On my website, you will notice that I have a tab specifically addressing narcissism as the way I saw it going back to 2015. I compared these people to monsters in storytelling or movies and I've said in more than 500 meetings now that monsters are not born unto this Earth, they are created by other monsters which is why one of my spiritual advisors had one word for them. Compassion. (?) I started reflecting on who is the most famous monster that almost everyone around the world would know and I came to the conclusion that it was the Frankenstein Monster. (depending on your age of course) Then it hit me that the Frankenstein Monster was created by Doctor Frankenstein. This made me curious who Mary Shelley the author was because as a film major and a writer, I know that all stories have inspiration behind them. I wondered who it was in Mary's life that inspired the Frankenstein novel and I found out that she had a history in politics. So she was surrounded by narcissistic traits.
I found the following less than a week ago…
Mary Shelley once said, “The story of villains is much more entertaining than the story of heroes, because monsters are not born, they are made.” They do not emerge from the void or darkness by themselves, but they are shaped by circumstances, by the wounds of the world around them. They reflect the deepest of human pain, rejection, loneliness, misunderstanding. A hero is defined by his acts of bravery, but a villain is the result of a heart that was once pure and ended up corrupted. The monsters, in their tragedy, show us what could happen to us all, if the world turned its back on us.”
That hurt to read (“if the world turned its back on us”) because I know a lot of stories from my survivors and they shared with me their ex spouse’s childhood history. These were deeply sad stories.
Your ex too was once a defenseless child with a big smile on their face but they were raised by Dr. Frankenstein. They have that wound Mary mentioned earlier and they cauterized their ability to feel empathy so they wouldn’t feel pain anymore.
This is also a story of generational trauma. From Grandma to mom down to daughter. From Grandfather to dad and down next to son.
I also in that original 2015 write up on narcissism used vampires as a comparison. The follow is a script from Nosferatu (Werner Herzog 1979)
It is a chilling read that maps out the attraction between the empath and the narc.
Lucy to Dracula:“You are drawn to me, not for my blood, but because you see in me what you lack—hope, a life that begins and ends with love. Yet what you awaken in me is not tenderness, but a hunger for darkness, for power over what is unseen.”
Dracula:“You are the light I cannot bear and the shadow I crave. You call me back to what I was before this eternal curse—soft, fleeting, vulnerable. In you, I find not salvation but a mirror to my torment. Together we are whole, but alone we are condemned.”
Lucy:“I am not afraid of you, Count. Perhaps I should be, but there is a familiarity in you—something I cannot name but have always known. You are not a monster; you are a shadow, cast by something within myself.”
Dracula:“And you, Lucy, are a flame that burns too brightly for this world. You call it love, but what I see in you is the same hunger that drives me—the need to consume, to possess, to transcend the limits of flesh and time. Do not mistake me for a stranger. I am what lies beneath your fragile light.”
Lucy:“If I am the light, it is your darkness that gives me form. Without you, I am untested, unbroken. But with you, I feel the weight of eternity pressing against my soul. Is that not what you crave? To shatter the prison of your endless night with the brief, searing clarity of my mortal life?”
Dracula:“You tempt me with your mortality, your fleeting humanity. But I am no longer capable of such fragile things. Love, hope, even despair—they have turned to ash within me. And yet, when I look at you, I am reminded of a time when I was more than hunger. You are my torment, Lucy. The piece of myself I cannot reclaim.”
Lucy:“Then take what you need from me, Count. Drink my blood, steal my life—but know that in doing so, you will only consume your own emptiness. I am not here to complete you, but to remind you of what you chose to abandon.”
Dracula:“And what is it you seek in me? Why do you linger in the shadow when you could flee into the sun? Is it death you desire—or freedom from the cage of your own virtue?”
Lucy:“Perhaps I see in you the courage to be what I fear to become: untamed, eternal, unburdened by conscience. Perhaps you are the darkness I must embrace to understand myself fully. Or perhaps you are nothing but a dream, and I am already lost.”
Dracula:“If we are a dream, then it is a shared one. You, who would face death with open eyes, and I, who cannot die yet long to. Together we are the cycle, the unending balance of light and shadow. But Lucy, do not think I will spare you. My love is a consuming fire, and you are its offering.”Nosferatu (Werner Herzog 1979)
The balance of light and shadow….the Yin and the Yang.
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