The Psychopath: A True Story(49)
He went on to say that in Trump’s case it is not a single condition at work but rather that Trump shows a quartet of conditions that add up to malignant narcissism, a term that was originally devised to characterise Hitler. Garner stated the four conditions as ‘narcissism, paranoia and antisocial personality disorder, with a dash of sadism thrown in’.
I loved doing the show with Jon Ronson. The stories he tells are funny because they recognise the vulnerability in the human condition whilst also being shockingly recognisable. I sat backstage each night and laughed at each story he related even though I had heard it over and over again. We did the tour again in 2017 in different cities, and bigger venues (up to 2,000 people in the audience) which was again sold out everywhere we went. It was phenomenal being able to sit onstage and make people laugh about such a serious subject. It was amazing as well to hear 2,000 people gasp – interestingly enough there were certain points in the show at which the women gasped in unison and other points where the men did, clearly showing what different aspects they each found shocking. I felt completely comfortable talking about the issues, something that often surprises people, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I felt. I also found the show quite cathartic; talking about my story over and over again each night helped me to see it for what it was, something that happened in the past.
My fascination with psychopaths and narcissists grew as I wanted to understand more and more about the subject, and the questions that the audience asked in the second part of the show helped me to expand on that curiosity, especially when they asked questions I had not heard or thought about before.
People asked me about the other victims and if we kept in touch and were surprised to find out about the private Facebook group where we can all chat and keep tabs on what Will Jordan is doing. They asked about the children and whether they talk to each other, about Will Jordan’s parents and if I thought they were psychopaths too. (I suspect that his father might be, or at the very least an apath.)
I remember one chap on the last night asking if I would consider marrying again and I replied that we had only just met but if he was interested he should keep in touch. The audience roared with laughter.
OPPOSITES ATTRACT
I had spent six years with a man who was severely psychopathic and the question ‘Why me?’ reverberated around my mind. How had this all happened? What was it about me that made me an attractive target? There had to be some reason, something about my past that made me the perfect mark. Will Jordan had crawled under my defences and into my life and pushed his way under my skin like a poisonous splinter. Day by day, pushing further in, bonding me to him through love-bombing, gaslighting me into distrusting myself, and using reframing, projection and word salad to keep me hooked – every manipulation technique available to brainwash me into compliance. Looking back, it was still hard to comprehend how I was so totally taken in. I needed to understand my own role in all of this. I needed to know what made me accept his behaviour when others wouldn’t have done so.
It’s disturbing how many of the victims of psychopaths I have talked to were also previously abused in early life or young adulthood, and I wondered whether there was a correlation. I was abused as a child by a family ‘friend’ called Jimmy, who used to come over and play hide-and-seek with my three older siblings and me. He always used to find me first. I participated in his ‘game’ and enjoyed the adult attention. Being the youngest of four children, it was nice to have an adult solely focused on me. I was four years old.
I can now see how Jimmy groomed me, see how he tested the waters by exposing himself. He stood in the hallway with his penis hanging out of his trousers and his hands on his hips. I giggled as I asked what ‘that’ was. As a result, I became a target.
If I had pointed and said I could see his ‘penis’, he would have zipped up and put it away. Then he would have mentioned to my parents that I had walked into the bathroom on him and he was worried I might have seen something whilst he was taking a pee, thereby neutralising anything I might have reported back to them. Paedophiles don’t target children who have the language to describe what has happened to them.
Once targeted, it became his regular game. I would hide and Jimmy would come in and shut the door. It became a secret, a game between us that was not to be talked about – because I would be in trouble if I did. It only ended when I was about six years old when my twelve-year-old brother stopped him at the door. The man had been coming around too often when my parents were out. I think he was caught abusing another child and he never came back again. What happened to me stopped when I was about six but it didn’t start to trouble me until I was a teenager. I understood the rude jokes too easily, people started to talk about sex and I remembered things I shouldn’t have. I started to realise that what had happened to me wasn’t normal. Far worse was that I remembered enjoying the ‘game’, and that gave me a deep sense of shame and self-loathing.
I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was thirteen, something that was quite newly being recognised in schools at the time. It helped to explain why I struggled in class but it didn’t stop my classmates from moaning if I had to get up and read. I felt like I was less ‘able’ than the other students and when I did well, I assumed it was a fluke rather than through my skill. My feeling of being mentally subnormal combined with the self-loathing.
I used to cut myself or bite myself or burn myself when it got too bad. I used physical pain to blot out any emotions that rose to the surface. I also became very good at hiding what I’d done as well. I shrugged the injuries off as accidents and smiled sweetly at people as I related some story of how it had happened. I remember taking a piece of broken glass and scoring two crossed lines across the back of my left hand. When my sister Isobel saw it I told her I had fallen over on glass – she believed me even though it was an odd injury to have sustained from a fall.