So why bother? Why set the stage? Why go through the whole ridiculous ritual when she could have simply looked the girl in the eye and decided her fate on the spot? Because that isn’t how this game is played.

No, people like the Queen, the ones who actually run things, the ones who pull the strings, the ones who have long since stopped pretending that fairness is real, they know that a verdict means nothing unless you make the accused believe in it first.

So the Queen plays her part. She smiles, she welcomes, she places the test in front of the girl and says, prove it.

Prove that you are delicate enough to be chosen. Prove that you can suffer in the correct, precise way. Prove that you are not like the others, the ones who would sleep soundly and wake up refreshed and have nothing to show for it.

And if you fail, well. You are nothing.

Not a princess. Not a fraud. Just unremarkable. Just someone who does not matter.

And that, the Queen knows, is the worst possible fate.

So she smiles her knowing smile. And she watches as the girl flinches and winces and wakes up in agony, believing it with all her heart.

And the Queen nods, satisfied. Not because she learned something new. 

But because the girl has learned what she was meant to learn. That pain is proof. That suffering is currency. That the worst thing a woman can be is unaffected.

And that no matter how high she is placed; on a throne, on a pedestal, on twenty mattresses stacked to the ceiling, she will always be ruled by something small and unseen.

The prince never intended to become the prince. That was the first mistake.

He was simply a boy once, a boy who learned early that wanting was dangerous but being wanted, ah, now that was power. That if you played your cards right, if you knew what to look for you would never have to be the one standing at the gates, never have to beg for entry, never have to wake up cold and alone and insufficient. He was not born a prince, he made himself one, because he understood, in a way that others did not, that the world only opens its doors to those who can make themselves indispensable.

But what they do not tell you, what no one warns you about, is that once you make yourself indispensable, you can never rest. And so the prince searches.

The problem with having everything is that there is nothing left to chase, and he has spent his whole life chasing. If he stops, if he stands still for too long, he will have to face the unbearable possibility that he is not searching for a princess, not really, that the perfect princess was never the point. That it has always been about the search itself, the endless proof that he is worthy, that he is good enough, that he is more than whatever terrible thing lurks in the quiet moments between people’s eyes glazing over and their interest fading.

Because that is the thing about people, isn’t it? They get bored. They always do.

And so he must keep them looking, keep them watching, keep them waiting. The prince understands this. The prince has been searching for meaning, for something that justifies his need because without it he is simply a man in a castle, and what a dull thing that is. The princess must be rare, must be delicate, must be the kind of person who will make the world say, ah, yes, this is love, this is devotion, this is a man worthy of a story. Because if she is real, then he is real. If she feels, if she aches, if she suffers beautifully, tragically, poetically, then it was never about him to begin with. Then he does not have to think about the vast, yawning emptiness of his own reflection, does not have to sit in the silence of a room where no one is looking.

You must find the worthy one, the right one, the one who has been carved by something sharp and merciless, the one who wears their ghosts properly, who bleeds at the edges in just the right way. Not someone who complains, no, not someone who is merely wounded (that is tedious, exhausting, the kind of suffering that demands but does not elevate). No, what you seek is the one who knows their suffering, who has polished it into something valuable, something almost holy. Someone who understands that the only thing worse than pain is pain that is meaningless.

And here is the second mistake. He finds her. He actually does.

She is everything she should be, she is haunted in all the right ways, she is restless and aching and sharp enough to hold his interest, and for a moment, just a moment, he thinks, maybe this time I will be satisfied. Maybe this time, the search will end. Maybe this time, he will finally feel what he is supposed to feel, what all the stories promised. 

And so he demands the test, demands the proof. He does not need love so much as he needs recognition. If the princess is real, then he too is real, and his search was not in vain. He is no fool, he knows what is expected of him, knows how to look, how to choose. He has met other women before, women who claimed to be something grand, but they lacked something, something intangible, something that, if we were being uncharitable, we might call insufficiently haunted.

She is real, yes, but real things are inconvenient, are unpredictable, are flawed. She is real, but that means she has thoughts, desires, needs of her own. She is real, but that means she will not stay exactly as she is, frozen in time, forever waiting to be discovered.

And then, the moment passes. Because what is he supposed to do with her now?

What do you do when the prize is won, when the quest is over, when there is no longer a goal, only the unbearable question of what comes next?

The princess’s skin was never supposed to be this sensitive.

She was supposed to be normal, or at least something resembling normal, the kind of person who could be knocked around by life and could endure without making a spectacle of it, who could wake up in the morning and not immediately inventory the damage done. But somewhere along the way things went wrong. Maybe it was the way she was built, the way the world kept pressing in too hard, but the fact remained: her skin was too thin.

It was not a metaphor. It was not just a poetic way of saying she felt things deeply.

It was a problem.

Because the world is not made for people like her, for people whose nerves are too close to the surface, for people who do not have the good sense to simply toughen up and move on. And the worst part, the absolute worst part, is that no one believes her. They see her flinch, they see the way she winces at things that should be nothing, and they tell her, oh, you must be imagining it, no one else feels that, you are exaggerating, you are always exaggerating.

But she is not. She is simply built like this.

So of course, when the prince and his queen put her to the test, when they slipped that insignificant little pea beneath twenty mattresses, she felt it. Of course she did. It was always going to be her because who else could be counted on to suffer beautifully? Who else would wake up exhausted, bruised by something no one else could see, and not only accept it but declare it proof of her own worth?

For a moment, she thought, this is what I have been waiting for. Someone who sees, someone who understands that her pain is not imagined, that she is not being dramatic, that the world really is sharper for her than it is for other people.

And then a funny thing happened. She realized that they did not care.

They were not horrified by her suffering. They were not moved to remove the pea, to give her rest, to make the world a softer place. They simply nodded and said, ah, yes, this is the one, and that was that. The prince had what he wanted. The queen had proven her point.

The world had continued turning, as indifferent as ever. And the princess...well. The princess was still tired.

It turns out that proving her pain was never going to be the end of it. That no matter how real she made herself, no matter how much she felt, the story would always demand more. That her ability to hurt was not a reason to be cherished, only a reason to be chosen. And what exactly was she supposed to do with that? Was she supposed to be grateful? Was she supposed to smile and say, thank you for confirming that I am indeed suffering, I will cherish this validation forever? Was she supposed to continue on, knowing that this was how it would always be, that people would keep testing her, keep pressing on her bruises just to see if she would flinch?

You understand, don’t you? If you feel it, you are real. If it disturbs you, you are not faking. If it doesn’t hurt, what are you? A fraud? A hollow thing? A creature of instinct without refinement, without depth? The world likes its princesses delicate, likes its suffering neat and decorated with a reason that can be displayed in glass cases. No one knows how to handle pain that is loud, pain that bleeds out onto others, pain that demands something instead of merely proving its own authenticity. 

The princess wakes up and says, I barely slept, something tormented me all night, and this is the moment she is validated, sanctified, given a title, and perhaps most importantly, given a purpose. She is now a real princess.

If she had woken up refreshed, if she had stretched her arms and said, what a lovely bed, what an excellent sleep, she would have ceased to exist in any meaningful way. She would have been just a girl, just another soaked traveler at the gate. And what is more terrifying than being just a person?

Once upon a time, there was a prince who wanted a princess, but not just any princess, a real one, whatever that meant. It was not enough that she arrived in the rain, soaked and shivering. The queen, wise in the ways of noble suffering, placed a pea beneath twenty mattresses, twenty featherbeds, and waited. In the morning, the girl awoke with dark eyes and an exhausted voice: something had tormented her all night, something imperceptible to the common soul and that was enough, more than enough. Only a real princess could feel so much, even when there was nothing to feel at all.

And so she was crowned. And so she was wedded. And so the pea was locked away in a museum, proof that suffering, when delicate enough, when incomprehensible enough, is the highest mark of legitimacy.

If the princess had slept through the night, she would not have been real.

If the prince had not sought proof, he would not have been worthy.

If the queen had not tested, she would not have had control.

If the pea had not been there, they would have had nothing.

And isn’t that the heart of the thing? That feeling something - feeling anything - is the one and only currency, the single proof of existence. If you can feel, you must be real. And if you feel so much that others cannot fathom it, then you must be more real than all of them put together.