Love letter to lost me

I know melodramatic title.

I'm coming to terms with the end of an abusove relationship with a covert narcissist.

I have low moments, where I say silently to myself "I miss him."

Now friends and family have said to me "what's wrong with you---how can you be."

Well I researched that very question, and the term is called -trauma bonding-

Over the years and early days I was groomed, groomed in to needing him. If he was silent then it was something I had done and I needed to do more to make it up. Systemically, it wears down my self esteem, independence, and ability to function of. Y own free will.

Many of the people I talk to in the support group, have all had similar experiences.

In the old days it worked on a cycle.

Love bombing.
-I love you
I miss you
-your the only one who really gets me
This is my girlfriend
-I hate having to leave, I wish we could just stay like this.
ETC ETC ETC....

Then comes devaluation.
-silent treatment
-triangulation

Leaving me wondering what I had done, that suddenly he stopped talking to me.
What had I done that he's curt to me
What had I done!?

I remember googling "what does it mean if he is giving you the silent treatment?"

I hadn't experienced that before in any other relationship.

Then out of the blue he'd return. Apologies and affection with him.

Then just as sudden as everything else, I would be discarded.
I remember the first discard, and yes the first.
It was three days after I said "I love you" for the first time.
He said it back as he held me, laying in bed.

Then three days passed and I was told to go away never speak to him again and that he didn't love
Me.

It crushed me. I felt like I had just lost the love of my life.
What had I done?

That's a phrase, I would continue to say and ask over five years.

I grieved, a grief that felt similar to the grief I felt at the death of my Father.

Months passed and he returned, a passionate affair one night....followed by silence and cruelty.

It's taken a long time to come to terms with what I really mean when I say I miss him.

I miss the man I fell I love with. The mask he pretended to be to win my affections.

He then would let the mask fall away and reveal the monster he was.
In the following early days, I used to think that the mask was the real him and the monster was fake.
I thought that the real him/the man I fell for was caged behind the monster. Needed help to be freed.
And the monster held him back.

But it time to realize that that the man I loved is not real. He never was real. That he never existed.
That the monster was the real him all along and is the only thing that exists.

It takes time, slowly, to heal from all the years of verbal and emotional abuse. To remind myself of the pain and to learn from it and not ever forget, because in the weak moments I remember the "I'm sorry's" after the abusive moment we're not real and was deigned to make me not leave.

Grow and learn, and hopefully heal.