This is a big lesson for us.

When you’re dealing with a narcissist, their whole game is to disconnect you from yourself.

Chaos, gaslighting, lying, manipulating... it all adds up to exhaustion. Exhausting you to the point where you feel like it doesn’t matter what you say or do. Exhausting you until you stop standing up for yourself. You stop speaking your truth.

When my kids would come back from visits and share incidents that really bothered them, I’d often ask, “Did you say something?”
And they’d reply, “No. It doesn’t matter. It won’t make a difference anyway.”

And if we looked at it from the perspective that the point of saying something was to change his behavior, then yes... that was an accurate statement. We cannot change anyone else’s behavior.

But that’s not what it’s about.

Each time someone does or says something that undermines you... that cuts at you, that makes you feel less than... it chips a piece away from you.

And each time you speak your truth, that’s you picking up that piece and reclaiming it. Putting yourself back together.

You don’t speak your truth to change them.
You speak your truth to stay whole.

And when you don’t... when you stop speaking up... who you are ends up a pile of rubble on the floor.

And when those who really love you try to hand you the pieces of yourself, begging you to heal, you won’t even recognize it as love.

You’ll just say, “It doesn’t matter. It won’t make a difference anyway.”

It does matter.
It does make a difference.
Even when it doesn’t seem like it.

You being you... you being whole...

It fucking matters.