usually i’m more of a lurker when it comes to fandom spaces, but for some reason i find myself having strong opinions about a certain wizard.

at this point i am very hesitant to follow any g@le themed blogs (or write posts about anything else other than his romance) cause imo a lot of people miss the mark when it comes to their interpretation of him. either reducing him to his domestic side/being the “perfect husband” or putting the focus on his hubris and thirst for power alone… and sadly a lot of his nuance is lost in the process.

Where all this is going

7.27.20

This blog, like my mind, is all over the place. I imagine it's difficult to make sense of the message.

I am in the midst of two separate grief processes, both of them for the same person. For over a year now I have been grieving the loss of the Rey I loved, since the day he cut me out of his life after months of progressively worse and worse abuse. After he left, I began searching for answers to help me understand what I had been through. I realized that Rey suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. While he was never clinically diagnosed (narcissists rarely are), he fits the diagnostic criteria 100%, and what is known about this disorder predicts his actual behavior so well that there is no doubt in my mind about the diagnosis.

NPD is the result of a sort of developmental brain damage caused by childhood trauma, especially parental abandonment, abuse, and neglect, all of which Rey suffered from a young age. The child's brain does not grow in a normal fashion, but rewires for survival. Specifically, the part of the brain that receives empathy is missing. Without empathy, they cannot feel compassion, and they cannot feel love, at least not in the way we do. Narcissists are also abusers. They abuse the people closest to them in a variety of ways, following some very predictable patterns. Their abusive behavior gets worse as they get older. My goal in this post is not to give a comprehensive overview of NPD or narcissistic abuse. That information is all over the internet if you need it. 

Narcissists are emotional con artists. And when you realize this, when it hits home that the person you love with all of your heart and soul does not and cannot love you back the way they led you to believe, it is a betrayal like no other. You grieve for the suffering they put you through and for the love they pretended to offer you but could not deliver. And you rage, because they take so much from you and mind-fuck you so hard. The truth is, there was a time, a long period of time, about 6 months, when I wanted him dead. I wished for him to suffer like he had made me suffer, and I hoped for him to die so that he would stop hurting me.

I did not expect him to go along with this plan. But he did. By then, I no longer wished him harm. I had begun to forgive him, although it was, and is, a messy process. When he came back into my life at the end of January, I saw that I had gotten my wish, he had been suffering, and I didn't want that for him any more. He asked me to forgive him, but he still kept lying to me about everything, gaslighting me. I understood his pathology at this point, and his limitations. Still, I kept pushing back, telling him truths he didn't want to hear and wouldn't hear, but that I needed to say. I was afraid of him, traumatized, but also so tired of crying that I didn't care any more what happened to me. I finally just said, Lie to me, manipulate me, use me, kill me if you want, just make it stop. Make the wound where you tore out my soul stop bleeding. 

I was also terrified for him, because I sensed the danger he was in. I asked nothing of him except a way to get in touch with him so I wouldn't worry needlessly (because his phone had been cut off); he refused me that, just because it was the one thing I asked for.

And then he went and got himself killed.

It took a long time for it to sink in, for my feelings to settle. His death was a 180 degree turn at high speed. Death sanitized him, made him a better person than he was, first in other peoples' minds, even those closest and most loyal to me; but also, gradually, in my own mind. Now I had another Rey to mourn. That really hit home when the "interventions" started (see my previous post about my spiritual revelation). Now, I could grieve publicly. People understood what had happened to me. It had a name, a set a characteristics: I am a grieving mother. This is a whole separate grief process on top of the other, ongoing one. It is cleaner, and slightly less lonely; hopelessly permanent, but ironically offering its own kind of mercy. It has both complicated and enlightened the other.

So why expose all this pain and craziness for all the world to see?

For one, because while there is a lot of information about NPD out there, there aren't a lot of people telling their stories. Humans need stories to provide a context for information. No one should have to go through what I went through. Everyone should learn how to recognize narcissists when they meet them and to understand the danger they represent. This is essential knowledge today, because narcissism is a pathology that is spreading like wildfire in our society, and will continue to do so until deep social change occurs and generations of healing can take place. Even if you are a secure person with good self-esteem who sees through bullshit well (which I was), the right narcissist, under the right circumstances, can get around your defenses if you don't really understand the disorder and its implications. And, those who have already been victimized need stories they can identify with. I found the support groups often did me more harm than good because they get mired down in dogma. We all have to make meaning of our experiences in our own way. I hope to offer an alternative way of thinking about these experiences to those who need one.

But there is a bigger picture here too, which weaves its way through my story. Some themes I have been drawn to throughout this journey and even earlier, and some I have only recently opened my eyes to. I have been a metaphysical thinker since I was a teenager. I have been aware for some time (and can credit my university studies a few years ago for some of this) of the power of language, of narrative and metaphor, in shaping human perception and behavior. I have experienced during the past year-plus how little critical thinking exists in the field of mental health. All of the experiences I've had seem to be lining up like stepping stones to somewhere. I have to follow them.

These are the themes I hope to address in this blog and other work I do in the future:

psychological/emotional attachment,

spiritual connection and metaphysical idealism,

how we co-create reality with each other,

pathological narcissism and related disorders,

the toxic individualism of our society, and

the places where any of these things intersect.

That doesn't mean it's not going to continue to be a mess. I am sharing the process with you here, including the ugly parts.

Feeling low

My best friend visited me at uni last weekend, coming for 16 hours overnight to go clubbing and see me. He literally had 2x 5-hour coach journeys the mad bastard. I told all my uni friends about this two weeks in advance and asked them to be there and to hang out and go out with us. On the night only 2 out of the 10 were really there. The others all fucked off with various excuses. I can’t put into words just how at home and happy I felt having my mum visit me last week and then my bestfriend too. There was no drama, easy conversation and just relaxation in general.

When I talk to my uni friend AS he is unbelievably insecure. Every thing he brings up in conversation is some kind of masculinity competition I swear to god. I eat my dinners with him as we are both catered and every night he talks about how many push ups, pull ups and sit ups he’s done, how many fucking nuts he’s eaten and why they are such great food, complains about the same fucking girl who he’s already been rejected by but continues to be her best friend all day. When he went on this stupid camping trip over the weekend he walked 90km in 3 days. He talks about how it was an ‘adventure’ and how the ‘danger’ made him feel revived and alive. He talked as if he’d done something amazing I should be in awe of. Seriously though? I wouldn’t give a flying fuck if he’d climbed Snowdonia. The danger he was in? It was just him being a fucking idiot e.g. walking down a marshy hillside AT NIGHT or being subjected to only eating beans all weekend WHEN HE COULD HAVE JUST BROUGHT SOMETHING ELSE. There’s a weird pretentiousness that some people have about the outdoors and he most definitely has it. I love camping and hiking myself don’t get me wrong, but in my opinion it should be a relaxing experience focused on talking to people and campfires and NOT walking all day long from dawn until after dusk when it’s too dark to make a fire and focusing on photography all day to the point that you don’t fully experience it. He just won’t shut up about it either but he clearly can’t take a fucking hint that I actually respect him less for this stupid excursion rather than more.

The next issue on my mind has to be my girl failures. I consider myself to be pretty optimistic about the future in general. Not until recently had I considered that I might not even have a successful romantic/sexual interaction with a girl before the end of uni. This situation is dire though. I’m not meeting many girls at the moment but even at times when I AM meeting many, I don’t get anywhere. I don’t know why either. I’m no longer either too forward or too shy, I try to flirt (though I suck at it I guess), about half the girls I’m into are quite rude to me etc. They say that you need confidence to be successful romantically but how can I have that kind of confidence when I have only failed and failed and failed my entire life? I kissed a girl on a summer camp type of thing when I was 15 but that’s it. I’m 20 at the end of the year and I’ve made no progress since then. It hurts me internally so badly because my girl failures have always been at the forefront of my mind. I’ve never been able to get fully engrossed in a hobby or subject that I’d forget girls and so it’s always been a painful hindrance to my existance. What’s more, nobody seems to give a shit that I don’t get with anyone. My friends don’t give me advice because they’re too self-centred for that shit and often it feels like they think they’re in competition with me over everything rather than being up for helping me. I’ve been feeling very low for the whole last week except when my mum and friend came to visit. Literally both days they were coming I was hoping they wouldn’t come because I wanted to be alone but then the moment they arrived I felt so happy. 

When I see and talk to my real best friends I genuinely have a warm feeling in my heart. My best-friend/crush CF who lives on the other side of the world snapchats me still. I kid you not that girl is so pretty not only on the outside but she is such a kind soul with a beautiful creativity I can not resist. When She takes a good photo of herself I cry a little. My heart skips a beat and I can’t help but admire her face. Maybe that sounds weird but when I’m looking at her picture, even during a hectic pre-drinks, I’m in a warm bubble and it always makes me smile. With some people on snapchat you just delay opening their snaps because you can’t be fucked to reply yet or maybe you want to wait the appropriate time. With her, I either open it immediately or if I’m very busy I save it for when I need something to just calm me down. I do think I’m somehow in love with her which is silly but even my drunk self thinks so. Drunk-me has declared on multiple occasions that I’ll marry her.

On a totally different note I want to talk about national identity. I claim 5 which makes this very confusing. By heritage on one side of the family I’m Greek. I’m happy to be called Greek and I love Greece - the place, the language, the people, the food. The issue is that it’s my mother’s side so nobody thinks I’m Greek which means they’re always surprised when I defend it in arguments and talk about my love for the culture. I joined the Greek society at uni in the hopes that I might get more in tune with the culture here but unfortunately that went terribly. I just feel so alienated when I go to the society meetings because everyone just speaks in fluent Greek and ignores the ones like myself who are not fluent. On top of that like half of the people there are Cypriot so they have a weird fucking accent which makes understanding them even harder. There’s literally no point me being there and they make me feel like an outsider. Even though I’m on a Greek intramural football team, the other members just ignore the fact that I don’t speak it for the most part. This is exacerbated by the fact that I’m 100% the worst player on the team though I’ve greatly improved and I know for sure that one of them is always mouthing me off in Greek behind my back. I just don’t belong. Similarly I joined Balkan society cos my Dad’s side of the family is Serbian. It’s such a small society and spread out over different ages that I can’t just blend in-it’s shitty af. I have two Bosnian friends at the uni and they joked about how I still can’t speak the language a couple weeks ago. They also understand Balkan culture so much better than I ever could and wear adidas trackies unironically. Again, I just don’t belong with this crowd. I’m just not even like the other Serbian members of the family because they are so aggressive and nationalistic and all that but there’s no way I could ever be that. I don’t have a passion for the motherland, I don’t enjoy plum brandy moonshine, I don’t speak the language, I haven’t been in protests against NATO and the UN bombing Serbia. Because of my surname, I get called a Serb a lot. Lots of annoying nicknames which I don’t enjoy if I’m honest, even if they are lighthearted. Things like being compared to Vidic (who’ll fucking murder ya) or Slobodan Milosevic, being called a vampire, serial killer, genocidal maniac, squatting slav etc. etc. It’s just not me and it made me feel like I was not really welcomed fully into being a Brit even though I was born in London and lived there my whole life. My accent and my surname prevent me from being seen as British by pretty much everyone. My accent is a totally fucked mixture of various English ones and then Canadian + American too. The North Americans give me strange uncomfortable looks when I try to say I’m one of them because I never really know their culture in detail enough to fully be one despite possessing citizenship. To sum up I don’t feel like I’m any one of my nationalities and I would gladly be seen as any of the 5 except Serbian - the only one I get labelled as thanks to my surname - as it is something I will never truly be.

This kind of leads me on to my fake exterior. I think I’ve been over-compensating with gimmicks and characteristics so I could distract people from who I really am. Things like making jokes about the peculiarities and eccentricities of my Serbian family, wearing cowboy boots/ slavic football kit/ sunglasses to the club, only drinking absolutely terrible novelty factor drinks such as Buckfast wine and WKD or the big one which I can’t help telling new people about: my gollum impression. I do all this random shit because I think it makes me seem exciting and fun to be around but when I run out of them, I realise I’ve made friends who don’t really know about my serious side. When I put away the gimmicks they still expect me to be overly-outgoing and excitable so when they see me in either a normal state or a low-one, they seem to leave me alone to the point that I get very lonely. I don’t feel like I can talk to anybody about any of my problems because I only hang out with these people when I’m being weird. I can’t live my life normally with my uni friends because I don’t live in their flat all together. I don’t get little interactions whilst making breakfast or doing some work. All i get is pre-drinks and clubbing. I do enjoy it when I get people on their own and we have proper conversations. I’m good at one on one chats whilst we do things together which is why my date with that girl a few months ago went so well despite us being diametrically opposed in every aspect of life. I just feel like something’s missing here. This loneliness enhances my desire to find a girl for once. I genuinely feel so sad all the time at the moment. At school I didn’t use gimmicks and an overly-outgoing side - I was only myself and serious around strangers and then friendly among friends. It resulted in me having very few friends and feeling very isolated but now me trying the other way around helped me make lots of friends initially but then has not led to as many deep meaningful connections as I would have liked.

What really doesn’t help any of this shit is the fact that I am a catered uni student. Unfortunately this means I don’t fucking get lunch served to me BUT I ALSO DON’T GET ANY FUCKING KITCHEN APPLIANCES APART FROM A MICROWAVE WITH WHICH I CAN COOK. This means I’m fucking starving most of the time and when I get hungry I get emotional - especially angry or sad. What am I supposed to do? Pot noodle is so unhealthy and I don’t like eating pre-made meals out of a microwave very much. I really miss having the opportunity to make my own food I can’t tell you. I eat so much junk food just because of the lunch situation. Luckily I have a fucking steam engine of a metabolism so I don’t gain weight from it but imagine how healthy I could be if I was able to prepare fresh food. Oh my. So sad.

                                  RABASTAN LESTRANGE

♕ II: CHARACTER INFORMATION ♕

FULL NAME: Rabastan Haverill Lestrange

FACECLAIM: Gaspard Ulliel

DATE OF BIRTH: 10 April 1950

HOGWARTS HOUSE & YEAR: Slytherin 1961 to 1968

GENDER & PRONOUNS: Male. He / Him / His.

SEXUALITY / SHIPS / ANTI-SHIPS: Aromantic Bisexual. Much as I should probably put Rabastan/Chemistry here, the fact of the matter is that Rabastan fully expects and accepts the fact that sooner or later some poor pureblood brood mare is going to be thrown at him so that he can do his duty and populate the world with more little Lestranges etc etc etc. So Rabastan/Convenience is the ship to sail. 

OCCUPATION: Socialite (albeit one less keen to be discussed in the gossip columns than his peers). He is an amateur architect and was a professional boxer up until his 25th birthday.

ALLIANCE: Death Eater

POLITICAL VIEWS: Unabashed and volatile purist. Might as well have “Magic is Might” tattooed on his chest.

Hilariously, Rabastan, entirely straight facedly and with the blase of one remarking on the color of the sky, has frequently stated that he’s not biased. However it is often the case that those who feel the need to qualify that they “aren’t prejudiced or anything, but...” tend to be just that. Overall, it’s a spectacular lie, though not a deliberate one and therein betrays the empiricism with which he thinks about the world. In Rabastan’s mind, prejudice has nothing to do with the way he regards “mudbloods, muggles, and blood traitors”, it’s an issue of bald fact and therein are his protests and his vocal purism able to co-exist. Muggles are sub-human. End of story. In the case of one, Rabastan H. Lestrange, arguing that muggles are on the same level as wizards would be as successful as advocating that animals are on the equal standing as humans. Rebuttals that have feelings and build civilizations and cities are pointless; to draw from a exchange once held, “ants can build an anthill, that doesn’t mean they’re not insects.” 

When one has other’d muggles as thoroughly as Rabastan Lestrange has, muggleborns are an unacceptable infringement upon the natural world order. They shouldn’t exist. Certainly, they shouldn’t be inducted into the ranks of wizard-kind with open arms and all acceptance as if they were due a place here. Their blood is tainted and their inclusion in society is a contagion. 

On down the hierarchy...if pureblood are the template, half-blood are a mold with something subtle blemished in it. Unconsciously he’ll attribute any fault and flaw in talent or body with that hereditary dilution. His ideas about half-breed follow similar patterns. He doesn’t approve of werewolves and vampires and other “creatures” being brought into the ranks, and thinks it’s a joke to give them the idea that they have any sway.  

KNOWN FACTS: 

TRUTH.   Rabastan was expected to enter the Ministry after Hogwarts, but rebelled against paternal orders and entered the realm of sporting fights instead. He abruptly retired in 1970, after the death of his mother. 

FALSE RUMOR.  He was supposed to marry Andromeda Black, but was jilted when she eloped with the muggleborn Theodore Tonks.

 TRUTH.  He has an extremely contentious relationship with the Head of the DMLE's Auror Office and has been a prime suspect in several cases though never ones with substantive enough evidence to even warrent a questioning, let alone anything more definitive.

BOGGART: Rodolphus’ corpse.

In the interest of heading off any sentimentalists, it must be emphasized that this has nothing to do with affection or brotherly love. For all that Rabastan frequently can’t stand the old nag (or rather, one of the reasons for why he can’t), younger brother sees elder brother as invincible. Utterly. A frustrating but inescapable constant. A dead Rodolphus means something has gone very very wrong with the world. 

AMORTENTIA: Kindling after the fire's been put out. Air after it just snowed. Expensive perfume.

PERSONALITY TRAITS: At least four detailed personality traits

Cruel

Much of Rabastan’s perceived fanatical hatred of muggleborns springs from his tendency to be particularly cruel to anything less than pureblood. This is a textbook case of misattribution. Rabastan is cruel. Period. The fact that channeling his considerable penchant for ruthlessness into the offensive against "mudbloods and muggles" is more productive in the grand scheme of his ultimate goals is just convenient happenstance. One need look no further than his hard handling of Alecto Carrow to see that, when given license, Rabastan's brutality is enthusiastic and undiscerning. He naturally favors violence as a course over any other and while he knows that blood and pain isn’t always the best option he stands by the position that it’s always the fastest option.  

Temperamental

Beneath the brittle veneer of gentility bred into him by generations of self-proclaimed aristocrats, Rabastan is all sound and fury. As a Death Eater, he is a force of nature. Titanic boundless emotion and unashamed to show as much. With violence as his domain to control, it'd be simple to assume reckless, berserker rage on his end when it comes to fighting and leave it there. He's nothing so straightforward, so pat. Reality proves Rabastan to be a muddled study in duality. War itself is rarely anything personal; holding a grudge is not characteristic to Rabastan, nor niggling over personal annoyances. His moods and impulses are changeable, fickle, and rarely static. 

Irreverent

He lacks in respect or reverence for anything; even the Cause, his Lord, and his own narrow world view. Nothing is sacred, not even the things that he holds most important. He is sacrilegious and thoroughly stubborn. With few exceptions, trying to tell Rabastan what to do is a study in futility. Even asking him to do something for you is a useless endeavor unless you have a very excellent reason why he should, presented lecture style complete with well calculated statistics and visual materials.

Charismatic

If he were capable of letting himself out of his own head space a little more, Rabastan would make a superb leader. When he means to be, he is good with people. His social intuition and charm are one of the few edges he has on his prodigal brother. Young school aged Rabastan was a master of charming professors, but even when not exerting considerable effort, he has a magnetism that often comes pack and parcel with the irreverent and the impulsive. Broad grinning, good humored, and quick to laughter in the way that Rodolphus is decidedly not, when he’s in one of his oddly good moods Rabastan is an easy creature to get along with. At least until, eventually ( inevitably ), that latent brutality bleeds through.

Loyal

One is not elevated into the ranks of The Dark Lord’s inner circle without at least a certain degree of demonstrative fanatical devotion. For all that he is fickle and bitter, mocking and disrespectful, Rabastan is faithful down to the bone. If there is a sin in his own self-centric religion it’s betrayal. While it's a fair fear that Rabastan might stab you, one can at the least rest easy in the confidence that he won't stab you in the back.  

SPECIAL SKILLS: Rabastan is thoroughly a fighter, with magic and without. He excels, particularly, in wandless magic; something he considers the most primal example of proof in the power of pure blood and raw impact. He’s a remarkable artist (surprise!) and a mathematical savant, particularly in the areas of cartesian geometry.

BIOGRAPHY: It was decided, even before he was delivered screaming into the world, that the second child to come of Odilia and Rivalen Lestrange's union would be claimed almost entirely as his mother's. The firstborn, Rodolphus, was his father's son and the family's heir, and what maternal instincts Odilia had were not sated by the time her husband usurped his upbringing. And so Rabastan became hers rather than the family's; the mother-son bond was quickly sparked and forged into something so durable that the years did little in the way of lessening the attachment. His father, a hard disciplinarian, had denied Rodolphus such mothering, seeing it as a form of affection that would no doubt soften both the mind and constitution of the boy, and so automatically saw his second son as something inherently weaker due to an upbringing he himself had allowed to continue unchecked.

And thus the family lines were drawn. He's a greedy little brat, of course -- one who ultimately turns into a greedy bastard. (Though not little. Definitely not that.) Their father's attention is tantamount, is the moon to their mother's sea, the pull to all their tides. Rabastan demands their father's eyes, nudges Rivalen with baby-strong hands, callous adolescence, and finally sullen respect. He makes himself impossible to ignore by dint of being an obnoxious shit, grinning as though he owns an entire set of especially bad secrets, even as he bows his shaggy head and offers deference in place of snide asides. Deference from the younger Lestrange would look like rebellion on anyone else; he doesn't just walk the thin line, but bounds down its path: sure-footed, cocky, smiling the radiant smile which all but forces others to return it in kind. 

The template of Rabastan's relationship with his father was set; so too that of the fraternal dynamic, with Rabastan going on to make an art of swiping, prodding, and testing just how abundant Rodolphus' supply of stony-faced patience really was. Rivalen tries to whip it out of him. Second son laughs and laughs, smirking through rivulets of blood and tears to further rankle his father. Why? Because he can. Because he cares. Because insolence tastes coppery-sweet, and if he can't be the favorite son, then he'll damned well make himself unforgettable. In those long days of disobedience, he escapes by diving into his mother's cold heart. His first war is with his father. His mother, though -- soft but flinty Odilia -- she teaches him to reconcile for the greater good. He hides their lessons in his windstorm heart.

His tenure as a Hogwarts student was a matter of public record. Slytherin was both relief and annoyance, Rodolphus' own wearing of the green factoring into both, and Rabastan proceeded to forge a scholastic career in which he maintained the barest minimum of a relationship with his brother and while his instructors seemed at first reluctant to forget that he was Rodolphus’ younger sibling, but caved to the younger Lestrange’s unique brand of charm and incivility. He got into fights often and was immune to attempts at correction, but completed school for 5 NEWTs under his belt.

The question of his future thereafter was a terse discussion at family dinner table. A jeering statement that he was waiting for elder brother to set the standard and mother’s elbow jutting into the space between father and youngest son to keep them from crossing proverbial battle lines. True to his dedication to obstinacy, Rabastan’s course veers deliberately away from any trajectory intended by father or brother. Except in one area and that was swearing fealty to The Dark Lord. 

CONNECTIONS: 

Rodolphus Lestrange

As a babe and a boy, Rabastan assumes Rodolphus knows the way only a parent knows: everything, and everyone. He makes effort to be an occasional thorn in his brother’s side, a point of provocation and frustration because breaking that poker face would be the ultimate achievement. But in the end it all boils down to admiration, to idolization. In his own contrary, heavy-handed way, he needs his brother's grounding presence more than he will ever care to admit. At the end of the day, should he ever take his antics to far he’ll bend his pride enough to go to this man who will ever be the favorite, the wise one, the safe and strong one. Says "I'm sorry," says "brother", and they are mended.

Regulus Black

It seems like unsubstantiated suspicion, but Rabastan is all gut and instinct and his say Regulus Black lacks in conviction and cut-throat both. This generation of Blacks has as many traitors as they do members who stayed on the proper path and he’s waiting to see which way their no-longer-spare heir will tip the scales.