It’s a cool but sunny Sunday morning. I’m showing up here to write my post for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. These days I’m so easy distracted. My mind feels fractured, like a cracked mirror. Images and ideas are splintered. I have to work hard to bring my brain back to attention. Today I want to talk about what I know about narcissists. I’ve spent this past month learning about them. It is important because I live next door to one. She is what I know is true – a malignant narcissist. How do I know that? Here are some of the ways.

• She, like all narcissists, is controlling, have low levels of empathy and high levels of entitlement. It’s her way or no way.
• She has been destructive. She has ripped up signs and fencing in my yard. She has kicked over my flower pot. She has sprayed pesticide in my yard.
• She enjoys harming others. She likes to tell me that all the neighbours hate my yard. She has thrown my landscaping rocks at me on two occasions. She has stirred up trouble for the ladies across the street with their neighbour  whom she has befriended. She doesn’t like their yard either. She went up to a couple on the sidewalk and asked, Why are you looking at that ugly yard?
• She’s cold, calculating and very good at lying. She tells me she studies all by city bylaws. She knows alot of people in city hall and also the police dept.  She calls us bullies when it is she who is doing the bullying. She tells me my fence is her fence. All these things she says to me, she doesn’t say to the police.
• She has exhibited anger, rage, harshness – the attitude of NOBODY MESSES WITH ME.
• She is authoritarian, forceful, insistent and dominant. She will not allow me to speak so it is laughable when people advise me to talk things over with her. Last fall the police said that she would not allow him to talk. She talks over him. This was before he had talked to us. We did not influence his perception. I have not been able to even yell over her. She is so good at her game.

I’m heeding Dr. Les Carter’s advice. I have developed a healthy fear of her. She can and has come at me. I have not ever or will ever win an argument. How can I when she won’t allow me to speak? She is very fixated on my yard and me. She is very vigilant and notices any little thing I do in the area next to her driveway. She retaliates even though it is on my own property. I would say she has an altered sense of reality. I don’t expect her to change, not for the better. She has gotten worse. I will avoid her altogether if possible but I will not let her bully me.

I do need to stand my ground and not let her push my boundaries. I do live on a busy street. The police liason officer has visited us a couple of times since last fall. Neighbours have a way of noticing. I will be diligent in holding onto my own morals and in practicing good mental health. That will be another post – maybe tomorrow.