Losses, Bosses, and Technological Incompetence

Ophelia by Alexandre Cabanel

O my royal prince, my knight-in-shining-armor, wherefore art thou?

If ever a girl in a white dress needed a rescuer to save her from drowning, it's today. I'm scanning the horizon in the hopes he'll come galloping up my street on his white stallion and carry me away to a romantic island where dogs don't bark, nephews don't run away from home, and people write messages with feathered pens, not keyboards. Technology sucks and yet, one must rise above her resistance and meet her challenges with grace and style.

It's not easy setting goals that demand more of us than we believe we're capable of achieving.

Vision. Who needs it? It's a curse and a blessing.

Ever since 2002, I've been typing messages to people on forums and doing my best to keep one foot in front of the other. But there are days when floating on lily pads would be welcome relief from the recovery journey post-narc. My self-doubt is still there, accompanied by a desire to revisit LaLaLaNd just one more time. Hey, it's kinda nice there, you know. Feeling numb, pretending to be dumb, just goin' with the flow, and meeting the N's expectations without setting or achieving our own. But once we wake up and I do mean WAKE UP TO REALITY, there's no going back.

I guess what strikes me this morning is that we'll still have unpredictable problems to resolve. There will continue to be nasty issues we'll have to deal with, uncomfortable confrontations to handle, arguments to settle, relationships to tend, demands and exigencies we can't ignore or deny. At least not for very long. It occured to me last night that despite my best intentions to Face Reality, I had secretly hoped my arrival in RealityVille would be free of crisis, chaos, drama, and woe-is-me suffering.

Nope. That was another illusion waiting for the hammer. They don't call it Recovery Work for no reason. It IS work, even after N-lightenment. ha!

I'm utterly frustrated creating a new message board. MSN decided to eliminate all groups and communities. Groups and communities that have been in existence for over a decade. For those of us who Woke Up and Grew Up on NPD message boards, this news is similar to finding out your neighborhood is slated for demolition and there's no recourse, no picketing, no power to reverse the boss's decision. Losing MSN message boards is a tremendous loss to people who've invested years of their lives in supporting and receiving support from peers.

Oh well, (sighing in Ophelia fashion now) there's nothing to be done but accept the inevitable and build a new home elsewhere. Hopefully before the wrecking crew arrives.

The truth is, losing our MSN Web of Narcissism Forum is another loss to shoulder and frankly, my shoulders are drooping after counting up numerous losses in my fifty-something life. How much can a girl take before she lumbers towards the lily pond and dives in head first? My luck though, I'd meet up with a frog and he'd promise to save me from my fate. This time...well, this time I hope I'm less likely to see a prince instead of a toad!

So after logging-in to the new forum this morning, the new one I've been working on for the past two weeks, it was horrifying to see that half my website name had escaped the header. Left my monitor completely leaving nothing behind but "The Web of Na". Well, maybe that’s not so bad. The Web of Na is fairly descriptive of what people need to do when they meet up with a narcissist. Tell ‘em “na” and move on.

But I sincerely hope ‘rcissism’ didn’t target someone else’s website and decide to shack up there instead. Could be a nasty surprise for a web mistress in cyberspace somewhere:

RecoverYourJoyrcissism

GaleWarningsrcissism

HolyrcissismWaterSalt

MyMommarcissismOnlyRaisedOneDummy

Or best yet maybe: US.govrcissism

Where’d that 'rcissism' fella go anyway? If any of you find 'rcissism' roaming around the Internet today, will you please tell him to get his butt back where he belongs? Maybe it's time to call the Internet Police and file a missing person report.

Hugs all,

CZBZ

P.S. Our new Web of Na forum is located here: WebofNarcissism.com