A Bit of My Story and Some of What They Are
In the spring of 2012, on a sun-shiny Los Angeles Tuesday, I was married to a handsome, exciting man in a private residence in Beverly Hills. Little did I know that in truth, this was the day I became legally entwined with fugitive on the run from authorities.
My new husband was wanted in six different countries for fraud and other felonies under a stolen identity. This witty, energetic and humble man was hiding from abandoned wives, finances, partners, children and others he’d harmed in countless cities around the globe. And tragically, one of his escapades involved two teenagers who lost their lives.
Rather than marrying an interesting man who seemed to not only fit my life, but seemed like a missing piece I didn’t know was possible, I’d been sucked in by the hypnotic and invisible influence of coercive control into the vortex of the surreal world of a sociopath. This is what many people call a “narcissist”, and what we could more accurately call the ultimate in “lost soul” mental health categorizations, the antisocial psychopath. A sociopath. A psychopath. A conman.
Hard to Believe
This notion is a lot to take in, and even more difficult to comprehend unless you’ve been in it. For this reason and to make “what they are” and what we call them a bit more digestible, after more than a decade of talking and writing about them and how to escape and recover from them, I’ve arrived at calling them parasitic predators. An important thing to eventually embrace in gaining knowledge of what they are is that they are permanently what they are. There is no rehabilitation of them, no repairing, no recovery. They are what they are.
In the eyes of prey, the initial impression is the particular demon creature they fall under the influence of is that they are an amazing person. Beyond amazing. Often they’re perceived as incredibly accomplished people.
Handsome, beautiful, sexy, and attractive. In many of these circumstances they seem like they just need a helping hand, have had an unfairly hard life but hold limitless potential.
Promises and a Bed of Roses
By the people who unwittingly land in their clutches they’re seen as compelling humans who bring with them gigantic promise. Often the parasitic predator, in all their amazingness, seems to be the missing piece of that person’s life that has finally fallen into place.
They are none of this. They aren’t in the room with us or on the planet for the same reasons that we are.
This collision of their deceptive purpose and our pure heart is a toxic mix of their malevolence disguised self-interest and our genuine good-faith intention. In these life-jackings the deceiver knows what’s happening. We, as their targeted prey do not.
As they hide their intent, we see the world and the moment we meet them through our great goodness. Our great goodness is already bent and twisted to compel us to do things we’d never otherwise do and to their benefit. In the end, when their façade crumbles and their house of cards life falls apart, this great goodness – the fiber of what we intrinsically are – is our saving grace.
Great Goodness in Good Faith
In my own true-crime story, the two of us, the monster and I, dubbed the day we got married, Happy Tuesday. It was a Tuesday…and ostensibly, we were happy. I made hand stamped silver key ring charms for each of us saying so. Happy Tuesday, 05-29-2012. Afterwards I hopped up and down in my living room telling a friend that this was the best thing I’d ever done.
Here’s the thing: I’d be the first to tell you that if I told you even one of the myriad oddities that occurred between the day we “decided” to get married and the day we did, you’d be screaming at me to Ruuuuuuun!!!! But, that’s what being under the spell of a psychopath is: you do thing’s you’d never otherwise do.
American Horror Story
Then on a day just a little over ten months of being “married”, I kicked him out. It wasn’t simple. It was a slo-mo odyssey into an Ed Gein or Richard Speck kind of madness.
After he was out, in fear I’d certainly never known, and knowing in every cell of my body that if he wanted to he could kill me, I promised myself that this madness would still be the best thing I’d ever done. I vowed to turn this hell and terror into a meaningful victory.
It was after I kicked the nut-bag out, I was told quite casually over dinner by a friend who is a psychologist that he was a sociopath, a psychopath, an antisocial psychopath.
These Are Not “Narcissists”
This term “narcissist” in reference to the kind of person who pursued and married me with ill intent was predominant online when searching recovery materials or information by 2016. Unfortunately, interpretations of a “narc” or “narcissist” are typically off the mark and can hinder understanding what these creatures are.
But before 2014 there was absolutely nothing to be found in support of those entrapped in this defrauding, criminal invasion through someone’s heart in a romantic “relationship”. This made even the misconceived term “narcissist” an improvement. To this day the term has been enhanced with what they really are to some degree, but still the term carries off-the mark characteristics and explanations.
These off the mark definitions misconstrue the dynamics of predator and prey and can prolong or block a full recovery. But then, we each start the restoration of our lives in the aftermath as who we are and from wherever we are in this and wherever we are is a start.
A Monster by Any Other Name
Whatever we might call them, these inhuman-humans for all their initial charisma, attraction, draw, promise, beauty, polish, and charm… These are people who live in a different world than we do, though right here among, and alongside us.
Based on a psychologist friend who let me know I’d married a “sociopath, a psychopath, an antisocial psychopath…” I searched online for more information, but found next to nothing. This great lack of real information inspired me to start talking, to write, and to take recovery, and awareness of this as far as it could go. I write plainly, directly, and clearly about these dependent and parasitic monsters and their range of effect on us from fatal danger to utter ridiculousness.
In writing my website, the podcast, and other articles and books, all the related social media, I use a pen name, Jennifer Smith. This name is meant to represent any and every single one of us gorgeously human, normal people, who might find ourselves entrapped in this very abnormal quagmire.
We Met and Married In Seven Days…for Ten Months
Before we even met face to face, just over the telephone, it started as compatibility like I’d never known. Introduced by a friend, and told his home base was Europe though he was born in Africa, he seemed sweet, and humble.
His interests and his work dovetailed with mine. It looked like I’d found all the things I’d ever wanted at any point in my life and more on every tip; things I’d not thought about as having in one place, in one person, and at one time all came together. And like any normal person, and like any normal person already under the influence of a pathological parasitic predator, I thought, why not…?
I’d had hardship and grief in my life. The usual bullying in school, divorced parents, and the usual U.S. American kid type of challenges. I’d been married and divorced. I’d gone through siblings’ marriages and divorces and some of their bouts with and deaths from cancer. Some years after my divorce, my (normal human) ex-husband was killed in a sudden horrific, and likely premeditated homicide that to this day is unrecognized by the legal system as such because the person who killed him was an on-duty law enforcement officer.
We Think We’re Getting Our Chance
Given both my usual and unusual life experiences at the point of meeting “this amazing person”, I felt I knew enough about life to know this opportunity at a marriage could work, and that this was an adventure I’d paid my dues for.
The ideas of what our life will be when we’re spell-bound by these creatures is along the lines of a fairy-tale, a storybook, a movie. This isn’t because those of us who fall into this trap are stupid or particularly naive. This is the natural influence and automatic effect of a parasitic predator even upon the most cynical of us if we are mesmerized and drawn in.
Going to City Hall, Gonna Get Married
So… we set out to be married. There was a lot to do. Filing for marriage certificates, getting documents from his country, and translations. He’d come to the U.S.A. this time around ostensibly to finish a film project and lots needed to be done with this. He needed a U.S. green card and all that entailed had to be undertaken and managed.
He had more projects he wanted to undertake. Those and finishing his film, a green card and sponsoring him for it, a marriage and all of this, meant me running errands, researching, making calls, finding solutions, driving him around Los Angeles because he had no car or U.S. license to drive, setting appointments and making purchases… and on and on. I hadn’t understood all that would be required at the outset, but once in it, it didn’t seem I could step out of it.
Promise Turns to S*it
Then, married for only ten months, the day arrived that the excitement had ramped into more than a long to-do list and challenges but complete chaos. After months of trying to untangle the increasing confusion and the sense that things were going nowhere despite my efforts… a feeling of something I couldn’t put my finger on, I landed on intense fear, mind-bending fear of whatever this… this weirdness that I was living was.
I was in something I’d never seen, known, or heard of before. For me, every part of me knew that to get out of this madness, I had to know what this was, and the truth of what he was.
Stepping into uncovering whatever this was, I engaged my Buddhist practice. I practice Nichiren Buddhism with SGI-USA and had for a few decades at the time I encountered this monster. To extract myself from the nuthouse i’d landed in, I prayed intently to pull whatever this really was into the light.
I decided to chant for three hours, for three mornings in a row; my single determination was that the truth would show us. Immediately, the first morning the truth began to roll in, like a breakthrough in the cosmic fabric of the universe.
Impossible evidence showed up. Things that are inexplicable aside from them being the result of my determination. The prayer for “truth” was answered, and answered again, and again, and with each answer, the bottom broke away from my world but the unhinged and sinking feelings now had a reason behind them and I could begin to tread water to stay above it all.
A lot went on during those three days, culminating in kicking him out. Enough went on to fill an entire book or make an entire movie, so here’s a condensed version.
Getting Him Gone
After I calmly, nearly whispered, “I want you to leave”, he stayed ten more days. One of those days, standing only inches apart, he showed me what he was. He stood face-to-face with me. A position he softly planted himself in. He allowed his true self to show and that creature looked me directly in the eye.
There’s no memory of exactly how we came to be in this physical position because he didn’t normally come near me. And by then I’d been careful to keep my head tilted down and my gaze away from him at all times. But there we were.
I showed no fear and let him look into me, but also gave away none of myself; no feelings, no emotion, no thoughts. I turned off my thoughts and impulses as quickly as they emerged in my conscious mind. I made myself an open blank as he allowed me to see, invited me to see what he was.
Surreal is a Real State of Being
The room disappeared, and my focus zoomed into this huge and horrific intimate moment. With a little internal stumble, a hiccup of a natural impulse to reach out, I made a deliberate effort to pull back from my instinct to connect. This so quiet and tiny moment illuminated how profoundly hard-wired we are to connect, in all circumstances, in all things. A beautiful and life-sustaining natural impulse, but right here, right now, a dangerous impulse to follow.
I steadied myself and looked into his eyes. As I scanned this face that I’d once thought so handsome, I saw a human-shaped vessel but filled with something else… This being in front of me was harder than stone or steel; there was nothing soft. There was no one to talk to. Just…no one. No one to reason with or lean into; no one. Nothing touchable; nothing reachable in a human way. His eyes were pools of bottomless black; blacker than black.
Evil Shows Its Face
In absolute certainty, I knew there was nothing I could say that would land anywhere within him to change anything that had happened. Nothing I could say would make me safe. I was on the edge of an abyss. His eyes were a portal to another world. One I wanted no part of. This tiny peek-in was enough.
What I saw in this moment of quiet and calm horror looking inside him, through those open windows that were eyes in a human face, was infinite endless destruction. Bottomless, endless, infinite evil. Pure evil. This thing in front of me, animated and covered in human skin and bone was pure evil. There was no mistaking it.
In the moment, of exchange, looking at him, my mind kept trying to define what I was seeing… it kept saying, there’s nothing there. There’s nothing… nothing there. It was weeks later that I understood those words in my head. In my mind trying to comprehend and recognize what this was, my repetition of there’s nothing there, where the only words my mind could form to represent what I was witnessing. What it was is that “he” was nothing. Nothing recognizably human.
When We Know…
What I also knew was that he let me see this. Invited me to see it. He let me see who he was. What he was. Where he lived. It’s an entirely different world. It’s not the world we occupy or see as reality. This place he’d always lived in and from while pretending to be here in this one with me was not a place any of us would willingly live in.
This exchange, this revelation shifted the dynamic between us into a reality worse than any imagined moment in American Horror Story. Ironically, I knew (and maybe he did too) in order to escape, to survive this, I had to step into his world.
Endless Discoveries
Just now in this moment I realize he could have intended to open that world so that I’d have less of a chance of breaking away. It could be he thought I’d be too terrified to break away. In my case if that’s so, it had the opposite effect. I knew that I was now more terrified of one more second with him than I then realized I was of getting away, of getting him gone.
It could also have been that the just didn’t care. He had gotten what he wanted and knew the jig was up anyway and didn’t care if I knew wha the was or not. As well as likely showing his true self as a warning, as a don’t you dare… Don’t dare to do anything to stop him. Well, he rather underestimated me. One of his favorite phrases about himself and others… He’d mutter in anger and spitting hatred about others who didn’t do as he wanted them to, They underestimate me…they shouldn’t underestimate me. Unmistakably a warning.
But this warning spurred me on to break away. To stop him. To take my life and his damage back.
Follow Your Gut
Following instincts I didn’t know I had but that came to my aid and in a sense took over my body, I went into an unfathomable realm of fear and at the same time rock solid focus to maneuver him out of my life.
At the risk of losing my mind, I had to do what these creatures do. I made things up. The single most significant life-saving thing I did was lie to him. And lie more.
I also said a few true things… A few weeks after he left with my annulment filed, immigration reports filed, and before changing my phone number so he could never again reach me, I sent him one final text, you fucked with the wrong person this time.
And New Horizons
Based on my own, and on the thousands of people I’ve supported and guided through their own restorations, that what we believe to be true about these hijackings, about ourselves, and about how life works determines how soon and how fully we recover. And that what we believe about life, ourselves and this event varies person to person. And, whatever we believe that to fully recover there are specific things we must come to believe.
A cornerstone to recovery is in our faith – let’s say our philosophy for living. The beliefs we hold about how life functions – whether we’re aware we have any or not inform our healing.
My thinking in these hijackings and in life is rooted in the belief in and us of the inherent power within our lives. I know that we can direct our lives and manifest unlimited potential. At the foundation of all things in my life is the philosophy of Nichiren Buddhism and the SGI. This includes the ability to create value from all things.
This belief led me straight to the determination that just as I’d thought marrying this “amazing man” was the best thing I’d ever done, I decided still – with all this – that marrying this maniac would also be the best g.d. thing I’d ever done. I would turn this to my benefit, I would take back my life and win.
These nightmares which defy description are horrors that not a single one of us deserves or deliberately or directly causes. I do hope that each and every person sucked into the vortex of one of these predatory parasites finds a way to make value from the nightmare, from the terrorizing attack. May you not stop until you get them out of your bones. Here’s to attaining a breakthrough in taking back your life. You’re worthy of every happiness.
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Please feel free to reach out, ask a question or comment. I always respond.
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True Love Scam Recovery, Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, Jennifer Smith, truelovescam.com, and narcissisticabuseunwound.com, and its agents are not professionally licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. All social media, presentations, publications, podcasts, public speaking, audio appearances, writings, and coaching are carried out under the pseudonym “Jennifer Smith”. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery et al Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you. Founded 2014 © All Rights Reserved.
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