Postcard to myself

There are venomous snakes in this box. You think it’s chocolates and that I’m sorry, but I’m not and it’s snakes.

I have been going through some cards, letters and postcards from my life up until now. My old room is getting ripped out and replaced with something new, to cater to my parents’ obsession with decorating and modernising their house, so all these forgotten bits and pieces have been coming to light for the first time in 10, 15, in some cases 20, years. What can I say? I’m a magpie.

And there’s this stash of old post, which has given me a new perspective on my upbringing. Because I was relatively late to become aware of psychopathy and specifically that it pertained to who I am (this I discovered at the age of 18; I’m now 25), I have been under the impression that other people in my life were similarly clueless about my nature. Not so.

There’s the card in the picture, sent to me one Christmas by a school friend, who wrote that it “reminded me of you… happy Xmas, you weirdo.” There’s another card, sent by family friends, with reference to an atlas they bought me: “You always said you wanted to take over the world. Let this inspire you.” Rereading that today reminded me that, yes, I was a megalomaniacal motormouth at one stage of my childhood, and had evidently revealed some or all of my plans to this family – rookie Bond villain mistake. And that is why I will never get the chance to be tried for war crimes in The Hague.

Then there was this bizarre Wallace and Gromit birthday card, sent to my grandad from all of my family, which read inside, in my mother’s spiky handwriting: “Happy birthday, Dad. This card was chosen by Jamie on the understanding that you’ll post it back to him.” It was dated 1997; I was three. Little control freak.

Sure, so there’s no smoking gun. No “Ohhh my God, my baby’s a psycho, what do I dooo?” letter. But there’s knowledge – and acceptance – of my personality. I’m lucky to have parents who have never tried to deny who I am, and who have supported me from the start. It just goes to show that sometimes close friends and family know you better than you do yourself.

---

In the same pile, I also came across a postcard from Montenegro, sent in 2008 by me… to me. It was postmarked and everything, sent par avion across Europe from the tiny Balkan state to my home in England. This is it, folks – peak narcissism:

Dear future self,

Ha! Ha! I’m on holiday, you’re not!

Classy.

It goes on –

Hope the ol’ ear has cleared up by the time I get this.

Oh, that’s right. I got an ear infection from the poorly-chlorinated swimming pool. I had to get some strange ear potion from the apothecary in Kotor. Yes, apothecary;  Montenegro’s a hell of a place.

I am sitting on my apartment’s balcony. Jealous?

Yes. Fuck you.

Anyway, fuck you.

Be you later,

James

Great, well thanks for that, 15-year old James.

The moral of the story? Never meet your heroes, because they’re sure to disappoint.

How To Explain Trump To Kids – A Lesson in Personality Disorders

“Remember the other day at the playground when that bully said, ‘I don’t care about you. I only care about me!’ Imagine if that kid ran the country.”

via How To Explain Trump To Kids – Dad and Buried

by Mike Julianelle

 

 

.

.

 

 

Just being psychopathic

So, New Year’s Day, 2018. I spent it in the company of my mother for the most part, playing board games. It was nice to reconnect, nice to not have anything else to do but play a few games and enjoy spending time with the woman who birthed and raised me. It’s not often that there’s literally nothing else I’d rather be doing than what I’m currently doing, or that there’s nothing else that really has to be done.

The way my mind works, it’s goal-oriented. Win this. Get that. Do such and such. Beat him. And when I have a goal, everything I do, every bit of effort is put into achieving that goal. You could say I have a sort of tunnel vision, a razor sharp focus on the prize, outside of which nothing else matters. When I’m trying to achieve a goal is when other people are most likely to be adversely affected. This single-mindedness is what causes me to manipulate and use people like tools. You see, people who have been hurt by psychopaths get it all wrong. They take everything personally. They act like there was always a plan on the part of the psychopath to ruin their life or to make them unhappy. This is rarely the case. The psychopath was just doing what he or she needed to do to get what he or she wanted. You just got unlucky, by being in the way or by being the key to achieving his or her goal.

Sometimes, I am accused of deliberately hurting someone or of setting out to cause them harm. This is fair enough; people are inclined to take things personally, as they love to imagine themselves as more important than they really are, being at the centre of their own universe. I don’t blame people for feeling like shit when they’ve been cheated or taken an emotional battering. It’s not a good place to be in. But it’s when they call me cruel or sadistic, they’re wrong. I’m not cruel. I’m not sadistic. I don’t wish anybody harm. On the other hand, I am single-minded. I am selfish. I am ruthless.

But not today. Today, there was nothing to do but play games and enjoy being with my mother. I suppose that was a sort of goal, and could be reimagined as an objective: ‘spend time with Mum and enjoy self’, which would require of me such behaviour as ‘be polite’, ‘be charming’, ‘be loving’, ‘be upbeat’ (yes, that is really how I think). However, there was nothing beyond this simplistic ‘goal’, no detailed planning or second-guessing required!

And it was enjoyable. We both had a good time. We drank cups of tea, and later glasses of beaujolais. We played ‘Monopoly’ and ‘Sorry’, and I won four out of five games. I was probably thinking more strategically than Mum, because she was just having fun with her son, while I can never really ‘switch off’ one hundred percent. I manipulated and cheated my way into winning four times, but always with a cheeky smile, playful banter and a joke to make my parent laugh. She could see what I was doing most of the time, both when I was giving ‘advice’ on what move she should take next, and when I tried to bribe her with 500 Monopoly money, but she didn’t hold it against me because she loves me, and because I was on top social form. I like that kind of interaction. Being charming and having someone hang on to your every word – it’s a good feeling, even when it’s with someone who is pretty much biologically-programmed to love you.

Still, the way I look at it is although my Mum can’t help but love me, the fact that she also likes me must count for something, and says something about our relationship.

New Year’s Day 2018 – it was simple, but fulfilling.