Introduction
For over three decades Victoria King lived life in her husband’s Narcissist amusement park, riding her Carnie’s roller coaster of abuse and enduring his daily choices of torment, producing the heart-stopping startle of Wack a Mole games at a state fair’s midway. Like peeling cotton candy from your face, living with an abuser is sticky and messy. Each encounter made Victoria feel she needed to shower to wash off her abuser’s slimy control residue. Her husband offered an array of mental, emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse, like cheap blue-plate specials that sound good from the menu but taste foul. Denials of his behavior saw him deceiving professional counselors by promoting the idea the problems were hers, not his, ideas too often swallowed. At church her abuser parlayed “apologies, repentance and forgiveness” to con naïve leaders and congregants alike. It took Victoria a long painful time to discover her brokenness was not the same as his sickness, but she eventually escaped her Sociopath Narcissist’s control. But jumping from her Carnie’ Merry-Go-Round brought retaliation from her abuser, as he used cruel, calculated parental alienation tactics to break bonds with her children.
In sections called Dear Younger Me, Victoria offers up sage advice, in case you too are riding a Narcissist’s roller coaster.