Unavailable. It Used To Be a Simple Word.

It’s a simple word, unavailable.  I’ve never given the word much thought until it happened to show up on my phone yesterday as it was ringing.  Funny thing, I don’t ever recall seeing my phone with the message unavailable as it was ringing.  As I sat there contemplating,  simply staring at it, a number of thoughts crossed my mind.

The first thought was, “Is this a hoovering attempt?”.  Having been divorced from my narcissistic ex-wife for nearly a year, I haven’t had any real contact with her other than a few misguided attempts by her to reach out to me.  The manner in which she has reached out has been very smart, in other words, she could deny they were attempts to communicate with me.  Things like returning relatively unimportant photos to me via envelope, having a bank contact me while she is on the other end of the line, just very disconnected ways of forcing me to think about her.  Was it her simply doing the fake hangup (and it did only ring 3 or 4 times), or was it me simply wanting it to be her?  Regardless, she is gone and isn’t coming back.  Unavailable…

The next thought, and this is one that I still struggle with, is how those suspected or actual hoovering attempts make me feel.  I know that I should NOT want her trying to contact me, and I have done very well at not responding in any way to her hidden attempts at reaching me.  At the same time, there is part of me that still desires it.  I tell myself over and over that I want nothing to do with her and I know that I honestly can never be with her again.  With that said, I still find myself wishing that she would reach out, that she would just try to make contact.  I know it is the co-dependent me still trying to rationalize that she isn’t so bad and that I still love and desire the false self that she created.  Luckily, I am educated enough about it now to know that any contact is bad contact.  Sadly, that doesn’t take away the hidden wish that somehow, someway, she could just “fix” herself and become normal.  Love is blind and in this case, very one-sided love.  I’m not so needy as to ever try to see if she can fix herself, knowing full well that she can’t.  Unavailable…

Unavailable is also a really good description of the narcissist themselves.  Seriously, if there is one word that you should and could attribute to them that can save you a lot of pain and trouble, it would be unavailable.  There is nothing about them that is available.  Oh sure, in the beginning they make it seem like they are COMPLETELY available, that whatever they have to possibly give is yours for the taking.  But that’s not them you are seeing, that is you.  They are simply projecting your wishes and desires right back to you, essentially making your dream person available to you.  That isn’t them, that is a mirage, an image, and soon enough it is going to go away.  The real unavailable them becomes oh so present when the devaluing and discarding begins.  They truly are unavailable in every sense of the word.

Finally, the word unavailable fits me.  I appear to be, quite honestly, unavailable.  I’m not sure how else to categorize it.  I had yet another date just last night, and guess how that went?  Nope, no spark, no wow factor, no feelings of hope, just another checklist comparison, another evening of communicating with another human being but little else.  Every time I have a date, I spend hours afterward critiquing how it went, evaluating her reactions, how I felt, what I thought she was communicating verbally and non-verbally.  Each time, I seem to come to the same conclusion, and that is she simply isn’t what I want, or think that I want if that makes sense.  I know it is absolutely the wrong way to frame it, but this one wasn’t my ex either.  I am not talking about the unempathetic, guiltless, non-emotional part of my ex.  Rather I compare them all to the idealizing, love bombing version of my ex, that dream woman who every man desires.  I KNOW that person doesn’t exist and never existed, but having lived through that phase of the relationship, that has become the standard by which all others seem to be judged.  It has left me simply unavailable to the normal woman.

Having been in a relationship with a narcissist changes a person in so many ways.  A few years back, seeing the word “unavailable” would have had zero impact on me, its just a word after all.  Now, everything seems to get looked at in a different way, an unfair way.  A word as simple as unavailable doesn’t deserve to be dissected and looked at from so many angles.  I shouldn’t be feeling unavailable, hoping for something that likely isn’t possible, the perfect relationship.  I also shouldn’t be hoping for unanswered contact from a psychopath, but that truly pathetic part of me still longs for it, even though I wouldn’t respond to it.  Things in my life are improving, time is having the desired effect and lessening the sting of emotions, but it’s not happening soon enough for me.  That emotionally sound place that I long to be is unavailable.

Unavailable.  One day, it’s prior simplicity will return.  As opposed to all of its current iterations, I desire for it to simply mean that I am unavailable for the narcissist and all of their BS.  I’m inching closer everyday.